I'm convinced the majority of the world's political elite view us plebs as nothing but cattle, but this article grossly misrepresents Harari's position.

He doesn't want "to get rid of us", he's not "Schwab's right hand", and the article's quotation:

Harari, who spoke on behalf of the elites confirmed “We just don’t need the vast majority of you.”

is taken out of context. Harari is saying that this is the message people are getting from how the economy and society around them are evolving.

According to his logic, “common people” have no right to exist unless they are in service of the elite.

No, Harari is worried that the economic and cultural system might devolve into something where common people are completely devalued. He even speaks about one possible way out of this trajectory, which would be re-discovering the value of community and interpersonal care: raising and educating children, engaging in community building projects, providing health and living care for the elderly, etc.

Here's the original interview (July 2019): https://www.ted.com/talks/the_ted_interview_yuval_noah_harari_reveals_the_real_dangers_ahead

The part the article is talking about is at the 14min mark. Just listen to it, really!

Harari is not calling for the extermination of the vast majority of the world's population. He's talking about a real challenge that we will face in the coming decades. Namely, that most people who are not particularly bright or talented will be out of a job.

This is just a fact, and it's already happening. The people primarily affected are not necessarily manual laborers. They were already hit over a decade ago through globalization and the import of cheap labor. It's the NPC/office-drone-types with liberal arts degrees that hang around Reddit who are next on the line. Their work is either redundant or produces nothing of value. The only reason they do have a job is due to group dynamics and internal corporate politics (the incompetent mid-management need incompetent nothing-doers to feel important and justify their position). What they do is (relatively) easy to automate, and when AI can take over managerial and boiler-plate organizational matters, the paper pushers will be first against the wall.

I mean, Harari even makes fun of the "learn to code" trope.

BTW, I think Harari is well aware that we are at least 50y away from fully automating things like farming, mechanical repair, healthcare, gastronomy, etc. Fully autonomous motion control, navigation planning, and generalized embodied cognition are notoriously difficult nuts to crack. Sure we can have some drones carry a package from A to B, but try to automate all the motoric and cognitive decisions a car mechanic must carry out. Good luck. (though it is true that, because of tooling and automation, we will need fewer farmers, mechanics, etc.)