Hey OP. As a fellow college student obsessed with all things automation and AI, I've also spent countless hours panicking about my future and whether or not I'll be employable in any fields that interest me. I've been thinking on it lately after recently switching majors to comp sci, and my perspective is this:

If GPT 4 or GPT 5 or whatever model that releases this year or a few more years down the road really does end up outright replacing all or at least a significant portion of people employed in knowledge-based nonphysical work, then not only you and me, but everyone, has some pressing concerns.

At one point during the COVID pandemic in 2020, over one third of the entire work force was working remotely from home. For reference, one third of the US workforce is around 50 million people. This is the number of people that stand to be rendered unemployed relatively quickly by AI.

What I'm getting at is, we can't arrive at the point where more than a third of the work force is out of a job in a short period of time and then expect things to just carry on as they are. Something's got to give. Our current economic paradigm would be turned on its head. This is where I think UBI comes into play, and why I think it isn't all that far off. There aren't really any better short-term solutions to the sudden and severe scale of future unemployment talked about on this sub. I don't think the doomer take of "they'll just let everyone starve" is all that realistic. Contrary to what many think 50 million angry unemployed people are ultimately going to make their grievances heard, be it through peaceful or violent methods.

Or maybe a black swan scenario of a runaway self-improving AGI pops up out of nowhere in the next few years, in which case we get 1) utopia, or 2) everybody dies. Either way, our worries are over.

I forgot what I was talking about.