Let’s imagine that AI will become cheaper and more efficient, it will not differ from humans in terms of the quality of its work, it will replace almost all intellectual workers, and only the operators of these AI models will have jobs, that is, one person or several people monitor the entire office of AI workers for a small salary. Yes, the AI bubble will burst, but the problems of ordinary people will only get worse from this, jobs will not return, no, automation will continue anyway.
Is it worth retraining as a mechanic, plumber or something like that?
It’s worth pointing out that if AI can be an engineer, it could definitely be a manager of other AIs. Why wouldn’t the operators be replaced as well? Or even the lawyers who set up and enforce the corporate charters? Meatspace jobs seem to be safer, but “foundation models that can do physical jobs are just around the corner” is something you definitely hear. And of course at the other end Lemmy thinks AI is totally useless.
I suppose in the scenario you’ve defined, yes, being a blue collar worker is the main option, short of owning a bunch of stuff. And like any other technological revolution, eventually the upheaval will end, there will be fairly high employment, and a lot of things will be cheaper than before.