Obviously the anger needs to come from somewhere, but I would argue that we have enough capacity for higher reasoning to temper emotions when necessary - and I don't thing raging against some caricature of evil tech workers is helpful here. To be clear, I also think pro AI people need to get their act together and respond with empathy instead of being dismissive assholes, both sides of this argument should do their best to enable calm, collected thinking in the other participant.

> "There are systems of respect at stake..."

I feel like you're overextending a particular sociological factor beyond all reason. Human beings draw meaning from a great many things, setting meaningful contribution as a necessary factor needs way more justification than just quoting one political philosopher.

You only need to look at our current society to cast doubt on this assertion. We live in capitalist system that promotes individualism more than anything else. Anyone working in a job right now is acutely aware of the fact that they can be replaced - not with AI but with a different human worker - at any point. We don't live in small villages anymore. Every baker in a city has to cope with the reality that his customers would, without a care, switch to the bakery across the street if he were to close down. Not only that, but many people "contribute" by doing work that is neutral for society at best and actively harmful at worst, as you yourself pointed out.

Yet our society still stands, and has stood for quite some time. People can adjust, they can derive meaning from sources that have been neglected or ignored, and live life just as happily as they did before.

> "A quick closing word..."

I think you're being overly defeatist here. There is a reasonable chance that giant challenges are ahead, but the extent of these challenges is still unknown.
There are a great many possible scenarios where just a little constructive discussion and some social policies may avert most of the negative consequences. The more we do now, the more likely it is that we will persevere in the coming storm and emerge with minimal damage.

I think the industrial revolution is a good comparison, even though I believe that the AI revolution is going to be far more challenging. The industrial revolution caused quite a bit of suffering in the short term, but you and I probably agree that this suffering could have been strongly minimized with the right approach. We can learn from the lessons provided to us from history and sociology, and give it our best shot.

And as for political inertia, we coasted on the "good enough" setting for quite some time now. Looming threats, especially ones where consequences to the individual are easy to understand, can fuel quite a lot of political action.

Suggesting that there is nothing that can be done is usually easy - after all, it absolves us of any need to actually do something - but it is also the best and fastest path towards the worst-case scenario.

EDIT:

I'm not suggesting that it's possible to have a discussion that is completely detached from emotion or the existential dread. The issue that I have is that we are stuck having discussions that are completely orthogonal to the issue at hand. I see pages and pages of heated arguments about copyright, the nature of art and other such trivialities. Discussions about AI inevitably deteriorate into an emotional circlejerk, where showing up the other side is the main motivation. None of that is going to help us deal with the fallout of what's coming.