> What are these "greater things" that people can dedicate time to, when clearly even classically cerebral activities like mathematics can be automated away.

Their applications?

For example I'm not a mathematician but I love thinking about weird "useless" shit like how math might be like for aliens? Are numbers as fundamental as we assume? i.e. humans developed math for "arithmetic" first, then latched geometry etc on top of that. We took ages to admit zero and negative numbers.. what if an alien species develops math for "navigation" first, and starts out with complex numbers right away!?

> What happens when humanity becomes obsolete?

There's an infinity out there to explore.

> And what happens when the machines that cause this obsolescence are controlled by a tiny amount of people, who suddenly don't need the rest of us?

That's a social problem we needed to tackle more than 100 years before AI or even computers appeared.

Apparently the minutes hand was added to clock to keep time in factories, for the benefit of the factory owners, not the workers — something I learned from this 1991 show from the BBC with Terry Jones: "So This Is Progress" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Em96NVxO9Q