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If I'm being very cynical I think people at the AI labs suspect they're going to shrink the market for productive labor but are fine with that since they'll capture a larger share of profits, as perpetual rent-seekers for all intellectual production. They also have this hope that there will imminently be a lot less of us around (they telegraph fear of this outcome, but that feels insincere).
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>But the gains have BY AND LARGE gone to the wealthiest individuals and countries.

This is simply false, the average Chinese or Indian is incredibly better off now than they were 100 or 500 years ago. In fact for the past decade many of the wealthiest countries (many Western European countries, and Japan) have seen barely any growth in living standards at all, GDP-per-capita growth has been concentrated in developing countries.

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It is correct. The richest 10% now earn 53% of global income. The top 10% average income/bottom 50% average income ratio has went from 18x to 38x in the last 200 years.
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Ratios gonna ratio.

It's not mutually exclusive with enormous relative improvement at the bottom, from where people were to where they are now. China and India have all but ended open defecation and there's running water in places we'd never dream of a generation ago. Diseases are being eradicated saving huge numbers of lives.

Rich got richer contains zero information about how poor people fared - even accounting for relative numbers in your claim.

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