I've worked on SCADA systems. The most the keyboard was used for was logging in then then putting something heavy on it stop the computer going to sleep. System was entirely controlled by the mouse and head office didn't consider that 1 person might be monitoring 4-6 computers on their own for an 8 hour shift and enforced a 5 minute idle lockout on all of them.
I mean, I'm all for giving jobs to humans and all, but isn't monitoring a bunch of numbers and sending an alert when they go wrong one of the few things computers are actually objectively better at than humans are?
Edit: Holy crap people. I understand that they're probably not there for that purpose. That was the entire point I was trying to make. You don't ALL need to point out the obvious to me.
I would assume that these people are there mainly because they know what to do if something goes wrong, instead of sitting there for easily automatable tasks.
I also have to assume they probably do rotations, like watch/guard duty in the military, of control room and more active work, or it would get suuuuper boring real fast. Plus their skills would get rusty if nothing ever happened.
"Welcome to your new job Private. Here we run a fully automatic system. You just need to watch this screen and let me know if there are any issues with the bleeps, the sweeps or the creeps. Got that?"