alt Hacker NewsThroughout history, automation has rarely been "marketed" as a collective achievement. That doesn't make it not one.
> But instead we're seeing them explicitly marketed as tools for capital centralization.
And labor automation, which is the single most valuable thing any technology can do. But if your answer is "kill the technology" instead of "structure society to live with it," of course you will experience pain.
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Zyklon B was also fundamentally an automation of labor.
Technology is value neutral. What you call cynicism is actually people thinking more critically about technology. Technology is not a fundamental good. It can be detrimental and destructive. It can be used to oppress, to kill, to harm.
Approaching this following a "we can fix things later" stance is horribly reductive and misguided.
You spoke of History in other replies. History is littered with technological advancements that caused immeasurable harm to society.
In addition to the lack of value neutrality mentioned in other comments one major issue is no one is optimistic about AI. Structuring society to live with it is an option but no one is offering even glimpses of what a structure might look like outside of shrugging and saying "maybe ubi?"
There's always been the positive and negative sides of technology. The major reason the pessimism is so strong in this case is because even the technologists involved aren't optimistic. I'm not saying that propaganda is good but with nuclear we things like "My Friend the Atom." What we now call Retrofuturism promised a wonder future while the nuclear arms race was running away in the background threatening total annihilation. Nuclear was also going to automate labor all power sources do but many people were thrilled by the future being presented.
The only future people see today is something like Cyberpunk which is a pessimistic and cautionary look at the future. You cannot lament the lack of optimism around a technology when there is simply no optimistic future being presented. Maybe it's a result of deeply ingrained cultural cynicism but the fact that even those pushing the technology only have pessimistic future views make it incredibly challenging to be optimistic. If those involved cannot even offer optimism then I don't know why anyone would expect optimism from the common man.