The issue with giving people money is that they can only spend. Money as it stands doesn't have a use outside of satisfying peoples' needs. Sure, they can invest in capital, but in every welfare system devised they make it a point of function to ensure they don't have enough to develop capital (a rather cruel system).

The only real "welfare" programs that have worked in the past is just to employ people in government. They're still living off taxpayer money (scary I know) but are contributing back with their labor and their ideas of how systems should be ran. The military, firefighters/police, and municipal jobs have lifted millions out of poverty and into the middle class. However, as it stands, most government jobs require a college education (when it's usually unnecessary) and has barred the impoverished from getting those opportunities. Instead, people who have the means to afford higher-ed (the middle class+) battle it out for those positions which frankly aren't worth the time investment of attending a 4-year.

I think most people are still busy having their mind blown away that AI can make art and voice acting. Nearly every tech source was saying accounting and labor jobs would be automated by 2025 and that art would be nearly impossible for AI to replicate. That 180 turn with art being the first thing to be automated has absolutely shattered peoples' minds into believing AI can do anything.
While I do find it hilariously ironic, I understand a lot of peoples' frustration with AI. I knew people who thought they were making the right call by majoring in creative /business fields because, "AI will automate numbers before art". Now it seems most creative/office work can be automated which has admittedly upset a lot people.
Now when it comes to the singularity I believe the concept has ascended to a religious-like status for some people since having their minds blown. There haven't been any charlatans, yet, but I suspect "the singularity" becoming a more mainstream movement.

I personally think we're on the cusp of massive political change, at least in the US. AI is going to rip apart the social fabric and completely upturn the markets within the next few years that people are going to realize just how inefficient the government is. Then they're going to realize (the harsh way ofc) that the current system of government is too slow to accommodate technological/sociological change and are going to reform it.

I think there's going to be more populist movements because of AI. There are still plenty of Gen X and Boomer politicians who still remember when globalism wrecked America's domestic industry to China and Mexico. A luddite movement is definitely possible.

I think overseas we're going to see totalitarianism exceed to new heights. New AI will create all-seeing governments Orwell could've never anticipated. This lingering fear of an AI-fueled dictatorship will keep most people very scared of big corporations and government, so much so to influence their vote against establishmentarianism.

I don't fault anyone for doing that tbh. A lot of people already feel disillusioned from society because of the lack of effective politics and community. Still, it'd be a sad existence to live in private with other people who ultimately felt their innately human ideas didn't matter for the rest of society.

The alternative of a "singularity" (whatever that means there's a billion definitions) seems like a mixed bag.

Best case scenario, if labor can be entirely automated then the only "job" would be political discussion and philosophy, and "nations" would dictate what direction to steer the AI in (space exploration? gene editing? psychedelic exploration?) People would still do their chores and hobbies, and maybe they'll treat them as "jobs", but ultimately everyone would be working for the "government" out of necessity. People won't "work" and instead would have all the time in the world to contemplate and use human intellect in expanding their own humanity. This hypothetical is if AI is treated as a tool rather than a savior.

The worst case scenario would be a hivemind-esque AI system people are plugged into. Where the private sphere has entirely banished and any differentiation (humanity) is erased. These "Humans" would have transcended their bodies and be floating minds operating within an AI-fueled digital/physical space which has full control. By its whims, the Ai could easily determine which minds are to be erased because of their """possible""" harm to others. Inevitably it'd result in a whittling down of humanity into a single animal hivemind where individuals are interchangeable. A benevolent AI's mistaken goal for preserving humanity.