You act as if the price on these things will always be this high. It's like saying cars will never replace horses because the cost of buying a car is the equivalent to 30 horses. Right now it isn't practical to replace people with them but do you really think it will be like that forever?

The benefits are also that the robot works for no benefits, doesn't take sick days, doesn't complain, it doesn't take workers comp if an accident happens, it isn't late, and doesn't require legally required HR training on the clock. The machines basically work 24/7, they do need to recharge but when you get multiple robots you now have workers that will walk over and charge themselves and work in shifts nonstop reliably.

I doubt maintaining the robot arm would be expensive. The issue with automation right now is the entry cost doesn't justify replacing a worker but as wages for workers keeps going up, as do the cost of benefits and the costs from them taking days off and bathroom breaks, the robot becomes cheaper. The price of the robot will also lower over time. I also really doubt DHL just bought the robot arms with it just being a money sink, they wouldn't do it if they didn't think it would save them money.

The robot arm robot from Boston dynamics already is replacing jobs at DHL. It is using AI to run because it is adapting to real world objects and can handle stuff dynamically. Not explicitly just AI since it's a robot too but it is already replacing jobs, not just changing work.

DHL already ordered the robot arms for unloading trucks from Boston dynamics and their robot dog has been available for purchase for over a year. These things will only get cheaper over time and competition will catch up and lower the price.

They can probably hide it the same way you hide Photoshop edits. The way an edit is detected is by comparing the pixels to the rest of the image and a computer can very easily see the differences in resolution and other small things. If someone just makes a high resolution image and compresses it enough that there are slight compression artifacts on everything, then you can't detect it anymore. The details that show the Photoshop disappear in compression artifacts.

Low wages < unemployment benefits that pay a percentage of what you made while you hunt for a better paying job with benefits