Tech is neither positive or negative. People and the way they use technology are what define the tools. The guy who invented poison gas also developed modern fertilizer. Einstein didn't develop his theory so that a bomb could be made. He feared that the wrong people would want to create the bomb that could be created.
Note that the fear of robots is opposite to the fear of AI. Robots (an idea that precedes electricity) can be programmed by people to kill other people. Otoh, people fear AI because they can program themselves.
I.e., they're too much like us. But, metal can't be evil.
Remember the original movie The Day the Earth Stood Still? There was a robot that had been created by a union of other civilized planets. It had the ability to wipe out any society/planet that broke the rules. It was like the universal police/military, and it had all power. What it didn't do was make up the laws. Anyway, the point of the movie was that the other planets had watched the Earth develop, and now saw a violent species trying to spread out into the universe. I totally agree with them. But we know that there's no way humans (at least in the developed world) would want to give power over to anyone.
There are several sci-fi movies that deal with a similar issue. Well, even in zombie films, it's the humans that are the most dangerous. The same with modern disaster ("post-apocalyptic") stories. Take away the technology and nothing changes; it's just crossbows and machetes instead of bullets. Shucks, the use of fire is technology, and people quickly figured out how to burn houses down,
At the other end of the spectrum, though, we get the Terminator (for adults) and Transformers (for the young).
"A man is rich when he has time and freewill. How he chooses to invest both will determine the return on his investment."