This is not capitalism, this is economics

If we are going to discuss what will happen when the robots come to take all out jobs then we need to get our initial analysis correct. Something that Tim Dunlop fails at we're afraid:

How likely is it that a robot will take your job?

It is a question asked with increasing urgency as everything from 3D printing to driverless cars to machine learning is rolled out by a tech industry that sees automation as almost a sacred duty.

To answer, let’s begin with a little-discussed fact. We live in a capitalist system, and the point of capitalism is to destroy jobs, not create them. That might sound counterintuitive but it is easy to explain.

Capitalism is driven by profit. Wages are a cost to be controlled in pursuit of that profit. This means that whenever capital can find a way to turn a buck without employing a human, it will take it, whether it be with robots in factories, automated checkouts at supermarkets or drones to deliver packages.

The destruction of jobs is not something which defines capitalism. It's something which defines economics.

Our basic starting point is that human desires and wants are unlimited. We also note that we have scarce resources with which to sate those desires and wants. Economics is about the allocation of those resources to meet them. Human labour is a scarce resource - we therefore desire to be efficient in our allocation of it just as we wish to be efficient in our allocation of copper, energy or land.

Whatever our economic system we become richer by increasing the efficiency with which we allocate those scarce resources. All economic systems therefore, at least those that make us richer which seems to be rather the point of the exercise, aim to destroy jobs for that is increasing the efficiency with which we use human labour, one of those scarce resources. 

The only point at which capitalism enters the picture is that this mixture of that capitalism plus free markets is the most efficient system devised as yet to reach that desired goal. Of us all being able to consume more, sate more needs and desires, while employing less human labour to get there.

Jobs destruction isn't capitalism - capitalism's just good at it.