alt Hacker NewsThat amount of change over 200 years is vastly different from the supposed timeline for AI to 'change everything' is the core of the difference. Over that long there's time for people to retrain into other jobs and there's enough people not significantly affected by the change that society as a whole can roll on and support the affected people. Mass disruption and joblessness is extremely destabilizing.
I get what you are saying, and I don't think you are wrong, but it has been like 100 monumental changes in 200 years. The demographic shift of the industrial revolution was particularly painful, to be sure. But we seem to be pretty good at coping with them, overall.
And again, I remain skeptical that general artificial intelligence is actually that close at hand.