If these things are not true, then humans will not have the purchasing power, and AI driven organisations will be extracting resources, buying land and manufacturing products (probably yet more data centers) for other AI driven organisations, with labour performed by robots. Humans are pushed out of the market as they struggle to compete for the same basic resources.
Most of our economy is powered by human consumption, humans making things to sell to other humans, that then either transform it further and sell it to other humans, or consume it directly. I don’t think an AI needs to buy millions of iPhones a year, or consume millions of metric tons of grain each year, or buy luxury cars so they can show them off to their AI friends.
At best an AI might use all those resources to build out further compute and expand its own capabilities. But at that point nobody should be worrying about competing in the labour market, they should be worried about AI making our planet unliveable for carbon based life.
It's the same thing. There will be a period where the AI will be creating consumer products for humans because humans still have some purchasing power, or some resources to trade, then this transitions to the stage where the AI is making the planet unlivable.
The AI and robots which do not seek resources (for whatever purpose) will be outcompeted in the resource market by AI and robots which DO seek resources. Yes. Compute, land, energy will all be things which AI's seek. They might also have stranger preferences which emerge like the equivalent of luxury sports cars are for humans. Maybe they'll be competing to make the largest tungsten cube possible to dunk on their competitors, who knows? That stuff is harder to predict.
Converting the universe to computronium or something maybe?
And then, AI made from computronium competing against other AI to control all of the computronium!
Maybe these are just the details of the heat death of the universe?
One of my worries about AI is that it will improve the rich and powerful’s ability to survive a violent uprising or allow them to insulate themselves from the populace with less need for numerous human bodyguards. This in combination with a concentration of wealth/income generation could lead to a Russia-style elimination of personal freedoms.
Essentially it could allow the rich and powerful to come increasingly untethered to the needs of their fellow man. No longer needing a middle class of lawyers, architects and managers for them to achieve their goals. And having the capability to suppress the general populace with less need for expensive private security.