Here's the thing: you'll never see the one that works.
You'll feel things are fine for a long time, but you'll get brought into the office one day at 4:30PM, and they'll tell you they're doing layoffs. It's not your fault, but you're to clean out your desk and be out by 5. Don't worry, they'll say, you'll get your 2 weeks pay and 6 weeks severance, plus a good reference (After you sign an NDA, of course). You'll wonder what the hell happened, all their prototypes were garbage before, how could they have laid you off?
What happened was you saw the 3-4 years of versions that failed. In another warehouse, where my friend was doing testing, they finally got things to work on the new system. It's both producing more than your factory by an order of magnitude, because robots are usually faster, and without requiring a team of expensive employees who want healthcare and a pay-raise every year.
They laid you off because, with their now-working prototype, they want to close down your plant, use the new system, and even with cost of closeage, the stats say it'll pay itself back within 6 months, after which you're permanently obsolete at that plant.
Suddenly, your years of experience working in the warehouse mean nothing, because they'll also likely have a hiring freeze, since if the stats hold out in the new factory as well, they're going to roll out nationwide. You, and a fuckton of people with the exact same skillset as you are suddenly dumped onto the job market, unceremoniously and with a footnote in the associated press, because it's only 20,000 jobs or whatever.
So feel free not to worry about automation, so long as you don't mind being "promoted to a customer".
