Companies like Nvidia and OpenAI base their answers to any questions on economic risk on their own best interests and a pretty short view of history. They are fighting like hell to make sure they are among a small set of winners while waving away the risk or claiming that there's some better future for the majority of people on the other side of all this.
To claim that all of the benefit isn't going to naturally accrue to a thin layer of people at the top isn't a speculation at this point - it's a bold faced lie.
When AI finally does cause massive disruption to white collar work, what happens then? Do we really think that most of the American economy is just going to downshift into living off a meager universal basic income allotment (assuming we could ever muster the political will to create a social safety net?) Who gets the nice car and the vacation home?
Once people are robbed of what remaining opportunities they have to exercise agency and improve their life, it isn't hard to imagine that we see some form of swift and punitive backlash, politically or otherwise.
To claim that all of the benefit isn't going to naturally accrue to a thin layer of people at the top isn't a speculation at this point - it's a bold faced lie.
When AI finally does cause massive disruption to white collar work, what happens then? Do we really think that most of the American economy is just going to downshift into living off a meager universal basic income allotment (assuming we could ever muster the political will to create a social safety net?) Who gets the nice car and the vacation home?
Once people are robbed of what remaining opportunities they have to exercise agency and improve their life, it isn't hard to imagine that we see some form of swift and punitive backlash, politically or otherwise.