Indeed, and they're already better in a sense. I would never try to compete with the robots at basic manufacturing such as CNC machining and automated circuit assembly.

But for stuff that needs really quick turn-around, as a prototype or experiment evolves, I can take care of custom tasks and repairs in minutes that would otherwise take days. And it doesn't take many of those kinds of delays to utterly cripple a project.

However, I'm under no illusions, and have a "never say never" mindset. I don't claim to have a "safe" job. I'm already using AI heavily myself. The computer that's next to each lab bench is running the latest coding agents or whatever you call them. I'm not as deep into it as the coders are, but I'm not all that far behind. My token burn is respectable. ;-)