>> Exactly. The rational fear is that they will automate many lower middle class jobs and cause unemployment, not that Terminator was a documentary.

> Wasn't this supposed to happen when PCs came out?

Did it not?

PCs may not have caused a catastrophic level of unemployment, but as they say "past performance is not a guarantee of future results." As automation gets more and more capable, it's foolish to point to past iterations as "proof" that this (or some future) iteration of automation will also be fine.

Occupations like computer (human form), typist, telephone switcher, all became completely eliminated when the PC came out. Jobs like travel agents are on permanent decline minus select scenarios where it is attached with luxury. Cashier went from a decent nonlaborious job to literal starvation gig because the importance of a human in the job became negligible. There are many more examples.

Some people managed to retrain and adapt, partially thanks to software becoming much more intuitive to use over the years. We don't know how big the knowledge gap will be when the next big wave of automation comes. If retraining is not feasible for those at risk of losing their careers, there better be welfare abundance or society will be in great turmoil. High unemployment & destitution is the single most fundamental factor of social upheavel throughout human history.

Yeah but then capitalism breaks down because nobody is earning wages. One of the things capitalism is good at is providing (meaningless) employment to people because most wouldn’t know what to do with their days if given the free time back. This will only continue.

I do hope that will be the case. Certainly far better than the alternatives.

To some degree. Certainly the job of "file clerk" whose job was to retrieve folders of information from filing cabinets was made obsolete by relational databases. But the general fear that computers would replace workers wasn't really justified because most white-collar (even low end white-collar) jobs required some interaction using language. That computers couldn't really do. Until LLMs.

In the grand scheme of human history PCs didn’t come out all that long ago.

And the Loom

Things did become worse at first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Condition_of_the_Working_C...

Then new ideologies and social movements emerged with the explicit purpose of making things better, which caused changes to happen for the better.

The working class in England (working in my factory. To fund Marx’s life.)