I didn't mean that as a rationalization--it actual makes the exploitation even worse, I think. I feel like the momentum of research around factories is invested in reducing the number of human workers rather than making conditions better for the ones still needed. That's the inevitable direction to head, but it does create a lost generation.

Meanwhile, you are right--we'e had advanced robotics for a long time. But I feel there's recently been an explosion in computer vision; the kind of thing that's only recently made driverless cars a practical reality. Combined with the crash in costs for computational power, I think we're about to witness a moment in history where the march towards automation is going to become really accelerated.