You're right, and I think we're slightly at cross purposes. I'm not disagreeing that AI will drive some major societal changes as you outline.

My point is that the current narrative of "AI will take our jobs" is too simplistic, and that it might even be a smokescreen against the rising inequality that is already fueling anger across the world and which is totally unrelated to AI. If you're struggling to pay your bills today, that's not AI's fault - it's years of bad politics and politicians, geopolitics, hyper-capitalism, supply-chain issues, inflation, and so on.

In the future, if/when AI decimates parts of the middle class and they've had a chance to retrain, there will likely be a second-order impact on today's skilled manual workers. But that's years off, and not something I've seen discussed in detail in the mainstream.

You're probably aware, but if not, worth a read: https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic

I guess I just feel like your appeal to skilled manual workers is pointless. They’re not really the focal point. It’s the large masses of people being relegated to the bin labeled “effectively unskilled”.