People will be broken out of their denial by actual economic growth. That's what this is all meant to be for... I think we might start seeing some surprising numbers.
If your source is AI layoffs, there were plenty of layoffs with the invention of the horseless carriage, but that doesn't mean it made humans worse off overall.
There are reasons to be skeptical about progress and AI and all that but the 'making things worse for most people' thing you mentioned seems yet to be based in any reality
Is the amount of people making money from AI greater than the amount of people who lose money from AI? Is maximizing prosperity across humanity even a goal, at this point? Am I to be expected to believe, without doubting, that the end goal is the benefit of the many?
I ,for one, have read enough history to know that it's never the proles who end up benefiting.
And nowadays with Hong Kong (and probably soon Taiwan) they are proving they are perfectly happy to destroy economic growth as long as it benefits The Party