There's a fundamental difference between past industrial revolutions and what we are seeing now. Things like the printing press, internal combustion engine, computers etc, allowed humans to do new types of work. That is, these machines created work that they themselves couldn't do. That isn't the case now. Machines can increasingly do everything we could possibly do, but do it faster, more accurately and incredibly more efficiently. What work do you think a robot that can manoeuvre far better than us, is way stronger than us, and can process repetitive tasks better than us is going to create for us to do? The common answer is, well, we'll need someone to program these robots. Hello, computer programming is 95% algorithmic and logical. Things that computers are WAY better than us at. And it's only a matter of time until AI can out compete us in creativity and eventually our excellent sub-conscious heuristic decision making systems. And even if this wasn't the case, what, are 7 billion people going to become computer programmers??
Work for humans is fast becoming OVER. We need to face this reality and start doing something about the devastating effect this is going to have on capitalism (which will collapse in a screaming heap without a consumer class).
Perfectly said. This time it's different. We are essentially creating our own competitors that are way more advanced than us.