Many claim that the threat that technology would take away all jobs has been made many times in the past and that the outcome was always the same: some jobs were eliminated, but many others, better ones, were created.
So, again, we are just making the "old wasted" claim: this time is different.
However, this time isn't just repetitive manual jobs that are under threat, but white collar intellectual jobs: it's not just driving jobs that are under threat, but also medics, teachers, traders, lawyers, financial or insurance analyst or journalists.
And this is just the beginning.
The major problem will arrive with a general AI comparable to humans, but much faster and cheaper.
Don't say this won't ever happen. It's just a question of organizing molecules and atoms (Sam Harris). If the dumb Nature was able to do it by trial and error, we will be able to do the same and, then, better than it.Some are writing about the creation of a useless class. "People who are not just unemployed, but unemployable" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari) and claiming that this can have major political consequences, with this class losing political rights.
Of course, we already have a temporary and a more or less definitive "useless class": kids and retired people. The first doesn't have political rights, but because of a natural incapacity. The second have major political power and, currently, even better social security conditions than all of us will get in the future.
As long as Democracy subsists, these dangers won't materialize.
However, of course, if the big majority of the people losses all economic power this will be a serious threat to Democracy. Current inequality is already a threat to it (see
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1301649.0).
Anyway, the creation of a general AI better than humans (have little doubt: it will happen and you'll see it in your lifetime) will make us an "useless species", unless we upgrade the homo sapiens, by merging us with AI.CRISPR (google it) as a way of genetic manipulation won't be enough. Our sons or grandsons (with some luck, even ourselves) will have to change a lot.
Since it seems that the creation of an AI better than ourselves is inevitable, we we'll have to adapt and change completely or we'll become irrelevant. In this case, extinction would be our destiny.
