How are Circuit Boards Recycled? Do They Have to be Shredded?

Reflection:
While this is probably ethical recycling of PCB, I find this shredding process to be such a waste. Each component on the board takes so much effort to mine and manufacture. There is also so much waste and toxins produced from the making of these circuit boards that I shriek at seeing how these PCBs and motherboards are simply shredded. Why can’t there be a robot that can read the circuit diagram, figure out what each component (i.e. transistor, heat sink, etc) is, figure out which components are still working, desolder, and categorize? If there are self-driving cars I think an AI robot to help with the de-manufacturing of a circuit board is not too far-fetched!