I disagree with this. There's a lot of evidence that modern society has made things much better for everyone.
That doesn't mean that there aren't negative influences in modern society. The rich wanting to get richer is definitely one of the major ones that is particularly powerful right now.
But that's why society is a process. You gotta fight back and moderate the negative influences, and boost the more positive ones.
I think the question whether AI will fall on either the positive or negative side of the ledger is wrong in itself. AI will provide a lever to magnify whichever direction society and people were going in anyways independent of AI. It's a tool, and hopefully a really powerful tool, but it's not a God. It can be used equally for good and bad.
And if you believe, like I do (and by all appearances you do too), that our current society is balanced to benefit bad actors over good actors (where bad/good are being defined in terms of benefiting society overall), the magnifying effect of AI is likely to magnify the net negative.
The one advantage of something new like AI coming around is that, I believe, the primary reason open democratic societies allow themselves to become tilted in favor of bad actors is because of complacency...it's usually a slow shift rather than a single big change. The arrival of a major chance like AI forces society and everyone in it to once again take stock of where society stands.
This gives us an opportunity to change the tilt of our society to promote good actors again, before AI truly starts having an impact, which gives us an opportunity to ensure AI magnifies a net benefit, rather than a net negative, for society.
And frankly I think we are closer to having that reckoning than we've ever been in my few decades on this planet, so overall I'm optimistic about AI. But again, whether we benefit or suffer with AI will be independent of AI itself.