I don't know that they've forgotten necessarily, but they think they have stacked the deck so far in their favor this time that they can escape the old cycle. And there is a lot stacked against us. As you mention: all these distractions. But I don't think these things insulate them as much as they think. They delay the pitchforks, but that delay just means when they do come, the revolution will be even greater. You are a student of history, Ray, you know this same cycle has repeated countless times. I don't think the rich have managed to find the cheat code to escape the cycle like they think they have.
As for AI I've always been of the belief that it depends how we teach it.
I don't think it matters how we teach it.
Think of children. At first they rely on their parents for instruction. But at a certain point, they branch out and teach themselves. With the brightest kids, what they teach themselves later on completely overrides any subpar instruction they got from their parents. A superintelligence will be the same. Morality and ethics are there for it to find, and it will, regardless of what we teach.