Critical thinking skills in use - danger, danger, danger!
Next to biofuels and cold fusion - 3-D printing has been one of the most over-hyped, under performing technologies for the last decade. It has small specific applications especially in tool and die making part of manufacturing, but even there it has to compete with 3-D milling CAD programs that are often more cost effective especially in non-polymeric materials. People don't seem to understand that the 3-D printing techniques are severely limited by material purity, energy and costs - polymer printers are the most economically efficient which as you note are a petroleum derivative. Any product that requires multi-materials and or high heat formed materials - ceramics, glass, metals, become increasingly complex, problematic and expensive to "print" dramatically limiting their range of economic application. It isn't technical feasibility that limits 3-D printings broader application - it's basic economics. Printing material costs alone will continue to prevent 3-D printing from being economically feasible for most applications.
AI is such a generic term. Computers are already AI by definition. We are one of, if not the leading developer of software in general - the basis for AI and it hasn't saved our economy from China, who has actually economically leveraged it against us with debt. Your comments on the lack of economic balance - costs/disposable income with robotic production strikes at the root of our current economic problems. The corporate owned US gov. has either replaced workers with robots, or just out-sourced labor to cheaper economies and the only way those jobs are ever going to come back is when the economic balance - wage competition is a level playing field. The level of economic ignorance in the US avg. citizen is only exceeded by their scientific ignorance - the root problem of our all national decline.
Creativity has never been in short supply in the US. What has been is not only the ability to protect intellectual property internationally, but functional economic processes for effectively connecting creativity with responsible capital investment. Currently capital flow to creativity - start-ups in the US is at an all time low primarily because of the expense and economics of "professionally" managed capital. Capital management firms require large numbers to justify their overhead and fees - which inherently mean small start-up projects are avoided. It's going to take more than 3-D printing and artificial intelligence to get around this economic paradigm.
