I can relate to the career anxiety aspect. The way I want to look at it is, if AI is smart enough to occupy creative jobs such as engineers, the world could be heaven. The "only" problem left is politics. Humans will spend the rest of their unoccupied time negotiating distribution of all resources produced by robots.
> Humans will spend the rest of their unoccupied time negotiating distribution of all resources produced by robots.
I can't see a reason for the dynamics to change from what we have now - those who own the means of production will hoard the new power and those who don't will find their slice of the pie become comparatively even smaller, just as with every increase in efficiency.
And those with power will blame the Other for society’s problems and convince enough of them through media propaganda to vote against their own self interest.
Indeed. But the feeling of well-being is not absolute, but relative to you socio-economic context. The average American is manitudes better off now than 200 years ago, in absolute terms. But are they just as many magnitudes more happy? No. Depending on study, happiness is significantly less.
It's not at all clear that maximizing absolute quality of life is the best ultimate goal.
