After many years of working on the the problem of biological automation, I came to conclude that it's really hard to beat an extremely skilled/smart lab tech for general purpose experiments. And my company thinks on the decade+ timescale.
True. But what percentage of the workforce is extremely skilled and smart lab techs? And who knows, if we automate mundane normal jobs, we might get more people who find the time to pursue such high level skills instead of being worried about paying for food.
