The main issue though is the economic system, not the technology.

My hope is that it shakes things up fast enough that they can't boil the frog, and something actually changes.

Having capable AI is a more blatantly valid excuse to demand a change in economic balance and redistribution. The only alternative would be destroy all technology and return to monkey. Id rather we just fix the system so that technological advancements don't seem negative because the wealthy have already hoarded all new gains of every new technology for this past handful of decades.

Such power is discretely weaponized through propaganda, influencing, and economic reorganizing to ensure the equilibrium stays until the world is burned to ash, in sacrifice to the lifestyle of the confidently selfish.

I mean, we could have just rejected the loom. I don't think we'd actually be better off, but I believe some of the technological gain should have been less hoardable by existing elite. Almost like they used wealth to prevent any gains from slipping away to the poor. Fixing the issue before it was this bad was the proper answer. Now people don't even want to consider that option, or say it's too difficult so we should just destroy the loom.

There is a markov blanket around the perpetuating lifestyle of modern aristocrats, obviously capable of surviving every perturbation. every gain as a society has made that reality more true entirely due to the direction of where new power is distributed. People are afraid of AI turning into a paperclip maximizer, but that's already what happened to our abstracted social reality. Maximums being maximized and minimums being minimized in the complex chaotic system of billions of people leads to inevitable increase to accumulation of power and wealth wherever it has already been gathered. Unless we can dissolve the political and social barrier maintaining this trend, it we will be stuck with our suffering regardless of whether we develop new technology or don't.

Although doesn't really matter where you are or what system you're in right now. Odds are there is a set of rich asshole's working as hard as possible to see you are kept from any piece of the pie that would destabilize the status quo.

I'm hoping AI is drastic enough that the actual problem isn't ignored.