Geohotz makes a decent point. The way the industrial revolution reduced manual labour, and made thinkers and tinkerers much more valuable, the advent of AI (true AI, mind you, not the tiny stuff that we currently assume) might actually make us obsolete. It is a peaceful and yet terrifying thought.
Didn't the opposite happen? Suddenly artisans were out of business as nobody wanted beautiful hand-made luggage, or whatever, that would last decades, but instead we'd get some engineers and maybe consults an old-school luggage guy, get some specs, and toss that data into cheap mass production and be done with it. Sure they're uglier and last only a few years, but they're cheap and plentiful. Now those artisans had to close their shops and either go work in the factory or retrain for something else.
The I.R. was great for making things fast and cheap, but it was pretty much a full frontal attack on "maker" culture that has only rebounded in certain areas fairly recently, namely computers, because you can own the "means of production" trivially, namely a computer with a compiler.
I see AI going the same way. It'll be shoddy, cost jobs, and work "just good enough." The question is is "just good enough" appropriate for 5,000lbs death machines speeding at 75mph? Think of all very serious development protocols and standards aerospace and NASA use. And that's for machines that will never have to worry about poorly painted/paved roads, kids running into the street, snow covering everything, etc. I think the AI-guided future will be far off and hit a lot of practical limits quickly and the bullish attitude behind AI is more than a little unjustifiable.
There weren't a lot of people employed making movies or TV shows before the industrial revolution; now those industries provide lucrative employment to millions. Maker culture shifted with the technology.
That said, I agree with you that AI is being pretty dramatically oversold (again).
1) Historically technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/17/technology-c... One BIG difference, technology till now has been designed to aid humans, not replace them. But I think that technology will shift a lot of jobs in another sector but will not bring the sum of human brains needed to run it to 0.
2) Society will not be so nice to organisations taking away ALL its jobs. There will be a huge friction from society when they loose out ALL their jobs at this scale, it could vary from small riots to some new age guerrilla warfare. It will be interesting to see how politicians will react when they loose their jobs to computers though.
Entertainment, health care, and communications are industries that have exploded, in terms of economic value and employment, since the industrial revolution. One thing these industries have in common is that the value they provide is dependent on humans. People want to talk to people, see stories about people, and be healthy themselves. Technology enables these industries but technology does not replace the heart of the value.
Maybe someday if AI evolves into artifical persons, then AI could take part in conversations, be entertained, and wish to prevent it's own death. But that is probably a long way off, and might never come. It's not like people are working on artificial personalities now. No one is working on car AI that will tell its owner to fuck off, it's watching Mad Men and doesn't feel like driving.
The industrial approach to AI is to build better tools. Not to build new independent beings. Maybe it's possible that a tool can become a being, but we have no evidence at all that such a thing can happen.
So the future of employment will probably not be unemployment, it will be different employment. Truck driver jobs will get replaced by truck-driving AI, but the children of truck drivers won't miss it. They'll grow up in that world, and work in some other new industry, like virtual world designer or personal medical consultant or artist or athlete.
But I would point out that even though that is true, people still make money today selling chess sets and chess software and chess books and chess tournament tickets to other people.
edit: clarity
We will become the children of our new AI parents. We are building our future caretakers.
but weak AI? absolutely. Look at amazon's picker bots.