Yes, the military is one. It's politically palatable on the Right as well. The trick is to leverage them into creating even more public goods (since the 'peace dividends' marginal benefit drops with increased spending).
The horse analogy is very strong. Just because you've found other uses for other (higher IQ) commodities, it doesn't argue my point. I mean, I'm saying "increased robotics will increase demand for robotics" and that there will be increased growth.
You've looked at my analogy regarding drafthorses and then saw how shooting the drafthorses was good for people. My point is that the demand for these entities - capable of manual labour, new skills, but with very large training and maintenance costs (compared to automation) plummeted. It's not that people didn't like drafthorses. They just couldn't earn their keep, where their labour justified their feed. The Free Market didn't invent new reasons to give drafthorses a living wage, it replaced them.
The reason why the number of people employed falls is because for any specific job, it will (at some point) be cheaper to get a robot to do it. If you create new jobs for people (since you're an entrepreneur), you'll demand lower wages if there are many unemployed people competing. And as soon as you can replace them? They're laid off.
The drafthorses suffered from their ceiling in capabilities (compared to their maintenance costs). What makes you think people don't have ceilings? We do. And we've also got fixed maintenance costs. As soon as the robot's maintenance cost is lower, the person's maintenance cost cannot compete.
A taxi driver can learn to be (say) a bread counter man at Waitrose fairly quickly, and be paid while he does so.
Well, the checkout cashier who lost his job to an automated teller also wants this job. So, they'll bid down each other's wages.