If you take the ambitions of robotics and AI companies seriously then what they are trying to create is the equivalent of unleashing 100 million cloned copies of the smartest and most well adjusted people you know upon the economy at a fraction of the cost. If they succeed it would absolutely reduce jobs significantly. In fact, its a little hard to imagine how the average Joe would have any economic value at all.
When was the last time you went to the mall?
If no retail shops around you have closed down, I'd be surprised. The effects will take forever to reverberate through, but it's not like Amazon hasn't had an effect on the job market. Instead of being sales associates there's now Amazon warehouse workers. Instead of human copywriters, there's human fact verification as a service.
