The society still needs a homo sapiens to intervene when the machine flashes "Unknown item in the bagging area", though.

Also, define "we". There used to be an entire substrata of people whose job was to pull the elevator to the right floor when requested by the customers entering the elevator. It looks like those guys are all finally relaxing somewhere on the beach now that we've invented automated elevators eith buttons.

The people who own the machines that do the work do have more time for themselves.

The people who own the machines still charge for the products those machines produce for profit. Their profits have gone up, the retail cost of the products they produce hasn't gone down. Consumers still need to find the same money to purchase those products and so they still have to work to make that money.

Having machines doing most of the work helps nobody reduce their workload. All it does is make those that can afford to buy the machines to do their jobs have more time and/or long term profit. If you can't afford to buy a machine to do your job, there is no opportunity to reduce your income needs without reducing or finding more creative ways to provide for your material needs.

> the retail cost of the products they produce hasn't gone down.

I disagree, with almost anything that has both a handmade and a mass-produced version, the mass-produced variant will be cheaper - t-shirts, soap, mugs, suits, etc.