The problem with seeing automation as a means to liberate people from capitalism and free them for intellectual pursuits (a noble and laudable goal) is that it exists to serve capitalist ends. Amazon, for instance, is definitely not automating for the benefit of humanity. They just don't want to pay people.
Although it is good to know someone is thinking about it. I really worry that, at scale, mass employment won't be addressed until it actually threatens the status quo.
Andrew Yang. See his discussion with students at Georgetown Univ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tuJ0phjFys
or for a longer exposition of his ideas see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsEzmFamZ8
But the technology, while not liberating, will become more accessible. And I think a lot of people, just as in many decades past, are interested in something beyond bare capitalism.
My hope is that the collectivists can make progress in the coming decades too. We can develop our own open source alternatives to the machinery of dystopia. We can abandon intellectual property as a concept and ensure that when we labor for new development, the knowledge we gain is accessible to everyone who wants to liberate themselves.
And just as a group of hobbyists and corporations built Linux, perhaps we could build our own alternative to dystopia.
Politically right now I think we need unity and we need to stop trying to use the government to solve our problems. The government is a tool of force and force cannot be the way we build utopia except perhaps as defense against those who would have it shut down.
I’m also a writer and I study the intersection of automation and society.
So while it’s true that most automation engineers don’t think this way, some of us do. :-)
[1] http://reboot.love