So, let’s assume that AI replaces all current jobs. What happens then? AI doesn’t consume anything other than electricity and information, so it won’t be able to utilize most of the goods it’s producing, so it ends up idling itself because there’s nobody to buy what it’s producing.
In the meantime, for all of us unemployed, we still need stuff, and services, so a small-scale economy springs up where real people agree to swap services for goods, or vice versa, and a new barter economy springs up which, in the fullness of time, will supplant the empty AI-driven economy because, well, because that’s where the actual consumers can be found.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Bottom line is this: AI won’t put us all out of work, and Musk’s nonsense about work being optional is just that, nonsense.
Don’t get me wrong; things will change, sometimes drastically, and in the short term there will be pain, that we have to be ready to deal with, but at the end of the day, AI will supplement what people can do, and the economic pie will end up being orders of magnitude bigger than it is now.
