[JesseK]

Chris/Jim -- you're slightly missing my point, though I didn't clearly state it. My issue is less about the [generic] technology that genuinely improves our situation(s), and more about a robot that is literally intended to represent a human.

Increasing throughput of a factory or simply increasing the options a customer has available to them aren't necessarily detrimental to society. There is still the person that governs the self-checkout lines, and even on top of that many stores have increased their cashier quantities in order to account for ever-increasing demand for food (etc). There are also some things robots can do that humans simply cannot do -- like 40,000 widgets per hour at arthrtitis-inducing speeds.

As for the net shift of jobs -- well, that's a tough one to answer. Is the world motivated enough to learn what it would take to fullfill those jobs? Given that we're in FIRST, we apparently don't think so.