What's going to happen when the robots take almost every job?

[Xithras]

17. At some point in the relatively near future we will have full human AI.

Once we acheive human level cognition in a machine, it can self-program itself to recursively improve its intelligence until it exceeds anything we can come up with ourselves. After that happens, the machine can design custom robotic drones to complete any task that a human can do, up to and including repairing itself.

When that happens, humans become redundant, and modern economic theory goes out the window. No job will pay a wage, because labor will be worthless. Robots can provide humans with everything they need, from food to shelter to medical care and entertainment, and they'll be able to do it at no cost.

What do we do then?

In the Star Trek vision of the future, humanity dedicates itself to learning and exploration while the computers sustain us. In Vonnegut's Player Piano version of that future, a ruling upperclass uses its control over technology to create a permanent and subservient underclass. In countless other works of fiction, the computers just get rid of us and keep the world for themselves. There's no way for us to know or guess which would actually come to pass.