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I had a somewhat related idea to this. It's relates to ways that middle class professionals could be screwed. I haven't really hammered it out fully, but here's the gist of it. Basically, the value of automating labor is that it allows human resources to be freed up for other tasks. Rather than having one hundred artisans hand tooling goods, you have one machine operating by one engineer producing the same goods and then ninety nine people who can perform tasks in other areas of the economy.
But with AI, there will be an extinction of an entire class of meaningful work. That which is done by the middle class. There aren't adjacent fields for them to move into once displaced, as those will also be taken by AI. Their only options will be to move up or down, into different classes of the economy, and for the vast, vast majority of them, it will be a downwards spiral.
The area below the middle class economy is called the gig economy. So the value of AI is that there will be a wealth of gig workers, and thus fast food can be delivered more cheaply than ever before.
That is the one benefit of AI we are certain about.
There is a hypothetical scenario, a longstanding dream of science fiction, where with infinite labor afforded by AI there will be infinite opulence. However, some points that contest that are 1) there is only so much demand for consumables and market goods and services, so that economic demand begins to be overshadowed by status concerns and non-economic spheres of life in terms of desired things, 2) many of the inputs that go into supplying those goods and services are finite (i.e. resources) and so their creation can't be infinite, 3) political ramifications suggest reduced power and thus leverage for the displaced, and so their economic needs could easily be ignored by those who retain power.
All in all, there looks to be dark times ahead.
We already have, in effect, a trial run of post scarcity civilisations. Not complete or total, obviously. But western society is long past needing to worry about food and water.
I think men will play games and have fun in that kind of sci fi world. They'll find new and interesting things to pursue. They'll go sailing or rock climbing.
Women will play the status games, become depressed and create social problems via whatever the next social media is. Unless AI can turn this behaviour more productive at least.
Men's contests often don't look like rock climbing or sailing; they look like war.
But I don't think we'll get the sci-fi world. Scarcity will be with us always. Even if someone has to create it (by violently taking control or destroying the means of production), though I don't in fact think that will be necessary.
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