> we will either live lives of abundance and leisure or face extinction

Third option, the workers no longer control the means of production, and we see levels of inequality that make the railroad barons look like they were middle class.

I doubt this third option exists. If the AI(s) lack empathy for us and we are useless to them, they will either exterminate us directly, or indirectly by denying us resources. If they have empathy for us, they will probably let us live good lives. I doubt we will be useful to them, so I doubt there is a scenario where we live miserable lives working for the AI(s).

It’s happening now with closed AI models. The era of open computing may be ending. The models are essentially a new type of computer and they will remain fundamentally closed, accessible only through an API.

It’s not the AIs who are in charge, it’s rich humans.

By super intelligent, I meant AIs that have a will of their own. In the meantime, AIs are just a tool at our disposition. And I don't see why it would just be in the hands of the rich, anymore than electricity, the Internet, the personal computer or the smartphone is.

Yes, but there aren't many secretaries working these days, and certainly the skill set has changed (though I'll never forget the company owner who was surprised when he was called out on promises made to women running a local college and couldn't understand how they could repeat his statements back to him verbatim along w/ the time/date of the phone call in question --- had to explain that they'd all come up through the secretarial pool, and so knew shorthand).

The bottom line is, at some point in time, automation is going to reduce the amount of human work which needs to be done, and render some folks unemployable --- how does society cope with that? Universal Basic Income is the only reasonable suggestion I've yet seen, but doesn't address the age-old problem of socialism --- it only works until one runs out of other people's money.

Back when computers were first announced, taxing CPUs so as to cover benefits for newly unemployed folks was suggested --- can we put that back on the table?

For a fictional take on this see:

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

> The bottom line is, at some point in time, automation is going to reduce the amount of human work which needs to be done

Jevons paradox [0] proposes that as automation reduces the cost of labor then people will find new uses for automation, and this seems to be the historical trajectory. Hundreds of years since the industrial revolution and we still haven't run out of work to do (this could be better or worse given your philosophical premises).

> and render some folks unemployable

If automation truly causes more actually productive work to be done, then as a first-order effect there should be a surplus available to support these people without making anyone else (much) worse off. However as you observe the higher-order consequences of this are very much an open issue.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Yes, but how much more head room do we have for that sort of thing?

the current climate crisis suggests that we are running out:

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

> It'll be interesting to see what happens when AI truly surpasses human level intelligence, as in, being able to completely replace human jobs, but we're not there yet.

But we are there. This is a reality we live in for a lot of people. That's why the existential crisis in the OP.

Most of our ancestors actually had less stressful jobs and worked less than we do today. The average agricultural worker 100 years ago was not even doing a part-time in terms of time spent doing actual work. More like 2h/day on average.

You could still live like that today. But most people chose not to.