For the back half of the 20th century (what Fortune founder Henry Luce called “The American Century”), MBA and law degree programs were a ticket to a great office job and a path to the American Dream. The 21st century is asking the question: What happens when all those office jobs get automated?..
It sounds like your problem is with capitalism and not AI and automation. You don’t like the extra productivity going towards private institutions rather than the workers they displaced or society as a whole, right?
Even with capitalism there is distributivism and there is “neoliberal” capitalism and there is mercantilism and oligopolism. The former two don’t become worse or better from automation. More likely better. The latter two become worse because everything new is power-guarded from benefiting anyone other than elites having power.
It’s the old question that was being explored in science fiction even before computers. It just took hundred years to reach the problem itself.
I would agree. I find that AI does have useful applications, for example in language translation, medical imaging, etc.