>> perhaps AI is less like industrial automation (which substitutes for labour) and more like assembly line machinery (which complements labour) These are real

>> perhaps AI is less like industrial automation (which substitutes for labour) and more like assembly line machinery (which complements labour) These are really rather similar from a bird's eye view. In the second case, you complement labor and increase the productivity of an individual worker. However, in relative terms, you reduce the number of workers employed and/or increase the amount of capital used. This marginally decreases wages and increases returns to capital. Once the dust settles - the famous "long run" - you've increased the size of the economy by increasing productivity. This results in a slightly higher wage and a relatively even higher increase in the capital rate of return, thus increasing inequality. But then - in the even longer run - the capital stock grows faster than population, so you get the opposite trend. Capital becomes relatively more plentiful, favoring more capital-intensive production functions. This helps wages on the teeter totter. I think the most obvious changes are going to be the increases in the relative wages (and social prestige) of jobs that are neither low-skilled nor AI-augmentable, i.e. the "stuff AI isn't good at" and might never be. An illustrative edge case might be masseur/masseuse.