AI and the economy

Maybe this is better in the Social Science forum.

I keep reading how AI is going to take all our jobs, not just mental labor but physical labor as well when it is successfully incorporated into nimble robots. I was just reading a thumbsucker from CBS online about “gradual disempowerment,” the idea that AI will soon make us all useless and feel useless as well.

So, AI will write novels and poetry, digitally paint pictures, make lawyers, accountants, and doctors obsolete, and when wedded to robots AI will serve beer in bars, serve as barbacks, do all sorts of heavy manual labor, construction work, probably have sex for us, and on and on.

I don’t think any of this will happen. But suppose it does.

What the long CBS thumbsucker never addresses is what I wanted to learn about most of all: If AI wipes out all our jobs, both mental and physical, who will have any money to pay for goods and services that AI will miraculously provide?

I realize billionaires are greedy bastards who hate all the poors, but as soon as no one can afford any of the goods and services that AI provides they won’t be billionaires for very long, or even thousandaires.

They could just sell stuff to each other.

Without a worker class they would stop mass producing the consumer goods that workers buy, and pivot to making robots and space yachts.