I think the comparisons to lamp lighters or whatever don't quite capture why this is so much worse. The training for those jobs was relatively low. You don't need a decade of school to become a lamp lighter.
So if the white collar bloodbath is true. We have to tell a bunch of people, who have spent a significant portion of their lives training for a specific jobs and may be in debt for that education, to go do manual labor or something. The potential civil unrest from this should really concern everyone.
You honestly think it's gonna take more then a few years until everything else to follow?
Seriously, once something is able to do 90% of a white collar workers job, general ai has gotten far enough for robotics to take over/decimate the other industries within the decade.
So if the white collar bloodbath is true. We have to tell a bunch of people, who have spent a significant portion of their lives training for a specific jobs and may be in debt for that education, to go do manual labor or something. The potential civil unrest from this should really concern everyone.