Robot Macroeconomics: What can theory and several centuries of economic history teach us?

Advances in machine learning and mobile robotics mean that robots could do your job better than you. That's led to some radical predictions of mass unemployment, much more leisure or a work free future. Queen Elizabeth I denied a patent for a knitting machine over fears it would create unemployment, Ricardo thought technology would lower wages and Keynes famously predicted a 15 hour working week by 2030. Understanding why these beliefs proved to be wrong gives us important insights into why similar claims about robotisation might be incorrect. But automation could nevertheless have sizeable distributional implications and ramifications well beyond the industries in which it's deployed.