Our environment today is completely different that it was even 100 years ago. Yes, you have to ask this question for every part of modern society (fast travel, photographs, video, computers, antibiotics, vaccines, etc), so I am not sure why work is different.

Part of the problem is that we don't ask these questions when we should be. Social media, for example, represents a unique assault on our psychological makeup that we just uncritically unleashed on the world. We're about to do it again, likely with even worse consequences.

What would "asking these questions" entail? Would you have a committee that decides what new things we would allow? Popular vote? I get the idea, I just know see how you could ever actually do anything about this issue unless you completely outlawed anything new.

I don't think its plausible to have a committee to approve all new technology. But it is plausible to have a committee empowered to place limits on technology that we can predict will cause a social upheaval the likes of which we've never seen in modern times. It's not like we haven't done the equivalent of this before with e.g. nuclear and bioengineering technology. The difficulty is that the speed in which AI is being developed makes it so government bureaucracies are necessarily playing catchup. But it can be done. We just need to accept that we're not powerless to shape our collective futures. We are not at the mercy of technology and the few accelerationists who stand to be the new aristocracy in the new world.