Don't they know they are going to make jobs go away, basically forever?

That's not really a bad thing, so long as poor people are taken care of. There are people who are poor and spend X hours a week doing menial labor, there are people who are poor and don't have to work-or-starve, and there are people who are poor who live terrible lives due to not being able to get work for getting money to afford things.

Automation is essentially a good thing so long as it moves people from the first category to the second, but not the third.