>The way the industrial revolution reduced manual labour, and made thinkers and tinkerers much more valuable
Didn't the opposite happen? Suddenly artisans were out of business as nobody wanted beautiful hand-made luggage, or whatever, that would last decades, but instead we'd get some engineers and maybe consults an old-school luggage guy, get some specs, and toss that data into cheap mass production and be done with it. Sure they're uglier and last only a few years, but they're cheap and plentiful. Now those artisans had to close their shops and either go work in the factory or retrain for something else.
The I.R. was great for making things fast and cheap, but it was pretty much a full frontal attack on "maker" culture that has only rebounded in certain areas fairly recently, namely computers, because you can own the "means of production" trivially, namely a computer with a compiler.
I see AI going the same way. It'll be shoddy, cost jobs, and work "just good enough." The question is is "just good enough" appropriate for 5,000lbs death machines speeding at 75mph? Think of all very serious development protocols and standards aerospace and NASA use. And that's for machines that will never have to worry about poorly painted/paved roads, kids running into the street, snow covering everything, etc. I think the AI-guided future will be far off and hit a lot of practical limits quickly and the bullish attitude behind AI is more than a little unjustifiable.