Going from their sentiment, probably to be a father. The value you provide as an engineer changes, from being a 40-hr-per-week programmer for a company you may or may not have any personal connection to, to being a father to your child in whatever way you believe the world needs more of, and letting the machine program itself. That we should not get lost devoting a huge chunk of our entire life learning how to maintain an advertising system, just to earn the right to have a place to live in comfort.

Good luck finding a mate and raising kids with no wealth

Just imagine the imense wealth that will be generated if we can displace 99% of the workforce from what they are doing now. This is something to cheer, not to feel doomed.

How are 99% of us making money? The government is going to redistribute all the wealth to us?

No, you continue to work for a living, just on something else that's 100x more valuable than before (and you consequently become 100x more wealthy than before).

It's already happened once. 99% of farming jobs that existed a few thousand years ago now long gone. Are we all unemployed and starving because of that? No, in fact we're all far more wealthy than we would have been before all that technological progress was made. We just don't think of it as wealth, and instead complain that the guy next door has more than us and the government ought to do something about that, because he clearly wouldn't be that rich if not for all this darned technological progress taking our jobs.

> No, you continue to work for a living, just on something else that's 100x more valuable than before

This just doesn't make sense. If there's something I can (want to and capable of) work on that's 100x more valuable than what I'm doing now, why isn't somebody hiring me to do that now?

The farming example goes like this -- you may think food is less valuable than your phone because it costs less. But that's just because supply is greater and it costs less to produce, so the cost is lower.

Similarly, if some AI is capable of writing better software than I do now, I don't get to choose another job that pays 100x. It's just that my current job will cost less, and if I continue doing my work, it will be rewarded at 1/100x due to competition from cheap AI. Perhaps I'll be flipping burgers at restaurants and it will be 100x pay compared with writing software. I won't be getting 100x more wealthy though!

> If there's something I can (want to and capable of) work on that's 100x more valuable than what I'm doing now, why isn't somebody hiring me to do that now?

That's like asking why 2000 years ago the farmers didn't just buy a tractor and a combine and do their farming that way, since that would have generated so much more value. The technology doesn't exist right now, we're talking about a scenario where it will.

> Similarly, if some AI is capable of writing better software than I do now, I don't get to choose another job that pays 100x. It's just that my current job will cost less

Correct, assuming that it's only writing software that gets automated, and nothing else. Society as a whole will be wealthier by virtue of being able to afford more software, but not 100x wealthier. But if 99% of everything gets automated, the jobs that remain (and the new ones that get created as a side-effect) will indeed pay 100x more in terms of real purchasing power. Whether you think of that as "this job is 100x more valuable" or "everything else costs 99% less" is just a matter of perspective.

Most likely they will have to. The governments main role is to make sure the majority of people can live together in a society. If a something as suddenly as 99% of people becoming unemployment overnight the governing bodies will have no choice but to redistribute wealth, kill/enforce any rioters, or dissolve into anarchy.

You think that what, the benevolent trillionaires will give money to the unemployed out of the goodness of their hearts?

We've already replaced 99% of the workforce once. Now instead of subsistence farming, people can live, eat basically any kind of food they want, own a multi-room house, and fly around the world once or twice a year on a vacation, all in exchange for less labor than that same person would have needed to expend to simply not starve a few thousand years ago.

Is that because billionaires "give [you] money out of the goodness of their hearts"? Are you unemployed because all those farming jobs have been eliminated? Obviously not. Rather, the efficiency gains of modern infrastructure have simply made your labor that much more valuable.

Ironically, you're literally describing the 1% lifestyle. (That includes me, but I'm aware that most people don't get to enjoy the great lifestyle you mention.)

It’s not possible to have “trillionaires” if the economy is so small it has unemployed people in it.

That’s literally the plot of Atlas Shrugged, not real life.

? We're on the verge creating the first trillionaire in the next few decades with our current economy which, gasp, has millions of unemployed people in it.

That's more a discussion of wealth distribution, systems of government and the flaws of capitalism. Theoretically speaking if you free human labor through the use of machines you're creating wealth because the same or greater output can be achieved with less resources and those resources can be allocated elsewhere. Of course some people believe that machines will replace all jobs eventually but historically that has not been the case. Generally new technology makes some jobs obsolete but humans adapt and find different ways to contribute to society.

Did you miss an /s?

> In such a world, what value do us engineers provide, if any?

We would do systems engineering at the domain level. And when AI can do that, we don't have to worry about jobs anymore.

Your job won’t be obsoleted by AI even if the AI is literally better at the job than you are. One, that’s not how comparative advantage works, and two, the AI probably costs more than you.

Lots of people with no jobs, nothing to do, just sitting and taking the UBI? I think people will demand the right to work to support their needs. Even if that means just helping people get land, materials, tools and energy. People can't be passive wards of the state.

It's clear that the current economic system cannot accommodate a world like that and we either change or live in a world with a handful of trillionaires and billions of desperately poor people.

With nothing to spend their wealth on, all those wealth becomes meaningless, except for a few intrinsically valuable stuff.