Quality, reproducibility, and precision necessarily require removing the human.

If it's something "artisanal", that not necessarily true, but even then, intentional "mistakes" can be added [1]. Having humans for the sake of having humans isn't a charity that non-luxury businesses can support (à la Snow Crash). It'll have to be something that governments subsidize or enforce tyrannically.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2012/04/24/new-yo...

Fewer and fewer people are interested in manufacturing jobs, especially the less glamorous ones. Large manufacturers are having a hard time using analytics and more advanced systems because of qualified labour shortages. I've spoken to manufacturers whose technicians can't even write or follow instructions correctly. Sometimes, sending 10 technicians to inspect an asset would results in 10 different opinions about possible issues / failures. All of these could lead to lower quality product and increased unscheduled downtimes, lower revenues etc etc. But, it is definitely important to still allow people to use their brains and come up with better options

I volunteer for rural development organizations providing the kinds of services that suburbs would call dept of water or forestry. This point is very important to reliably onboard volunteers.

If we need excavation, our worst-case scenario is that that we need excavation by someone who also knows

If it produces a better quality product/service with less volatility relative to cost, then yes.