> The AI not leading to job displacement prediction is just silly, given that it's already leading to job loss.

The prediction was about job loss, not displacement, and you are incorrect about the current state. Job displacement and job loss are two very different things. AI is leading to job displacement (less jobs in certain industries, but not necessarily overall reduction in jobs), it does not seem to be leading, so far, to job loss (less jobs overall). It's harder to tell if it is leading to a greater share of jobs with lower wages, which has similar economic and policy implications to it causing net job loss, because there are lots of confounding factors when looking at the dynamics of wage distribution.

A lot of AI fear is based around net job loss (which has not generally historically been associated with technological advancements), not mere job displacement (which is a common effect of technological advancements).

The fear is that jobs left to humans are those low level ones. Technology divide up the society into elites who control machines and labors who is controlled by machines. And gradually, the elites become less and less until the day we humans are all batteries.