[cm2187]

Well, that's my main opposition to "AI will replace [insert any profession]". Many jobs are so specific it will never be economical to hire a team of software+AI specialist to create and maintain the software to automate that work. Plus the fact that the said specialists usually know nothing about the domain.

[TeMPOraL]

There's always a way around this, and GP hinted at it. Instead of automating a difficult stage of a process as-is, you redesign the entire process, possibly including the final product, to make it automation-friendly.

This is how we deal with problems in general. If we can't solve them on their own terms, we change the terms. For example, designing an all-terrain vehicle is hard, so instead we've been beating the terrain flat, and paving it so that it stays flat, to allow a simple box with wheels to work, and we've been doing that since beginnings of recorded history.

(And speaking of paving - we're not placing random stones in the ground anymore; we're either pouring liquid, or laying stones pre-cut to standard size. Both are much easier to automate, and to some extent they already are automated.)

I can't think of a job so specific that wouldn't yield to competition from equivalent but normalized job.

[afiori]

A cynic could reply that you only need enough hype/marketing to convince management and a way to shift blame when shit hits the fan.

[anotheryou]

Now you need three experts, one in the domain, one for automation and an engineer. But only the engineer will be needed in production.

[Dylan16807]

If lack of roboticists to spend enough time on each station was the main issue, I bet 100 roboticists would have been plenty. At that rate you can pay them a lot and still save money. And after 6 months you can reassign 90% of them to a new project, while the savings continue indefinitely.

[throwayws]

Which is where the push to general AI comes from.

[cm2187]

Even assuming this will be a thing one day, you still need an IT team to integrate and maintain this software.