We'll all be on the beach at that point collecting our universal basic income right?
Based on how the US currently rolls out universal programs, UBI probably looks a lot more like the current Section 8 housing program. They’re gonna guarantee something minimally livable, not beachfront property.
So that's not the case for you now?
I have some news for you about life for the vast majority of people right now... Including yourself, most likely
You may feel like a cog in society, and at present, this is often not the case, compared to the situation which I talked about in a sibling comment[2].
If you disagree, try this: find a new job and put in your resignation and say that you're leaving effective immediately (or with a very short notice). Most likely, you'll have your manager and HR scrambling to get a proper handover, and sometimes followed with private comments berating you for your "lack of professionalism" and other comments like "why are you doing this to us" and "can we keep you for a little longer, please" (in violation of HR policy for the maximum notice period).
In an age where AI has replaced most humans, people would lose all leverage, and would be forced into zero-sum games (killing and maiming other people to steal their wealth) as they would not have any other mechanism to prove their worth and improve their standing in society.
I don't know about you but maybe the fact so many people determine their entire worth from their job is more problematic than inventing technology that will enable people to pursue more worthwhile objectives of their own choosing.
Traditionally, these challenges have come through challenges associated with a hunter-gatherer or an agricultural lifestyle, and in contemporary times, it is associated with a job.
There are other forms which can make feel people rewarded, such as through the excess consumption of food or social media activity, but since they do not have an associated mental or physical challenge, they only have negative worth and cannot be the basis for someone's self worth and value.
Maybe it's time we found other "forcing functions"?
Furthermore, it seems silly to me to think that all human intellectual endeavors will simply disappear. We will still need to drive science, build bigger and better AI systems, improve and repair the world, etc.
And your takeaway from this would be that that worker is an invaluable member of the company? They don't care about workers, they care about their bottom line. If they could easily replace workers, they wouldn't say anything and would just make sure you clear out your desk before you leave.
And not that I agree my comment goes against the guidelines, but let me be generous and ask this of GP: What autonomy over your life now would you lose if AI were to become as prevalent as you're implying?
The reason citizens like you and me are kept around is because we have typically provided some form of economic output, in the form of labor and taxes, to society, and indirectly to the wealthy and powerful class, which is billionaires and politicians.
If most citizens don't have anything to contribute in an economy, they can be eliminated entirely from society so that this class can win the zero-sum games in society, and have natural resources to themselves. Thus, in the best case, commoners will be kept around in government provided housing (with all the things that it implies), with strict limits on reproduction and a very small baseline of resources so as to give the appearance that the government wasn't killing its people, though death would still be incentivized in the form of lower standards of medical care, so that society's dead weight can be eliminated.
In the worst case, politicians and billionaires would simply join forces to eliminate aforementioned dead weight through mass genocide. There is no downside to this, except that the first country to do this may have to face criticism, but I suspect eventually all countries would move in that direction once a few have taken their first step and established precedent.
I have to say, it's more confronting to hear it come from someone else.
The interesting part will be the violent conflict inherent in this turn of events. Will it be so easy to mow down billions of people? Will a way be found to do the job without the natural resistance of empathetic humans (A virus? A very large drone swarm? Pin-sharp training of a traditional police force?). How fast is too risky to execute? How _slow_ is too risky to execute?
Most people on this planet would figuratively kill for that life. It's a crushing existence trying to survive on below $10000/year.