Will current developments in generative AI eventually result in a social revolution in human affairs?
Technology has played a role in similar transitions in the past. Mechanized agricultural production mosly eliminated the need for a large agricultural workforce for producing staple crops, a workforce that historically was organized and controlled via systems like serfdom and slavery, which were mostly eliminated as mechanization spread. Domestic household technology (washing machines, vacuums, electricity, etc) ended the need for a household to employ domestic servants and facilitated the entrance of women into the workforce, with associated loosening of societal gender role expectations.
Machine learning systems might play a similar role in enabling automation of the industrial factory system, creating a system in which a few workers manage complex workflows with all basic tasks done by highly adaptable robots. Generative AI appears poised to eliminate a similar amount of basic tedious work in the white-collar world of documentation creation, legal research, all secretarial-type tasks, boilerplate code generation, etc.
The real question in societal terms will be whether or not the fruits of all this labor elimination will end up controlled by a tiny minority of the human population. If so, that could plausibly lead to societal pressure to completely restructure the investment capital system of wealth accumulation and concentration, i.e. AI might cause socialism to become more popular.
However, the notion that AI systems will be making the fundamental choices (going to war, creating a national constitution, writing and voting on legislation, forming a new business entity, etc.) seems farfetched at present.