Not going to argue about what will or will not happen (predictions are hard, especially about the future), but you absolutely don't need AI to explain layoffs at Meta. On one hand they have a failed investment in Metaverse and an underwhelming attempt to participate in AI race. On the other hand they have a stable advertising business that doesn't need much innovation, but can always benefit from some cost cutting

The obvious problem is that you can't run a consumer economy without consumers. No one cares about warehouse robots if no one has the income to buy what's in the warehouses.

For "no one" substitute "more and more of the working population."

I suspect oligarchs believe they can automate their way out of this. The little people will be surplus to requirements, and measures will be taken to eliminate most of us in due course.

But the manufacture of everything is both global and industrial. You need to run things at a certain scale.

Even if we had AGI tomorrow there's still a huge gap between where we are today and a hypothetical low-population global post-AGI robot economy.

And if burn through that straight into ASI no one knows - or likely can even imagine - what that would look like.

Also doesn't help that nobody can say how many people it needed to develop and maintain software even before AI. Elon declared the emperor had no clothes.