I disagree with the premise. The author sounds bitter, bleak and uninformed.<p>First, I suppose the author should define 'rich'. Perhaps I've always been rich (even in my 20's!) and just didn't know it.<p>Even when I wasn't making much money (we had a single income for a very long time), my family was able to use health insurance for needed physical therapy and we budgeted for marriage counseling out of pocket.<p>I suppose it's all about what you prioritize in your life ...
Well, most non-surgeon doctors are already of limited use since for "easy" things information on the web is good enough or better and for "complex" things that need a lot of research the issue might be unsolvable and if it is you usually need to do the research yourself (unless you can find and hire a doctor that is actually willing to research your case for hours), so they are only useful for "medium" difficulty issues that aren't easily diagnosed by just tests but can be relatively quickly diagnosed by someone experienced.
Sounds like we're going through a composition effect change that exists at the top of the Ecological Kuznet Curve(EKC)[1]. In general, I hypothesize the AI stands to deliver composition changes to service work in a way that increases inequality. If/as we move toward a technique effect regime with AI, we can expect that inequality between human and AI services to reverse trend and decrease, although ultimately into a radically different landscape.<p>1.Grossman, Gene M., and Alan B. Krueger. 1991. Environmental Impacts of a North American Free Trade Agreement. NBER Working Paper Series, no. 3914. <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w3914/w3914.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w3914/w3914...</a>
1) This is pointing out that the wealthy can buy relationships. That does give them more options, but doesn't seem like a particular advantage, bought relationships are less reliable. I wouldn't want to be relying on them and someone who does without them is better off.<p>2) I am looking forward with great enthusiasm to the day I can trust my health to an AI. I see no reason to trust humans with something as important as my wellbeing, I want as many engineered processes on that job as possible. While I would accept that at the moment the AI experience is probably sub-par, I don't see why it is interesting from a rich-poor perspective. The rate of change in AI services is extreme and the quality of the service will be different in a few years.
The rich can afford private jets, the rest will have to make do with affordable international flights. The rich will always be able to get more/better of things. That's what it means to be rich. The question for society is how much richer than the average person is someone allowed to be, and how poor someone is allowed to be compared to the average.
It's "I will not eat the bugs" for people who don't want the feeling of having lost real human customer service for bots to become our entire future.