> We have, as a civilization, two paths before us

You forgot C: Butlerian Jihad. mass outlaw AI research, AI usage, AI building, AI infrastructure, on penalty of death

It may not be a good option but it's there

When the value of human labour reaches zero the economy will collapse so that will be interesting.

> Can you think of a mass labor displacement that resulted in an overall erosion of living standards? I cannot.

The mass evictions of the Scottish Highlands [1] in which peasants were driven at the point of bayonets to the lowland city slums to make way for the British government to transform Scotland into a mass sheep/wool production monoculture economy.

The use of kidnapped Africans as slaves in the Americas was also an example of a labor displacement - by introducing a source of mass human labor with absolutely no human rights - to scale the agricultural commodity economy (cotton, tobacco, sugar), which resulted in horrendous living standards for the enslaved, and an erosion for the poor paid peasants whose labor they replaced. Slavery was a very "efficient" way to use labor.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances

AI is different. It promises to be able to do everything humans can, but better and more cheaply. When AIs can do every human job cheaper than the subsistence cost of employing a human, humans will be economically obsolete and worthless.

Then there's the minor issue of AI deciding to just wipe us out because we're in the way.

Taking everything together, AI more powerful than that which currently exists must not be created. This needs to be enforced with an international treaty, nuking data centers in non-compliant states if need be.

The agricultural and industrial revolutions "weren't labor displacement", they were technological and social changes that happened unevenly and gradually in time and space and which resulted in labor displacement, but they were not the only cause, and they didn't happen BECAUSE of labor displacement. I would argue the subsequent labor displacement caused a minor part of the social gains to be later distributed and realized through class struggle, but that's beside the point. Most wars cause mass labor displacement and military technological advancements that later translate into society as a whole. Are you prepared to argue for wars? If you are American, you are experiencing firsthand the effects of what once was a major part of your industrial labor being absorbed by China. It has led to massive inequality and erosion of standards of living in the US. Not so much for the Chinese working class, which has increasingly improved their standards of living. Are you going to argue for it? I think if we only look at things from a limited perspective, and in this instance a technocratic and teleologic view of history, as in history has a designed finality and this finality will be achieved through unrestrained development of production forces, you are bound to quietly take part in the destruction of society and nature, now viewed as externalities, and accept the worst of atrocities in the name of "advancement", while most of any gains are captured in the short term by a minority.

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> The really big fuckup we are committing as a society in the US (may or may not apply to each person's country individually) isn't just this looming threat of massive labor displacement due to AI, it is that instead of planning for any sort of soft landing we are continually slashing what few social safety nets already exist.

Think of the alternative, though: If we planned for a soft landing and implemented safety nets and started transitioning ourselves to a society where people didn't have to work to survive, then a few trillion dollar companies would make slightly less profit every year. We simply cannot allow that. Won't someone think of those trillion dollar companies for a minute?

^^^^

That's a truism. But it ignores The Iron Law of Oligarchy, Pareto Principle, and dozens more that remind us that power tends towards centralization. It's currently fashionable to call out the billionaires, but if you removed them, they'd just be replaced by corrupt government officials, or something else.

That's not to say we should just throw up our hands and accept every social injustice. But IMHO we shouldn't go around simplistically implying that all social ills will be solved by neutering the billionaire class.