I'm sure people felt similarly when the first sewing machines were invented. And of course, sewing machines did completely irreversibly change the course of humanity and altered (and even destroyed) many lives. But ultimately, most humans managed, and -- in the end (though that end may be farther away than our own lifetimes) -- benefited.

I'm not sure you're actually under-estimating the impact of this AI meteor that's currently hitting humanity, because it is a huge impact. But I think you're grossly under-estimating the vastness of human endeavors, ingenuity, and resilience. Ultimately we're still talking about the bottom falling out of the creative arts: storytelling, images, movies, even porn -- all of that is about to be incredibly easy to create mediocre versions of. Anyone who thrived on making mediocre art, and anyone who thrived second-hand on that industry, is going to have a very bad time. And that's a lot of people, and it's awful. But we're talking about a complete shift in the creative industries in a world where most people drive trucks and work in restaurants or retail. Yes, many of those industries may also get replaced by AI one day, and rapidly at that, but not by ChatGPT or Sora.

Of course you're right that our near future may suddenly be an AI company hegemony, replacing the current tech hegemony, which replaced the physical retail hegemony, which replaced the manufacturing hegemony, which replaced the railway hegemony, which replaced the slave-owning plantation hegemony, which replaced the guilds hegemony, which replaced the ...

You're also under-estimating how much business can actually be relocated outside the U.S., and also how much revolution can be wrought by a completely disenfranchised generation.