This is the category that is also a lens. Robotics and automation are themselves becoming cheaper — industrial automation costs continue falling, agricultural robotics are deploying in commercial fields, humanoid robots are moving from demonstration into early commercial pilots. But the deeper point is that robotics is the mechanism by which falling costs propagate. A solar panel installed by automated equipment is cheaper than one installed by hand. A vertical farm with automated harvesting is closer to economic than one without. A home assembled by a printer needs fewer framers.
This is where the political question becomes most acute. The decoupling of GDP from labor that may be approaching is, materially, a robotics question. Who owns the machines that will produce the abundance? In whose interest will they be deployed? The answer is not technically determined. It is politically determined, and it is being determined now.