After reading through much of the discussion regarding Matt's many interesting points, it's somewhat troubling that nobody addresses the most obvious problem wi

After reading through much of the discussion regarding Matt's many interesting points, it's somewhat troubling that nobody addresses the most obvious problem with the realization of sufficiently good AI. In both cases mentioned, in regards to cars, taxis, buses, and call centers, you displace thousands to millions of human workers. While this is all very nice in our tech fantasy lands if these scenarios come to pass you have another mass displacement of low -> middle skilled workers. It's of my opinion (I also remember reading about a global conference regarding this issue),that our current society can't withstand another displacement event of this size, even if it does come gradually. In the United States anyway, we can already see massive unemployment due to certain jobs just not existing anymore, for example, token booth clerks, replaced by automated kiosks, cashiers replaced by automatic kiosks, conductors replaced by automated trains, etc. etc. Furthermore, there is always less need for highly skilled workers as the top, so say you displace 1000 construction workers due to automation, you may only need 100 foremen, leaving those previously 900 workers unemployed with no prospects of employment even with sufficient education. It's a major problem in my opinion, and possibly a problem we'll have to deal with in our lifetime, especially if we see minor to significant improvements in AI and automation.