there's another comment to this effect and it's spot-on. I suspect a lot of the people quick to work on these automation projects don't fully understand the complexity behind it. Just reading the descriptions of the early and later machines shows the comical oversimplification of laying bricks.
A lot of complex tasks are done by machine today, and they do it better than master craftsmen.
The thing is, designing a machine may be really complex, but it only has to be done once. After that, the machine will repeat the process with extreme precision. A machine can position bricks within microns and mix mortar to the milligram, doing things level and with the correct overhang is jokingly easy for a machine.
What machines are not good at is dealing with variation they can't control. Bricks are not perfectly sized, mortar behaves in unpredictable ways, the ground is not flat, not even solid. We humans have no problem with that, and anyone can do a wall shaped construction, but the machine, with its microns and milligrams may fail catastrophically at the smallest bump.
You forgot trees in the yard, how much sunlight the wall receives, moisture content of the soil beneath the brick walls, roots that are growing there, and existing structure.
The hard part isn't laying bricks. It can be already be done in a day efficiently. The hard part is the near infinite things that are different between every construction site.
