Your friends are provably wrong. I'd have to look up the actual numbers and dates again, but since around 1994-2000 automation and industrialization has replaced more jobs than it has created, and has in every year since at an exponentially increasing rate. Unfortunately while it would be nice to do this peacefully, the first Rosie the Robot is likely to cause a mass upheaval. Stupid people will try to ban them outright, the smart ones will simply tax the companies that make them and control them providing universal basic income from the revenue.