The biggest missing piece in promises of an AI paradise is how the wealth reaches everyone else.
Suppose machines can produce far more with far less human labour. Who owns them? How do people who lose their wages gain a claim on that production?
Cheaper goods would help. But cheaper goods and a dependable income are different promises.
If the answer is that wealthy owners will voluntarily provide for everyone, we need considerably more than their enthusiasm about the future.
Show us the ownership arrangements, the funding and the rights people would actually have. Can the payments be withdrawn? Who decides? What happens when the company changes hands?
A future where everyone can afford to live needs a distribution mechanism. The robots alone don’t provide one.
Run your finger around the rim of a chipped mug. There's a tiny cliff where yesterday there was a road. A flea could spend its whole life in a kitchen and think it lived in the Rockies.