I'd like to see AI "democratize" the world, but I have a much more pessimistic outlook. One thing we see with technological revolutions is that (once the dust settles) they provide general improvements for all strata of societies. But as some boundaries are erased, others are magnified a hundredfold wherever robber barons can stake an exclusive claim.

If genuine AGI is developed, its everyday conveniences may continue to be shared with the common masses, but the powers that own the technology and the data centers will have no incentive to give everyone access equal to superintelligence, and that includes giving governments the same access.

Every stage of the industrial age has seen powerful, wealthy people/groups (whether you call them oligarchs or industrialists or whatever) become able to exert disproportionate power over the state, and we're already in a place where this is happening. Humans have shown time and again that once you have some resource (whether it be oil, gold, or data centers), someone will want to own all of it, and that they're always willing fight for that ownership, and this fight rarely benefits ordinary humans like us.

Developed countries have been enjoying an unusually long peace time thanks to the wonders of capitalism and the emergence of stable, progressive capitalist-friendly democracies. The road to utopian basic income and limitless leisure is going to be fraught with riots and violence, and make Marx suddenly utterly relevant once again, because there's too much at stake, and too stark a division between the haves and the have-nots.

The alternative timeline is one where governments get together to regulate AI into some kind of international agreement under the UN. That requires taking power away from the private corporations; historically, that's been a tough sell.