To me, the reason to worry can be seen in today's politics. Big businesses making record profits. Stagnant wage growth. Unsustainable public finances.
AI is apparently going to take away many (most?) of our jobs within 5/10/20 years. And we are supposed to believe that when this happens, large companies are going to suddenly become philanthropic? Instead of large corporations and wealthy individuals threatening to leave the country whenever anyone mentions raising taxes upon them, they're going to pay enough to sustain the country, with a UBI on top?
Yeah, pull the other one
It comes down to economics.
To operate AI you need cashflow, that comes from users paying, and currently that's developers and companies paying alike.
Now if you believe that AI will take all the jobs, then think of this - if AI replaces the developers, the costs from those licences/use will simply move to the operational cost of the company that's AI.. so the business now has a cost of AI..
IBM used to basically screw over businesses locked into using their mainframes.. so I see no different hear, money being left on the table is taken up by rising costs to businesses.. as the costs then increase (you can't go back to a skilled workforce that doesn't exists).. so you're now in a situation where the business costs rise to maximise profits for the AI operators... the local companies still cost to sell and to operate but now as a wrapper to the AI cost.. Government taxation drops as there's nobody working..
Then the companies start folding.. because.. unemployed people and governments don't have the money to simply spend on goods that the local companies produce.. so the number of AI customers drops... increasing costs further for AI users.. and the economy fails.. an AI recession where nobody can afford AI and nobody can afford to produce anything as there's no buyers.. it's a zero sum economy.
Yet. I would suggest that the consumption of AI will reach an equilibrium, both from government's tolerance to threat to the economy and from companies need to sell stuff .. and they want profit not to be screwed by the AI costs.. so there will be a risk based tolerance to AI's impact on business and the ability to differentiate.
I know companies that IBM screws over due to the lock in to their proprietary mainframe ecosystem. I feel that we've still got memories of this.
Customers want a product that will make their businesses faster and more profitable.. not one that will erode them like a parasite from the inside out, eating their revenue and profits until a point comes where they can't operate.
