> The media does have an interest in doing this—writers are fearful that they’ll be first on the chopping block.

Maybe, but it's also pretty clear that the entire purpose and intent of delivering "AI" to the economy is to wholly wipe out labor. Do I think that's realistic? No. SpaceX's total addressable market (TAM) in their S-1 filing to go public stated as much. Their TAM is $28.5T(!) with $26.5T of it being AI. That's larger than the US GDP (~$24T). You can only throw numbers like that around if you're explicitly aiming to replace labor, no matter how realistic it is.

Personally, I'm tired of mediocre people who've attained some amount of business success turning around and trying to dismantle democratic systems because it's incompatible with their world view.

It's more than reasonable to complain about these things night and day. The alternative to vocal complaints won't be pretty.