"Deploying the robot allowed a human worker to do different work, increasing output"

Sounded like this was win/win here.

The article also quotes them as saying they’re not going to lay people off but also probably not going to hire more employees given this option so future workers are left out. And I imagine that position won’t age well as they may not backfill people who leave if not actively lay people off sooner than later.

Possibly, but doubtful if we view the full effect. It says that it eliminates the need to hire new workers. What is the next generation to do if the jobs don't exist?

Were they even planning on hiring more workers? And if the robot job scales to 2 robots, isn't it also possible that the other job scales to 2 humans?

Seed the Solar System.

Let's talk about realilistic stuff. Do you think that minimum wage workers are suited for being astronauts? Maybe a small subset can be trained for it, but many probably cannot.

Genera idea is that goods and services get ever cheaper.

If your not overly picky (beans and rice) have gotten so cheap that world hunger is already a solved problem. Distribution less so.

If you can setup a Von Neumann machine that worked In the middle of the desert. eventually you could have hundreds of cities ready for move in. So very cheap.

Yet people need housing and healthcare, which is ever increasing in price.

I partly agree, but not completely.

In the case of healthcare, it's partly the cost of technology - a generation ago there were no MRIs, drugs were less complex, etc. The quality and outcomes have massively improved in many areas.

Even with housing, you have material costs and labor costs. Everyone talks about density, but if someone isn't working with a UBI, then they can live in the middle of nowhere. Most of the housing issues are really a personal choices and labor location.

I have a feeling they are going to be shifts to have people either level up wiht their technical skills and work on advanced problems and some people who cannot level up but can still be used in lower level data work where automation is really difficult.

There's plenty of work to do: maintaining public infrastructure (buildings, parks, gardens, etc) and taking care of people (sick, elderly, disabled, young).

I guess we will have a lot more public sector jobs.

That sounds like a snowball problem. Not only will the government need to pay UBI, but also these other jobs. How to pay for it?

* Tax the machines (and/or the increased profits coming from automation)

* Some people who receive an UBI that covers their basic needs may do some of these jobs for a lower wage than the current one