It's not about high paying jobs. It's about just occupying people's time, giving them something to do. Perhaps high pay; or at least a pay of some form can come from patents/copyrights developed with such knowledge however.
Until basic needs are handled, you can't just say "it's about occupying people's time". People need to eat, clothe themselves, and shelter themselves, and all three require a steady source of income.
If you want to push widespread welfare or UBI for those in academia, that's an entirely different option. But that'd require a serious revision in the current tax codes or some very wealthy benefactors to bootstrap.
So, basically bmi/ubi is what I'm assuming when I talk about this. Just it's post that, what I'm trying to answer is "what will people do" essentially when there is no jobs and we have bmi/ubi. I sort of just assumed readers figured such a system would need to be in place already as jobs are automated. Probably should not have assumed that, my bad.
