The article explicitly addresses this. Crushing inequality was often a side-effect of industrial advancement, and while it always went away in the past it took a lifetime to do so.

When automation happened historically, people whose job were displaced suffered a lot and eventually pivoted to different jobs. Having to relearn all of your career skills is already quite bad in practice, but a bigger problem is that it only works if you can learn the skills for job B before it, too, is automated. That'd require AI progress to hit a wall and stay there for at least years, ideally for decades. If this doesn't happen, then there simply won't be any white-collar jobs to pivot to, and shortly after that, no jobs to pivot to at all.

> We won't all be unemployed if AI takes over white collar work.

So you wouldn’t mind going from 6 figure salary to working as a cashier at Walmart, figuratively speaking? Because I sure as hell mind, given mortgage and family obligations.

Historically that's not accurate. Automation eventually resulted in more jobs, but for the people actually living through the automation it was VERY bad.

Each time people found something else to do that someone would pay them for. This doesn't automatically mean there is an infinite supply of that - unless you believe in it as some kind of fundamental law.

Farms mechanized but we luckily had other jobs on hand to sponge that up. What used to be a farmhand is now a gas station worker selling zyn to a wallmart worker who sells food to the gas station worker.

However, AI is coming for them too. This time it really is different. The whole business pitch is the elimination of any safe harbor. All human labor to be automated. Why have 8 billion humans in that environment? Scary times ahead. We will probably end up culled by the machine.