Neither AI nor robots are a problem at all, the trouble is the transition. As the transition happens, people are not happily lose their jobs neither owners of large business will be able to sustain profits, this is unsolvable contradiction (that is, not solvable without violence). Unlike other types of innovation, AI is not an amplification of human labor, it is a substitution to humans. Perhaps, if cold fusion were to be realized before such threshold was crossed, people would perhaps get away from civilization and mind their own business, but it doesn't seem the case until now. There isn't,though, any meaningful advance in AI for decades. What happens is the massive feed of data for very repetitive tasks in a very narrow field of expertise.It just happens that, as time goes, the number of narrow field increases. A true AI wouldn't require that much data to learn new fields.
Indeed, all revolutions were associated with poverty. But not exactly any type of poverty. It's a type of poverty that cannot be brushed away. In the case of UK, or most developed countries, at least part of menial jobs could be offloaded to colonies or to the third world, so you wouldn't have too much people angry close together. This is not enough though, because you have to have a strong army with high morale and with massive support of the population (partisans, like Vietcongs). This high morale, for example, came in general in the form of genocide from a foreign invader. This is the case of Russia in the 1st world war, which suffered genocide from the rulings of nobles (they spoke French among themselves, for example); China, South East Asia, from Japan and European powers; East Europe, were devastated by Nazis, had, because of that, a vast quantity of partisans, and they were the ones that ruled. Fractured countries, without a clear ethnic majority failed, like in Africa, Middle East and in most of the Andean countries. In South Asia, there is a long stale mate because, while they are fractured, each of one them is quite large.
