I once single-handedly destroyed a space-mod by building the first autominer...
And while it was a lot of fun, I still regret that to this day.
From what I can see YOLOL is powerful enough to do certain automation applications and alleviate some monotonous tasks.
I don't think mining should be automated, I only hope we will get some better tools to do so.
An asteroid scanner would be nice for a start, so we don't have to check every single one close up.