Let’s follow the AI and automation craze to its eventual conclusion - automations everywhere, humans are either employed in automation industry, or are unemployed at a massive scale.
Stable jobs are replaced by ever-optimized gig economy for some, and chronic poverty for others. For there to even be economy - the massive underemployed population subsists on government welfare.
Cynic in me thinks that all of the wealth generated by enormous productivity gains resulting from automation will not find its way towards population displaced by it. Those cashiers, toll booth, and warehouse workers did not find themselves in much more lucrative careers - I don’t see why it will be any different for truck and cab drivers who will be joining them in the near future.
If you see a future where these people who suddenly found all this extra leisure time o. Their hands and no income - are somehow blossoming in creative directions and realizing their own potential - I’d like to have it painted for me, as it all looks pretty bleak to me. Just not quiet sure of the timeline.
Best I can come up with is an emergence of some kind of counter-cultural protest market where people buy and sell “made by humans” products, and are continuously attacked by various regulations originating from mega corporations who captured the government.
