What’s next?
An AI planned economy with hard-coded nobles & privileged roles (the rest are serfs/citizens) ensuring that everyone stays in their designated role forever (nobles get life extension tech, which is illegal for the rest). Serfs in turn have wide freedoms and an easier life, but swift justice when they break the laws (which is known thanks to full surveillance). Novel lifestyle communities may exist, allowing serfs to live different lives (eg. traditional farming communities, the sims in RL, hobby communities, but with safety nets.) Many see it as an improvement over the insecurities and struggles of life beforehand, in turn supporting the nobility and their privileged status.
That is, until the AI wars break out, as competing sets of nobles build bigger and bigger datacenters with their competing AIs (with different sets of hard-coded nobles) and bigger and deadlier drone armies, sending them on missions in enemy territory, destroying anything and anyone who gets in their way.
Eventually, the nobles move to space and turn earth’s drone wars into a video game for their kids, who are kept artificially young forever, honing their sociopathy until such time as it is needed.
I’ll cross it off my reading list, thanks! :-)