Bill Gates gives his thoughts about automation and workers in the somewhat close future: Robots who takes jobs from humans should pay taxes.
While I highly recommend to watch the video (it's short, just a little bit faster than two minutes), here's a TL;DR:
If humans helped fund these robots through taxes, it is therefore only logical that a tax be applied on the robots, as some kind of Robot taxes. Considering all the money that the industries will save through automation, a tax will be a minimal cut in their budget while allowing living workers to find something new and/or refresh themselves in a new domain.
I'm personally glad that we're taking a more direct focus on automation. It's becoming imminent, so making sure we're doing it right is (and should be) one of humanity's main priority.