Robotics and AI is our near future there is no question about it. I think Blockchain tech also goes with them, it is needed to actually.
Think about a simple manufacturing, a factory manufacturing lets say clothes. Robots will do the work commanded by an AI. But they AI won't be responsible for manufacturing only, it will also work on finance, logistics, storage, sales, etc. And these will happen very fast as we are talking about digital data and digital processing of it here. It will process and come to conclusions way much faster than us and apply them immediately.
One the problems will definitely be finance. Have you ever tried a payment using SWIFT. It takes ages and lots of paper work, a lot of human interaction needed, pain in the ass. Something working very fast won't and can't deal with this old infrastructure a new one is needed. This is where the Blockchain will come in.
Other problem is data manipulation. Legacy systems with database admins, CEOs, politicly aligned owners, I mean with any human interaction won't cut it. An immutable database is needed. I'm not talking about the Blockchains with CEOs who can rollback however they want of course.
in time they will program their own Blockchain or something similar most likely but until then we already have one blockchain that fits the criteria, Bitcoin.