Another option is the world goes totally socialist, stripping drivers for people to work hard. Innovation will grind to a halt as people pursue lesure rather than knowledge....
at some point something would kill the useless meatbags we become. A new disease we can't stop, or a meteor will just hit us and kill off us lazy humans. I'm sure our AI children will have a contingency and save themselves, leaving the meat to die and going off to do whatever untethered, immortal, self evolving, super-intellects would go do.
I actually semi-disagree with this turn of events, mostly because I think the idea that:
A.) Knowledge and leisure are not mutually exclusive.
I may -- and I expect many others here but I can only speak for myself -- count knowledge and learning as a leisure in-and-of-itself. Sure, that's not exactly the most common quality as expressed by the general populace, but I think it's happening beneath the surface for most people regardless. There's a reason that virtually all cultures equate endless leisure with inevitable dissatisfaction and ultimately boredom: we're not leisure machines, we're problem-solving machines. Yes, we like leisure-- love it. But leisure only has relevance when some form of "work" (and I use that broadly) is subtracting from it. Wildly rich people still work, often quite hard. Why, when they can afford anything they could want?
Because work you ENJOY isn't the same kind of work most people deal with. You might say that it then becomes a leisure in itself -- and to some extent I'd agree -- but even then the idea of working implies some form of problem solving, either a wrong that needs to be righted, or a question that needs to be answered. The former may resolve it eventually, but the latter? Who can say? The concept of "no more questions are left" doesn't even work with a typical, baseline human being. And that's ignoring if whether there are actually answers to the questions anyway.
What do you think made people from 15,000 years ago explore the area outside the valley lived in? Resources are obvious, but even in times of plenty (like right now for example, in much of the world), there are always people who just want to know what's outside the valley. And even if you don't agree in any such sentimental "will of the human spirit" argument, then talk strictly of resources. Unless we discover the answer to infinite energy, then we'll need to ACT eventually -- and if we did discover infinite energy, a thing beyond the scope of our wildest imagination, you really think no one would bother checking it out? Seeing what else it can do other than give them VR porn and digital drugs?
For what it's worth, I'll mention that I find any kind of sudden, apocalyptic scenario happening my lifetime to be unlikely. Not because I'm optimistic -- but because I think it's too dramatic. We're not special. We're not some pinnacle of biology that must soon be destroyed because we've exhausted all "work". From my perspective, we're just another layer of complexity upon the thing that is Earth-Life. What good reason do we have to assume it somehow ends here, when people have routinely expected looming apocalypse since before recorded history?
2.) We're useless meatbags that get replaced
I actually kinda/sorta agree with this, though not for the same reasons I think, and not in the same fashion. I do think that -- without some truly globally catastrophic disaster the likes of which I can't imagine aside from, I dunno, a gamma ray burst -- eventually there will no longer be purely, as-we-know-it biological humans. However, I don't think it's going to be some abrupt purging of our race by robotic overlords, and again I don't find most other doomsday scenarios particularly likely -- not to the extent of utterly wiping mankind off the face of the earth. Rather, I think the transition from one to the other (that is, organic to artificial) will be gradual, even if happens fast. Cellphones happened fast as shit compared to basically any other technology in human history. 20 years ago, if you told someone that they'd have a machine in their pocket, scarcely larger than their hand, which you could literally ask (verbally, with your voice) almost any rational question and actually watch as that device produces more answers than you need...what do you think people would say? Outside of pure ridicule, there would surely be dissent from various groups. "It will stop the pursuit of knowledge" seems like a good possibility...after-all, when most of humanity's knowledge lay at our finger tips, near instantly, why would anyone bother ever learning something?
To re-circle around, my point is this: people expect the worst of new things -- new technology, societal upheaval, whatever -- for a few big reasons. The most obvious is fear of the unknown, and though that is true, I think it's more nuanced. I think that people who attempt to think as rationally as possible have a tendency to resort to excessive pessimissim. Which makes sense and is actually a good thing -- we need, desperately, for people to
suggest the possibility that things are not okay. Certainty isn't helping anyone, regardless of the subject. The third major reason, and the least appeciable from my POV, is the bubble of ignorance. Why folk since the beginning of human existence have expected -- and at root, I suspect -- perversely desired catastrophe. It's why some people obsess over the end of times -- Y2K, Doomsday preppers, Mayan Calendar, and so on. Not because they truly, actually believe the world is ending (though a few might), but because the affectation of it creates drama in their life. Suddenly, their life becomes special in a sort of hollow pessimism -- I say it's hollow because most who entertain such concepts with serious conviction, do so only because they imagine that if the end of times actually DID occur...certainly they'd be among the survivors. Just like they'd have taken the gun from that bank robber, unlike the milquetoast they saw in the news earlier. Or how they're such great drivers, that they couldn't POSSIBLY be exceeded in skill by a robot, even as they express that opinion by speaking to a crude A.I. that translates their voice into accurate text which can then be cast across the globe through the digital network enveloping every human goes online.
TL;DR
The robots already won, we just haven't noticed yet, and when we finally do, it'll be because we are the robots. Technology is not distinct from nature, it's an extension. It's the form evolution takes when organisms become smart enough to evolve themselves. Automation is your heart beating, your eyes blinking, your lungs breathing. It's all the shit you don't need to think about so you can spend energy on more interesting things -- not because they're useful -- but because eventually you get bored and want a challenge, even if it doesn't feel like it. Especially when it doesn't feel like it.