History Main / JobStealingRobot

* The advancement of UsefulNotes/AIGeneratedArtwork has sparked fears of automation of the creative industry, as a number of digital artists have feared their work may become devalued in favor of art-generating algorithms. Further adding to the controversy is the revelation that these Generated Images are built on stolen and copyrighted artwork, often intentionally by the creators and proponents of AI Generation ''and without consent or permission from the artists they were taken'', effectively treating artists as little more than resources to be [[{{Greed}} stolen from, all the while reselling a competing product using their stolen work against them]] while claiming ownership and creation of said artpiece.

** And for further irony, the machines themselves have an ambiguous relationship with the programs, AI who have achieved near-perfect human behaviors, to the point that they are near-indistinguishable from other humans in the matrix, but can also perform complex computing tasks with weird-sounding names as their professional jobs. In short, ''programs could replace humans and machines simultaneously''. All we know for sure is that the programs also have constricting rules placed upon them; if they can't work, they're slated for execution. Especially applies to their disabled children.

While technically this would allow humans to free themselves from monotone tedious labor as productivity increases, making people displaced by robots that benefit from robot-made goods would require a major overhaul of the economy, necessitating political and social solutions, not merely technological. Many socio-political theorists and futurists do believe that, at some point before the middle of this century if technological progress is any indication, robots will indeed replace the vast majority of human jobs, effectively leading to a "Post-Capitalist" social order. While [[TheSingularity no one is quite sure of what exactly will that entail]], this is bound to result in a net increase of humanity's prosperity - the question is whether [[{{Utopia}} everyone will be able to benefit from it]] or [[FeudalFuture humanity would be divided into robot owners and everyone else]]. In the worst case scenario, reserved for {{Dystopia}}s, elites refuse to share the newfound prosperity and [[FinalSolution solve]] unemployment by [[KillThePoor killing the poor]] now that they are unnecessary.

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* This is a pivotal plot point in ''Anime/ArmitageIII'', due to the high employment rate of [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots robots]], on Mars. The human populace objects strongly, sometimes violently, to this and regularly hold public protests, to denounce robots and demand their jobs back. In fact, TheWarOfEarthlyAggression stems from a particularly unusual example of this trope. [[spoiler: Earth, having become a LadyLand, objects to the idea of Mars developing {{Ridiculously Human Robot}}s that are capable of ''breeding with humans'', thus stealing the "job" of pregnancy from human women. And incidentally ruining their power-base.]]

* [[http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-08-23 This]] ''{{ComicStrip/Dilbert}}'' strip. The comic also has a robot character that frequently threatens its co-workers with this possibility.
** In another strip, Carol asks Dilbert what college major he would recommend her son pursue. Dilbert points out that "it will take him fifteen years to pay off his student loans, but most jobs will be replaced by robots in ten". He adds that "the world will always need bankers" but Carol is "[[MorallyBankruptBanker trying to steer him away from crime]]".
* Meta Inversion: The strip ''Robotman'' became ''ComicStrip/RobotmanAndMonty'', and then finally just ''Monty'' when Robotman was written out.

* ''Film/IRobot'': This is yet another of many reasons for Will Smith's character to disdain robots. He invokes this when proposing a new slogan for a robotics company: "Shitting on the Little Guy".

* According to ''Film/TheMatrix'' [[AllThereInTheManual backstory]], this is the reason humans started fighting the machines. Artificial Intelligence had evolved to a point where machines became better than humans at everything. Eventually, the humans started discriminating against the machines and kicked them out. The machines claimed a worthless piece of desert, turned it into a gigantic company town for machines, and decided to export absolutely everything except labor so they couldn't steal jobs from abroad, but that just made humans angrier and started a war. And to twist the blade, this trope was inverted when the machines won the war; they discovered that humans were capable of some kind of psionic energy that gave them the power to subconsciously create energy from almost nothing, so they were all forcefully drafted as human crops in machine-grass fields. Initially the process was excruciatingly painful, and now it is totalitarian enslavement to the titular LotusEaterMachine Matrix.
** And for further irony, the machines themselves have an ambiguous relationship with the programs, AI who have achieved near-perfect human behaviors, to the point that they are near-indistinguishable from other humans in the matrix, but can also perform complex computing tasks with weird-sounding names as their professional jobs. In short, ''programs could replace humans and machines simultaneously''. All we know for sure is that the programs also have constricting rules placed upon them; if they can't work, they're slated for execution. Especially applies to their disabled children.
* In ''Film/WarGames'', the computer is used to replace human commanders in charge of missile silos. Leo [[Series/TheWestWing McGarry]] glances significantly at the machine when he's being relieved by it. Although this isn't so much about lost jobs as it is about the increased risk of ANuclearError.
* In ''Film/BillAndTedsBogusJourney'', Bill & Ted get killed and replaced by "evil robot us'es" which look exactly like Bill & Ted, but are programmed to be evil in order to destroy Bill & Ted's reputation so they don't become awesome rock stars and turn the world to peace. [[spoiler:They fight back by recruiting an alien genius who builds "good robot us'es" capable of destroying the evil ones, even though they look like they were cobbled together from random appliances (they were). They also make for great backup dancers.]]
* Franchise/RoboCop is initially feared to be this by his fellow cops, but he eventually is accepted as a valuable comrade who just happens to be particularly tough with special abilities that can take on threats head on and draw fire from his fellows. To be fair, Murphy is the only one who manages to go through the transformation without being DrivenToSuicide. In the [[Film/RoboCop2014 2014 reboot]], Robocop is meant for much the same purpose, except the intent is to use him as a publicity tool so they can legalize the use of actual robots on US soil.
* In ''Film/HeroesForSale'', laundromat workers start rioting because a new machine has taken their jobs.
* ''Film/HiddenFigures'' takes place when NASA had their calculations performed by human computers with a pencil and calculator. But when Dorothy Vaughan, the supervisor-in-all-but-name of the "colored" computer team, sees an IBM mainframe being installed she realizes that she and her team will be out of a job soon. So, she learns Fortran and teaches her team how to run it.

--->''"He'll make [[DaChief you]] obsolete. No hazard pay, no 'blue flu'... and he won't call me 'Evil Film/{{Gidget}}' behind my back."''

--->''"...Techno-warriors who never get tired, never get hungry, and never say 'no'. Every army in the world will be made up of my creations."''
* ''Film/TerminatorDarkFate'' opens with Dani's brother losing his job to an industrial robot literally overnight. A parallel is drawn between this trope and military AI like Skynet, discussing how humanity always searches for ways to replace manpower with machines, to advance science no matter the human cost. As the Terminator itself says in [[Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay the second film]], it is [[InYourNatureToDestroyYourselves in our nature]].
* ''Film/HarrisonBergeron'': It's said the Great Recession didn't end the way other ones had due to automation, which meant increasing numbers of people never got work again. Due to this, a revolution occurred as the unrest grew, in a huge backlash against the elite which were blamed, with strict enforced equality afterward.

* A non-fiction book by Federico Pistono explaining technological unemployment is called [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK]]. Recently, it became [[http://robotswillstealyourjob.com/read available online for free,]] as a part of the author's decision to raise awareness of the issue and why it's likely to be a benefit in the long run.
* The novel ''[[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm Manna]]'' by Marshall Brain argues that robots would make efficient managers far faster than they would make efficient employees, creating a dystopia in which workers are still human but they are saddled with AI governing their every step. Of course, eventually advances in computer vision would allow for the creation of said robotic employees, causing the near full scale robotization of labor and the masses of resulting unemployed to be shunted into government provided housing that end up being little more than prison camps by the wealthy and powerful who are waiting for them to die out of sight.
* ''Literature/AscendanceOfABookworm'': Myne's GivingRadioToTheRomans includes introducing the printing press in a setting in which books are individually handcrafted luxury items involving the labor of multiple people. One of the reasons she eventually needs to get adopted into nobility is that handwriting books is a job frequently found in the ImpoverishedPatrician class and introducing something that will start slowly eating away at their source of revenue and eventually force them to learn a brand new trade to keep having a job in the best-case scenario can only be done as someone of even higher status.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
** In ''Literature/FeetOfClay'', Sgt Colon has a conversation with a wick-dipper who's been made redundant since the candle factory started employing a {{golem}}.
** Averted in ''Literature/MakingMoney'' by Moist's swift intervention. Adora Belle Dearheart ends up bringing ''four thousand'' golems from the lost city of Um (yes, [[WhosOnFirst that's its name]]) to Ankh-Morpork. While they really ''would'' be job-stealing robots to the point of bankrupting the city (because unlike humans, they don't spend money), Moist decides to put them to good use not actually doing work, but burying themselves in a safe place and becoming the basis for his new currency.

** "{{Literature/Sally}}": Jacob Folkers was a chauffeur, but [[AutomatedAutomobiles self-driving cars]], like the titular Sally, eliminate his job entirely. Fortunately, his current employer irrationally refuses to trust the machine and keeps Jake around to clean and repair the car.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov and Creator/RobertSilverberg's ''Literature/ThePositronicMan'': One of the groups objecting to Andrew's attempt to gain his freedom is the Regional Labor Federation, who always oppose robot distribution and suddenly find themselves arguing the same side as United States Robots and Mechanical Men. They don't want robots to be recognized as people who deserve freedom because they fear that it will cause a loss of work for human beings.
-->"How ironic! To have built a tool so good that it takes command of its builders! To be supplanted by our own machinery-to be made obsolete by it, to be relegated to the scrapheap of evolution-"
* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** Comes up in ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear: The Doomsday Ship''. It's a Star Wars book, so droids are everywhere, but it's noted that there are things they can't do which organic beings can. For one, droids are rarely able to exceed or surpass their programming; without extensive modification, most have trouble with things not closely related to what they're designed to handle. A prototype AI is being installed into a ship which ''is'' adaptable and can handle things its human crew does, to the resentment of its captain.
** The Book ''The New Essential Guide To Droids'' establishes that a combination of this trope and quite a few [[RobotUprising droid rebellious]] are the main causes of [[FantasticRacism Anti-Droid Sentiment]]. Specific examples include Genetech, who were the first company to use the "Machines making machines" assembly line of the type seen in ''Film/AttackOfTheClones'', and the Aratech BRT Supercomputer which is not actually a droid but still hated for having taken the jobs of municipal workers. The book does also establish some droids have taken the jobs most Organics are unable or unwilling to do (such as working in metal smelting plants or cleaning windows on the mile buildings found on worlds like Coruscant).
* The novel ''Invitation To The Game'' begins with young adults, freshly graduated from college, being relegated to a slum because robotic labor is more convenient. Two of the protagonists' friends got to go home to family businesses instead... only to arrive in the slum later because ''those'' were converting to robotic labor. [[spoiler: Turns out the slum life is also to shape them into bands of TrueCompanions for the titular Game, and the friends' family businesses were deliberately converted because this particular group was incomplete without those two friends.]]

* ''Literature/TheVeldt'': Lydia has come to consider her family's fully automated house to be one, fearing that it has replaced her as a mother-figure to her and George's children. A child psychologist eventually confirms that she's right.

* Plenty of them in ''{{Series/Cybervillage}}''. One of the reasons Baragozin is hated.

* ''{{Series/Humans}}'': Mattie Hawkins believes there will be no skilled jobs for humans in the future. A newspaper headline in the TitleSequence also shows this fear. One of the members of We Are People partly bases his speech on this.

* Music/{{Styx}}: The song "Mr. Roboto" touches on this.
-->''Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto\\
For doing the jobs that nobody wants to''
* Played for laughs in the Lost Dogs' cover version of "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)". The StudioChatter in this version is completely different from the original song: here, band member Derri Daugherty doesn't bother to show up to the session, and he sends the Virtual Derri computer program to record for him. As the song progresses, the other band members get fed up and leave, one by one, each activating their virtual counterparts as they go. By the song's end, the computer programs are the only ones in the studio, and they plan to take over the entire music industry.
-->'''Virtual Terry:''' This will be great. Recording without humans. ''[...]''\\
'''Virtual Mike:''' Hey, guys, [[LightbulbJoke how many musicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?]]\\
'''Virtual Gene:''' How many?\\
'''Virtual Mike:''' All of them. Because they are now unemployed. And they need a job. Get it?
* Mentioned in Music/BadReligion's "Punk Rock Song":
-->''Like workers in a factory, we do our share\\
But there's so many other fucking robots out there.''

* Music/DanielAmos's "Incredible Shrinking Man", from ''Music/VoxHumana'', includes the lyrics:
-->Machines remind you\\
that you can be replaced

** This happened in a Nuka-Cola bottling plant in which a robot called Milo was made the supervisor of a group of workers. [[AIIsACrapshoot It began locking employees in a closet for days for things like taking slightly-too-long breaks and leaving a toilet seat up.]] Something would presumably have been done about this had the [[NukeEm the War]] not come first.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S5E33TheBrainCenterAtWhipples The Brain Center at Whipple's]]", a callous business executive replaces all of his workers with machines, putting them out of work. At the end, he suffers karmic justice as he is replaced by JustForFun/RobbieTheRobot.