alt Hacker NewsMIT's motto is mens et manus: mind and hand. These are, basically, the two primary attributes of human labor. They're the reason almost anyone gets hired to do anything. Our brains and our opposable thumbs are what set us ahead of the animal kingdom.
The industrial revolution first attempted to replace our hands. But the labor that was displaced had places to go: into smaller-scale manual work, where mass-production machinery was too expensive, and into knowledge work.
Now the AI is coming for knowledge work, and robots are getting better at small-scale work. We're not at that point yet, but looking down the road I'm not sure there will really be anything competitive left flesh-and-blood humans can offer to an employer.
The only exceptions I can think of are, maybe, athletics, live music performances, and escort services. But with only a few wealthy people as customers, I don't think there will be many job opportunities even in those fields. And I'm not sure that robots won't come for those too.
Again, this betrays a strong hindsight bias.
Nobody had any idea what was coming with the industrial revolution. There wasn't obviously other work for people. And for long periods of time nobody had an answer to that question for large percentage of the population.
In hindsight, we know the answers NOW, but then they did not know what was going to happen. We also don't know what's going to happen, it could go as you hypothesize. Or the Jevon's paradox people might be right and there's way more work to do.
The uncertainty is the historical lesson, not that "it'll all work out"