Downside would be loss of employment.

And it's happened plenty of times before - Combine harvesters employ a lot fewer people as drivers and mechanics than the old crews of people with scythes, mules and such.

Back then, we dealt with it by having these newfangled "factories" that could employ the former farmhands. What makes it particularly challenging today is we don't have something similar to absorb the lost jobs. And it doesn't look like we will anytime soon.

We should probably start talking about concepts like "universal basic income". 'Cause we're going to need something like that.

Amused by the image of the seizures Wingers would have over supporting "lazy" people that won't work for a living, even though they'd be the ones putting "lazy-folks" out of work.

There is only about 3,000 of us left in the US who sail for a living. The big problem with this is i've never been on a new ship or an old one that did not have issues pop up all the time. Gaskets fail, water leaks, the wrong steel is used and rusts out, electronics fail on a regular bases, ETC. This is driven by profit margin as always. When I was working for a company that ran three ship on the South American east coast run and back, a friend in the office told me they were making about 90-100 million profit per year on the ships. They still complained about crew cost....

the ocean is a very hostile environment. Salt water is extremely corrosive to both ferrous metals and electrical components. I doubt it would be profitable to operate robotics in that environment. +, I think insurance companies would balk at coverage.

I think the economic realities would over-ride the desire to 86 pesky labor issues.