Yes, and the whole point of Victorian socialist utopias was to 'take back control' - so that, to put it crudely, the machines do everything that humans don't want to, and humans have leisure time to do what is truly meaningful. The fact that the productivity gains resulting from automation are turned into profit for the few (and unemployed misery for the many) rather than distributed to make life better for everyone is, according to this view, essentially a political choice.