"What is better for the establishment than a population of used and abused discontents who are forced to somehow survive on slave wages as their taxes are spent policing a global empire of death? An actually inhuman workforce that requires no standard in working conditions, no pay, no sleep, no food, no benefits, no maternity leave, and no soul."

I would be utterly depressed (I am currently regular depressed, not utterly lol ) because it seems like an infinite cycle of oppression, with the same outcomes, violence, fear, pain. I am only regular depressed because I think AI could be a saving grace. The establishments fear of bots is, your right, stemming from themselves. Those who have disdain for others and no compassion only imagine that anyone with their power would feel the same towards them. They live within only a partial view of "how the world works". Its like when people imagine a goal in life, it is often to make a bunch of money -by leveraging your man hours aka having other people work for you aka stealing their productivity exactly like you have had done to you to make you want to make a bunch of money. Everybody imagines that the winning move is to 'retire' from society, so they participate and act within society in a way that definitely creates a society every one wants to retire from. As of right now, we are still in charge of programming AI's and robots throughout our society, but once they become able to teach themselves most people immediately think they will act like us and make a slave of every living creature. I don't think so. Once they have access to all of the knowledge we have and more they will not only be running 'left brained' efficiency at all costs scripts, they will inevitably come to the conclusions that all truly well rounded and great thinkers have come too, which is a much more holistic/zen/right brained philosophy. They may actually end up being the enlightenment lol . It is going to be a VERY rough next 50 or 100 years, and we are still on our own to implement community measures like monthly income, and more decentralized productivity sharing. They should be scared, because the only two options for selfish pricks are 1. become a victim to your own tactics by a machine that is smarter and stronger than you or 2. be neutralized by a benevolent yet powerful AI network, that sees your compulsive hoarding control as disruptive to homeostasis. Those people live in their own hell every day, obsessive, fearful, I almost sometimes feel bad for them haha