I'm confused. If the software didn't exist then many humans would be needed to figure out on paper (or excel) how to make these decisions, wouldn't they?
That's true. But, to the point of eliminating labor -- there's still a human in the loop here.
In fact I would argue that while people were still making capital decisions, the idea of optimizing them is only practical WITH some kind of software / calculator / computer. The tooling I write has added jobs, not eliminated them.
I use software to design algorithms to make capital decisions, where distribution centers and warehouses are built. I am not automating a human job.