Advancements In AI, can society adapt?

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I was just watching a JRE episode, Andrew Yang was mentioning AI automated delivery trucks being widely used by 2030 which removes a lot of high paying jobs for the uneducated. He was suggesting we need a government supplied income but the suggestion was $1000 a month. It raises questions in my mind, just how many jobs can eventually be removed by replacement of AI? I started thinking about restaurants, secretaries, manufacturing, even grocery stores. I don't think these jobs would completely disappear, the the amount of humans needed would dramatically drop.

So say 50% of jobs are taken from people, all people aren't equipped to be able to go into STEM fields or Coding. I would assume with a low government income most people would be so poor they couldn't afford to go to doctors or get surgeries thus reducing demand for doctors also. Even if a lot of people could adapt to get STEM jobs and coding jobs(which is a bit unrealistic IMO), the fields would not be able to hire everyone, AI automation will advance even stronger and will come after more Jobs. Call me crazy, but it seems we are headed into a state where the majority of humans are not really needed as employees, so what are we going to do? It seems to me that as AI automation advances we will basically funnel all wealth to a very small percentage of people. Is there something I am missing, how will humanity proceed in an automated world, how will the majority of people escape being dirt poor?

They will sit down, play guitar and enjoy the sunset.
Or they will kill each other in some war.

But seriously, there are many jobs all about human interactions. Animators, teachers (small classes at last?), counsellors, to name a few.
Yes, maybe we will need to shift from job-oriented society into something volunteering-based.
I doubt that shift would be easy or turbulence-free but I think it is possible. Humans are incredibly adaptive.

There are some people who will have to be retrained---but I don't believe there will be a societal collapse based on new technologies.

Probably less factory jobs. Many more health care jobs.

I read an interesting article the other day. It was about population decline. No where is this more self evident than in Japan.

"In roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline... Once that decline begins, it will never end."

Japan is already preparing for this eventuality. That's one reason why Japan is crazy for robots. In the United States, we view them with suspicion, seeing them as soulless job stealers. In Japan, they are seen as saviors; there won't be enough people to do all the work that needs to be done (e.g., taking care of the elderly), so robots can help fill in.

Source: Japanese Official Apologizes For Telling Truth About Shrinking Population

So the integration of AI combined with robotics can serve a very useful function in taking care of the elderly in a declining population.

I definitely hope it works out, but it seems to me society will have to dramatically change or else we will end up funneling money to a very small percentage of people. Just think about how the free market works, and as huge companies become more automated they will suck up more and more of the wealth in circulation making it difficult for people to even start other business(No way to compete with prices a corporation can offer). It seems people will have to be increasingly smart and educated or gifted in arts or entertainment. That seems unrealistic to me because the majority of people are not very intelligent or gifted. But even these people will spend money on things big corporations produce which will be largely automated therefor continuing to funnel money to those small percentage of owners.

It's almost like, a free market that has no reset has no choice but to lead to very few people containing all wealth and pay a small percentage of people to handle their needs. That's how it seems to me, like eventually people will have to learn to not be greedy or else huge problems will arise. Imagine a rich man able to buy his own army to protect his families wealth, it pretty much casts us back into the world of kingdoms yet a version in which technology is so advanced that there will be no way for poor people to rise up in revolution. His army will have technology while the rest of human society is basically forced back into the woods or exterminated. Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but it most certainly is possible.

Watch the video, I'm not great at covering everything, but automation is going to replace a lot of medical practices also. (Has already started). Teaches can be replaced with AI as well. What incretably rich guy is going to care about the mass of humanity being left out? Greed and power are tools that have enslaved humanity many times in the past, so I see it very possible to happen again. But this time, the majority will not have the power to overthrow them.

Another good reason to watch this video is the guest, Andrew Yang is planning on running for US president in 2020 as a democrat. So If he wins we could have our first Asian president. Which I don't really care what race our president is what's most important is they help us move forward in a good way. I hoped Obama would win and he did, I wasn't particularly happy with his accomplishments. I hoped Trump would win, I've heard of him doing some good things but from where I sit it's hard to really tell how he is doing(I'm the bottom of the pot in terms of wealth....I have none) I had a crappy education and got taken advantage of in the one area I could have been successful but I also suffer from ASD, ADD, severe social phobia among many other phobias like change and being around people or tackling new projects that I would be expected to communicate with others, sever anxiety and EDS, and about 7 degenerative disks with 3 known pinched nerves. I'm very poor so I don't have health insurance and can't afford to get any help until I manage to get on SSI which I'm even scared to do that and my mom will have to help me because I suck at paper work and communicating with people(It never seems to go well, I hit bumps and don't know what to do to accomplish my task). I used to be very good at programming though so I may try to do something in that field once I manage to get help.

It is an interesting topic. You have to wonder if unemployment will be higher than it's ever been in history. Then you have to wonder if the adage: "The devil will find work for idle hands to do." will be realized on mass scale (ie millions upon millions of unemployed and frustrated formerly employed poor people).

I think the move to AI whenever possible will be very rapid. Think about it from an employer's perspective:

If you owned a fast food franchise, for example, would you rather:

1) Employ a constantly churning pool of human employees many (not all) of whom are only marginally effective, irresponsible, possible carriers of communicable diseases such as hepatitis, potential public liabilities as well as being prone to injury and the resulting workers compensation claims; and of whom you have to pay wages, overtime, vacation time, sick days, mandated higher minimum wages. You have to employ human resources staff and managers to manage said employees. You have to pay benefits such as health insurance and 401k contributions. There are many other things that could be mentioned including the potential for workplace violence, theft by employees, etc.

or

2) You buy some robots outright and pay the extra electricity costs and maintenance costs and you receive consistency and reliability and production that you can measure.

How rapid the change will be was mentioned in the video. It is a scary thing, the point was even made that you may go to college to get a degree in a field that may have no demand within 10 years. AI and automation will come faster than people can adapt, it will lead into a world where we either decide to share all wealth or it ends up in the hands of very few dictators.

There are quite a few assumptions that are built into your concerns and the rapidity in which AI will integrate into society. For example AI in vehicles. There have been quite a few examples of AI being used in vehicle and then there are a fairly number of vehicle crashes. Who is responsible - AI or the driver who was suppose to have his hands on the steering wheel and didn't. Litigation of these accidents in the courts will dramatically slow down the rate of introduction. Also AI does not distinguish easily perception of pedestrians especially small ones like children that tend to run in front of a moving car. (Their solution was to ban pedestrians and bicyclist. - That will go over quite well I imagine.) This is a major weakness. Also when an AI vehicle gets stuck in the snow, who will pull them out. So we are probably looking at around 100 years or much more for true integration.

AI is currently transitioning into the marketplace. For example today there are self service lines where purchasers buy items and perform the checkout themselves instead of using a checkout person. Most grocery stores use them now and many big box stores. You go into many fast food restaurants today such as McDonalds or Taco bell and there are kiosk to do the ordering yourself thereby eliminating the checkout person.

It wasn't too long ago when you drove into a gas station an attendant would pump your gas, wash your windows and check your oil. That function no longer exist. It is all do it yourself nowadays.

Maybe there will be an increase in "back to basics" communal living or there will be an appreciation for and a demand for more artisan and hand produced supplies.

Areas that have grown to be million and even billion dollar industries in the last decade include: small scale "local" organic farming, "craft" beer, wine, cider and distilled spirits producers, home based arts and crafts and sales on internet sites like Etsy.

On some level there will probably be a bias against AI produced goods and an appreciation for human produced goods and services. Not near enough to offset the problems on the horizon, but creative people will adapt as someone else said.

I know it's hard to determine how exactly it will go down and how fast it will occur. It just worries me, ultimately we will get to see. It will result in a lot of job loss. Perhaps we can all adapt? The thing that honestly worries me the most is very few individuals obtaining the majority of wealth, that is already occurring and I predict automation will simply increase that rate. As the majorities currency is sucked up into the hands of a few the majority has less wealth in circulation, thus we get poorer and poorer. I'm no professional on the subject but that is a very simple principle. The majority buys products the 1% and less produces. I've watched a documentary about the 1% and they(Jamie Johnson) claimed that even when you get to the 1% the majority of wealth falls into to the hands of a small percentage of 1%. I've heard many people use the wealth gap terminology insisting that is a real issue. I wish I knew more about it but I don't.

STEM and coding aren't exactly safe fields, either. It will at some point make sense to teach a machine to code.
STEM will for a while need human intelligence - to be creative.
Art also still has some way to go - because of creativity. yeah, yeah, computers can paint now, but they can only paint in a way that has been shown to them, i.e., they show pure skill, but not creativity, in the human sense of following an intuition and producing something new, of quality.

that said, most humans aren't terribly creative, and most of the creative jobs right now are mainly skill-based, meaning, a computer can do most of that work. Just not come up with amazing new ideas.

regarding wealth distribution: oxfam announced that 26 people own 50% of the global wealth. 26 people is a small fraction of the 1%. .... I'm guessing they will spend their immortal days in decadence, as the AI starts to colonize other planets, or encounters an error and stops one day. maybe humans will become like the borg. maybe there will be a handful of feudal lords, competing against each other. who knows.
a universal basic income is basically capitalism's way to save itself, paying people to consume - but there is no reason for capitalism to go on, once the machines do all the work and a handful of people own everything.
yeah, maybe bezos will just watch everyone starve, and eventually he'll get bored and overdose on some drug so amazing we mere mortals can't even imagine.

Don't forget about the advancement AGI, one day we may foolishly overstep and create robots capable of updating and creating more robots, obtaining learning capabilities that far surpass any biological species and end up dominating the Universe, Lol, but seriously it is possible, perhaps the next stage of evolution for the universe.