I personally learn more and create more and generally live a richer social and intellectual life when I have extended periods off work.

I don't think AI directly leads to some kind of post scarcity UBI utopia, but if we did reach a post scarcity UBI utopia, I think life would be much better for many people and not the bleak dystopia the author finds. I don't think needing to go to work is driving most people's social lives; if anything, needing to work all the time is taking away people's social lives and the energy to maintain them.

I think we would need to mandate to send people off for a period of time to fighting wars in muddy jungle swamps and choking and killing each other with bare hands for that society to work. Its already visible today, people in first world countries seem to think lifes too hard burn it all down even though they live better than the rest of the world, and the rest of history. People start imagining oppressions when they don't have real oppressions.