Well its a simple question.
If they couldn't get their normal slave pools, or their normal imports, where did they come from?
The PF stats flatly that disconnected from Empire, Kingdom needed the Caldari for trade.
It also flatly states it is disconnected from the "normal slave pools" and takes what it can get. it is only the "what it can get" which is undefined / not fleshed out. The already subsituted, say, Gallente pop star for a busty Ealur chick.
My point is this: if you normally needed 50 slaves to mind the garden but instead only have 25, you use 25 wielding Caldari manufactured automated hedge trimmers to give them the efficiency of 50 (and the Caldari are about efficiency, among other things.)
If it takes me 3 hours ot sew a dress by hand, but thirty minutes if I use a sewing machie, that is the sewing machine substituting for the needle, not the seamstress. There is an added side effect of a reduction in required time. Its the "added side effect" I'm talking about, not a substitution of a slave for a hedge trimmer without a slave to operate it.
So no, I'm not saying "Replaced slaves with drones" (that would be Gallente), but augementing their efficiency with tech. As it is they prefer chip implants to Vitoc for their slaves, with an implant it would be safer to allow them things like machines etc that one wouldn't normally give them access to for fear of using the automated hedge trimmers to chop up their owners in their sleep
I'd have no issues with making that claim, as its stated like 4,000 times over that the Kingdom is not afaid of tech advancements. So the groundwork is already there. It's not an idea being born of a vaccuum.