content: Robots automation has been around for a long time.  They have, yes, but the previous generation were slow and stupid.  They were able to automate simple, repetitive tasks, but only those tasks they were programmed for.  Enter the new generation of multi-taski, multi-purpose robots like Baxter who learn a task by watching and can actually think through the process and improve on it with no further programming. It's the difference between mechanical muscle and mechanical mind.  Think about transportation.  The internal combustion engine replaced the horse, now we're replacing the driver.  Think about how close the self-driving car is; they've already driven a million plus miles on the road in California and caused zero accidents.  Take individual consumers out of the equation and focus on truck drivers, taxis, shuttles, buses, anyone who's employed to drive.  That's two or three million jobs in the US alone.  And that's just the transportation industries because they're the low hanging fruit.  The most obvious and probably most immediate.  But also think about warehouse workers that are already being affected by these guys, dock and port workers and miners. What it boils down to is that the previous automation revolution saw a replacement of mindless repetitive tasks, but anything requiring decision making, judgement calls or any kind of learning still required a high level of human intervention.  We're seeing that changing and things that we thought could never be automated are being automated at a pretty substantial and shocking rate.  I'm not weighing in here on whether it's good or bad, but I will say that it's inevitable.