While we can safely say that we don't have AI that can visualize code, design user experiences and build a great product, I think automation is definitely going to kill a lot of jobs.
Companies are always looking to cut costs. So, this is something that's already happening. I can think of two examples. CI/CD companies believe they have the tools that engineers can use to deploy their products. What that means is that, you don't need a DevOps engineer at all. Companies like RainforestQA are trying to make some great strides in the software testing industry. If they can perfect their tools, the strength of the testing teams is going to fall by a factor of 10 in the industry.
Coming to the complexity of maintaining these software, at least from my experience it's a one time thing. You are gonna spend a week analyzing a tool before integrating it. Orthogonal to your engineering tasks, you also troubleshoot this software whenever it breaks down or causes trouble.
That being said, I think automation cannot solve everything. Automation with a human touch, that's what we should look to do.
Allow me to tell a story from one of the world's biggest car companies.
Automation gone wrong:
Long long ago, in Japan, at Toyota motors they decided to automate the process of deciding whether or not a particular part of the car (I think it was the engine) was made correctly. This was a process that wad done manually until then. Keep in mind that this happened probably 40 or 50 years ago. So, the parts went through a machine, which had a threshold error factor to decide whether or not a part was made well. One day, the machine had a fault in it and kept rejecting 90% of the items that went through it. Nobody figured out that the parts were made correctly, but it was the machine that had the fault for quite a long time.
Automation with a human touch
To fix the above issue, they started assigning floor managers, who also had to keep a tab on the machine and make sure they were working smoothly without any interruptions. They later called this theory as automation with a human touch. I think we as engineers can extend this concept to our workflows, even in 2017. Automate, by all means. But, automate with a human touch.