My perspective is different than the two versions that are presented. I do not believe rich people's intentions to be pure, knowingly or unknowingly, their solutions will gravitate towards whatever brings them more power/control. Thus most of them will be in favor of AGI development. They can depend less on humans, and that desire was always obvious.

On the other hand, not developing AGI puts you at the risk that your enemy will, so it's not really a choice, it must be done or else.

The real problem, as I see it, is that once AGI is achieved, and robotics is up to par, human work is not needed anymore, which puts most people in a strange position, something that never happened before, useless for people in power. We were never in this particularly strange position, historically speaking.

And I do not believe people who are looking to get AGI's power, and remove dependence on humans, are objective in their ideas about what must be done. Thus their thoughs should always be taken with a grain of salt.

The only out I see for most people to stay alive, post AGI powered robotics, is if AGI completely takes power and control from the hands of the people up top. Else the people in power will have a very dark incentive, which I believe will inevitably (sooner or later) result in a massive population loss across Earth.

I'd rather risk AGI's conclusions than psychos in power starting to see me as a "useless eater". The latter has a guaranteed outcome.