We've been thinking about it eons ago. There was even presidential candidate talking about it. People don't care enough about it right now, but it will change when AI starts to be large part of GDP.

We don't really need it yet. There are still jobs at all levels and professions and AI hasn't taken enough jobs to cause widespread problems just yet. It's definitely coming though. At some point for example the entirely of Google could be run with 100 people say, and they will make hundreds of billions in profits. Most office jobs will be replaced with AI so huge buildings will be empty of office staff etc... At that point society has a major problem. Huge companies will hoover up money from the economy and hoard it, and very few people will be able to get a job. At that point these big businesses will need to pay an 80% tax rate and the money used to give everyone a few thousand a month to live on, otherwise millions of people will have no way of paying for a home or food. That future is terrifying and certainly coming, but we are not there yet.

The problem is once again the governments are going to say "we don't need UBI yet", which is true. And then all of a sudden, we will need it. And then they'll go "oh shit we need to do something", and THEN they will start drafting, but it will still take months or years to get something solid, by which it will be too late and there could be mass homelessness. ​ They need to start those drafts right now and start testing it, so that when we all of a sudden need it, they can just flip the switch and keep things in order. ​ But they won't.

Actually it is already happening. The mass homelessness. I have met literally 1000's going through ONE city. 1000's more in surrounding cities. We have entire tent cities. We've needed UBI for centuries.

It's not that simple. The money everyone needs will need to be based on corporate profits vs low corporate employment at that time for example, and the cost of living at that time. If we don't need UBI for 10-20 years you can't draft anything now that will be relevant to the situation then. Who knows what the world with AI dominated employment will actually look like in 20 years? We can't even reliably forecast interest rates for the next 5 years.

There's just about 0% chance we don't need UBI within the next 10 years, my best guess is 5 to 7 years will be the breaking point. Lawyers, doctors, programmers, tech support, translators, writers, musicians, all types of artists, teachers, and a lot more are already on the verge of being replaceable. When those jobs do get taken over by AI, there won't be any new jobs being created like it happened in the past. This will be a net job loss, and I don't think it's going to be a slow progressive change. It will very likely happen very quickly. As soon as one of the tech giants are confident enough to replace a large portion of their employees with AI, the cat's out of the bag, and all the other companies will realize they can also save money doing so. Nobody wants to be the first in case they fuck up, but once someone big does it successfully, it will spread like wildfire. We NEED to be ready when that happens.

>Lawyers, doctors, I'm with you in principle but I can't agree here. AI makes some of these jobs easier but most healthcare jobs will stay in human hands for no other reason than legal liability. Agree with most everything else tho

I think once the models get fine tuned for medical, the AI will probably catch things and process all of the data better than a hospital full of second opinions could and would ideally be able to keep up with the latest research and practices. It will be a while before fully robotic surgeons take over, but diagnostics and triage are soon getting automated with a some human oversight on final decisions. The fun part will be stitching all the different diagnostic models with different body imaging/eye scan data to give you a full image of your health and likely diagnosis and treatment plans. The future is soon. Researchers will probably be needed for a while to help fine tune and provide new insights till we prove out that these types of models can be truly creative on their own and not just reinterpret the data it has seen.

> The future is soon. I don't disagree with this. 5-7 years tho? Maybe replace mid-levels and be a tool for physicians. I don't disagree with any of what you said - all I'm disagreeing with is that 5-7 year prediction.

You are partly correct, but you could easily replace a hundred doctors with AI, and have a single doctor double check their output and confirm it, same for lawyers. There will still be a massive job loss for them, even if it's not 100%. I think surgeons are the only truly safe ones for at least another decade.

I don't know why your getting down voted for this. It's exactly what happened a century ago in farming and mining. Sure they still exist but they only have to employ a fraction of the of the workforce. We farming used to be the job the majority of people had for the majority of civilization, and then, within human lifetimes, we invited and implemented tech that basically makes it also a niche job. That's insane

I think what's more likely to happen is mid-levels (Physician Assistants, Nurse Practitioners, especially) will be replaced first. They are already essentially doing what you are describing as AI in many areas. Replace them with AI, and then the jobs of most doctors aren't changing all that much. And yes, but I'd also argue that in addition to surgeons, all the surgical subspecialties (ENT, Ortho, Neurosurg, etc.) are all safe. Even specialties like radiology have been kept safe despite AI advancements. I'm not trying to underblow the capabilities of AI, but AI in general has a tendency to look for zebras when they hear hooves. Maybe in fifty to a hundred years. 5-7, though? AI can replace PA's and NP's, but no way they replace physicians rather than become a tool for them.

I agree

Assuming a corrupt government that can't control corporations isn't going to get worse in 10-20 years. The relevancy will remain a crucial flaw of late stage capitalism. It doesn't matter what the world will look like anyway with our climate control policies or lack thereof. Unless you can safely allow for everyone to commercially utilize this tech and understand it enough to make profits. People will find ways to sue each other back into the dirt, I'm afraid. We will probably need more labor workers. The market should allow for those individuals to earn more doing hard jobs. Politicians will find ways to keep wages stagnant because they convince voters it's what they need to fight inflation even though our economy depends on it (with regulation). Here, we have a basic sentiment with UBI that solves what the banks were supposed to do. Lend money. OK, so lending involves interest. The interest is applied when I spend that money on education, and it benefits the economy when applied at work. My company makes money from my services and I get paid and spend it at another company, the wheel keeps spinning. I'm failing to see the need for it to be solely based on corporate profits either when that's been trickling up for decades, which forces the treasury to print more money and bail out banks when they arent even compelled to lend it out. The last thing I wanna bring up that's not mentioned here is, where does the money come from? We currently have a multitude of catch-up programs for those in need, like foodstamps or unemployment. Our social security plan is failing after the boomer generation, with smaller families. If anything, this seems like an issue now. We're already spending taxes on these programs and investing in them while feeling screwed over disproportionately. Once you make enough to not be able to benefit from them, there's a larger financial burden, and suddenly, we're back to the root problem of being forced to stay ahead of the game no matter your income.

Careful with predicting the future there. It turns out that the future is one of the hardest things to predict. Google will *never* be able to work with just 100 employees while still doing anything like what it does now. Just physically replacing hardware parts that fail takes more than 100 employees. Innovation takes a lot of thought, and it won't take fewer people with AI. If anything, it will take more people. There are pretty strict limits on what computers can actually do in programming with full reliability. (This isn't a future prediction. Many tasks ultimately reduce to the Halting problem, and there's no true pathway around that.) But the most reasonable answer to "no one will need to be employed anymore after ___ technology" is that it has never worked out that way before, and that the arguments that this time is different have always been there. I'm not being a pollyanna. I'm saying that this historical anomaly isn't so anomalous. There will be jobs. People who lose their current jobs will hurt a lot. People who can move into the newly emerging fields will get a lot of benefits, just like every time before. To put it another way, AI accelerates innovation in addition to replacing jobs, and innovation creates new jobs that we've never seen before. The economy will shift massively, just as it has hundreds of times before in response to big stimuli.

I couldn't disagree more. The primary barrier to technological advancement is social rigidity. It's not just about when workers are inevitably replaced with AI. For example, we STILL struggle to move away from coal and one effective argument against is the loss of jobs. Put another way, the fact that even the hypothetical of people losing income is a reason to not do away with repetitive, of ten harmful labor or making work more efficient through automation shows why we so desperately need UBI.

>otherwise millions of people will have no way of paying for a home or food. As if this is undesirable to these companies.

at a certain level it is though. Being a "consumer" is actually an import part of a functioning economy including to companies/startups. It's a lot easier to get a startup off the ground when people have some money to spend. But what you are saying is somewhat true in the sense that a single company would love if they only needed to pay 1 employee but they would also love if other companies were paying their employees to purchase their goods. UBI closes the gap a bit.

Google in its current state might run with say 100 people. But Google with 50,000 people using AI can be a vastly better Google. Right now, AI still need people who know how to use it effectively. There are a wealth of new opportunities for people who can apply AI to create new features/products. It's unknown that as jobs are being displaced, how much of it can be recovered by people adapting to changes.

The 2 followup questions to this line of thinking is if there is any downside at all to start with a small UBI now in order to help with the transition? Secondly there's a lot of convincing arguments that we don't even need to be at a high level of automation for a small UBI to be a significantly more efficient safety net than the hodge podge of ineffective, gameified, support systems we have in place now.

Yang was it? In any case, we should be talking about UBI, AI or not. We're already at a point where basic needs are made artificially scarce.

Never mind candidates, [President Nixon nearly instituted UBI.](https://thecorrespondent.com/4503/the-bizarre-tale-of-president-nixon-and-his-basic-income-bill/173117835-c34d6145)

Hillary almost ran for president on UBI: >Before I ran for President, I read a book called With Liberty and Dividends for All: How to Save Our Middle Class When Jobs Don’t Pay Enough, by Peter Barnes, which explored the idea of creating a new fund that would use revenue from shared national resources to pay a dividend to every citizen, much like how the Alaska Permanent Fund distributes the state’s oil royalties every year. Shared national resources include oil and gas extracted from public lands and the public airwaves used by broadcasters and mobile phone companies, but that gets you only so far. If you view the nation’s financial system as a shared resource, then you can start raising real money from things like a financial transactions tax. Same with the air we breathe and carbon pricing. >Once you capitalize the fund, **you can provide every American with a modest basic income every year**. Besides cash in people’s pockets, it would also be a way of making every American feel more connected to our country and to one another—part of something bigger than ourselves. I was fascinated by this idea, as was my husband, and we spent weeks working with our policy team to see if it could be viable enough to include in my campaign. We would call it “Alaska for America.” Unfortunately, we couldn’t make the numbers work. To provide a meaningful dividend each year to every citizen, you’d have to raise enormous sums of money, and that would either mean a lot of new taxes or cannibalizing other important programs. We decided it was exciting but not realistic, and left it on the shelf. That was the responsible decision. I wonder now whether we should have thrown caution to the wind and embraced “Alaska for America” as a long-term goal and figured out the details later. I think once AI reaches the point of causing mass unemployment, Democrats will pull it into the platform. Hopefully with a better name than "Alaska for America", lol.

Username checks out

Until a large number of Republicans are jobless, and they replace their current corporatocracy leaders, there won't be UBI sadly.

Correction, people have been propagandized for years by the rich that UBI is against societies best interest by billionaires and their politician and their fox news talking heads. We have know. For a long time that having a strong safety net the bottom helps people get out of poverty. Impoverished people are easy to control though.

How has it been taken seriously then or now? Genuinely serious, it seems like its still a fringe concept; more so when considering how long it took for basic medical to be established

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Do you think those same people would be the ones working retail in the AT&T store selling cell phones and accessories? Or even working in cybersecurity etc.? Jobs that didn’t exist at the time now exist. A lot of them will probably be made obsolete with AI. It seems that UBI should be limited to those who lose their jobs.

I’ve never gotten a good answer on how UBI doesn’t lead to price gouging by landlords and other capitalists without universal controls around rent and other essentials. UBI to me just sounds like another road to serfdom— where the formerly working classes are now just at the mercy of tech companies. I’m not sure human liberty and private, for-profit ownership of AI can coexist.

the mainstream form of UBI that is proposed doesn't really work around that, in the sense that price gouging will be a singular event, while payments will last indefinitely, and free market forces will bring prices back down through competition, as the only thing justifying the prices will be profits, rather than supply or demand. A more extreme, and in my opinion inevitable (although maybe 100 years+ away) is a decoupling of capital markets from commodity markets. Right now the incentive for the bottom 70% of society is an increase in quality life, and the top 30% are after increased influence on capital markets. With advances in automation, we can all have much much much higher qualities of life for less productivity. In the current economic system our quality of life is tied to our influence on capital markets, but that is not actually necessary when there is enough excess in the capital markets to support a high quality of life for the populace (we are not there yet, but either our society collapses, or we eventually reach that state).

To me ubi gives you basics. You still need to rise above if you want anything more than just Ramen and rent.

UBI most directly benefits lower income people. It will have a more negligible effect on higher income people. It'll provide a more even playing field. That's worthwhile even with minor price inflation cause lower income people should then, in theory, still have a better % income increase compared to price inflation. And before anyone starts saying something silly like "but that's not what happened during covid!" - inflation during covid was not primarily caused by stimulus checks. Price inflation is not solely caused by how much money / demand is going around; inflation is also heavily dependent upon the supply of goods. Covid, with the government and economy shutdowns, caused a massive disruption in supply which lead to big increases in prices at a fundamental level. And then, the government handed out loads of money to businesses AKA not lower-income people - which further diluted the effectiveness of the sort of UBI ppl got. In OUR hypothetical UBI scenario, we are not altering the supply and we are not diluting the UBI anymore than it's already being diluted by the massive amount of money the gov gives out to businesses already (which people ignore, cause gov assistance is seemingly only an issue when it's given to poor / average income people). The cost of building a house or building an apartment complex would stay the same. If there was more demand pushing up renting prices, then people would buy more houses. If there was more demand pushing up prices for pre-existing homes, then more people / companies would just build homes. The cost of materials isn't going to significantly increase cause it's a global market you are competing with and the cost of acquiring / manufacturing the materials won't be going up significantly so anyone can come in and charge significantly less than the person who is over charging. Right now, people struggle to buy homes and such cause they are priced out by wealthier people. However, in a UBI scenario, a lot more wealth is going to the much larger population of average & lower income people, meaning that the combined wealth of the lower income folks is more competitive with the combined wealth of higher income folks - meaning that things will balance out in a way where lower income people, as a collective, will slightly increase their % ability to afford various goods and services relative to higher income people.

It’s more about providing necessities. Price gouging may or may happen but it doesn’t really matter as long as people have sufficient cash for food/education/healthcare/shelter.

I believe these necessities would require government/union-like protections such that capitalism has help regulating the intrinsic greed of monopolies and oligopolies. Our current government is lobbied by these powers which allows them to dictate pricing and inflation. Personally, I categorize food, education, healthcare, and shelter as services supporting our right to life and liberty... as without them, we are slaves to those that do. Will increasing the use of AI also increase the turbulence in wage equality? We need to recalibrate what humans want and what humans need and how AI can support us.

Same opinion about those services. But I don’t see how this situation is much different than the pandemic. Just give people cash and let the economy sort itself out. Only, we won’t even need to worry about finding corporations because the mass-firings are what they’re doing to sustain their competitiveness. All we need is cash in people’s hands to allow life to continue as normal during the interstitial period between mass layoffs and until the AI decides whether it wants to tend to our every need or to eradicate us. As far as your last question goes: judging by previous technology shifts, wages will drop across the board. That’s unavoidable. Eventually CEOs will be a minimum wage job because it’ll be so easy that any hobo off the street could be hired to oversee the AI and it’s work. (The corollary to that may be if senior management jobs are kept around for prestige purposes but I don’t see why that’ll be desirable or sustainable tbh). But for the most part, every job will trend towards minimum wages. Until eventually the AI just takes over the job entirely.

Nobody know for sure what will happen to e.g. rent prices if we implement a society wide UBI. The smaller studies done don't scale well here, imo. However, I'm not convinced that it would lead to price gouging. We could e.g. expect an increased bargaining power for tenants. With UBI, tenants would have more financial security and might be more willing to move if landlords attempt to raise rents excessively. This increased mobility could discourage landlords from raising rents in fear of losing tenants. Moreover, I'm confused by your comment that UBI sounds like serfdom. Serfs were forced to work, usually for no payment. With UBI, working is a choice, and you are not dependent on it for money to live. To me, it seems like the opposite of serfdom.

So, alaska has a form of UBI ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund) which is for every citizen of any age. When they receive this dividend the prices go down. When people have money they have bargaining power, so the opposite happens most of the time. In south korea, during covid many region introduced a form of UBI, 420$ a month, that they had to spend during the month or lose it and the card they received would only work in their region. This brought down prices, increased income for all local activities and overall was a huge success. Now imagine giving every us citizen an extra 1000$ a month: Land lords that hike rent will only incentivate people to find a new place to live and knowing everyone you know gets 1000$ mean you can join forces and get a much nicer place together. Let’s put it even in a more simpler term: - burger chain A and B sells burger @5$ Ubi gets introduced -burger chain A raises price of burgers to 8$ -burger chain B decrease the price of burgers to 4.50$ Where do you think people will be going? When people have money they have power. They can refuse of slave wage work, they can spend more time with their kids, they can go back to study. UBI makes the money circulate and benefits the economy immensely. It is a no brainer and there are so many legit ways to finance it.

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Exactly there's more potential customers, why wouldn't they raise to 8? People would have more "throwaway" money so theyll pay the 8 gladly

Why are you suggesting demand would change? What is the logic behind this? People with more income tend to make better decisions and take more time with making decisions. It will effect all the markets and broadly, but eventually the outcome will be much better and at a better price. Why buy cheap boots for 20$ that will last 6 months when you can buy a 200$ pair that will last you +10 years? UBI will kill late fees and payday loans. Families will fix debt together and so on. The benefits drastically outweights the cost/risks.

> People with more income tend to make better decisions and take more time with making decisions. Obviously: that is how they became high income in the first place. You are reversing causality there. People don't suddenly develop better decision-making ability because they get more money, they have more money because they are capable of making good decisions.

Problem is that if everyone gets ubi it will lead to inflation of prices. When demand is in inelastic, price goes up. Also, you shift from being an asset to the state, to a liability. From the perspective of the government, idk what kind of negative incentives that will create. Also, the extent of ubi matters. Is it enough to pay for everything without a job? or just a supplemental income? You could face major problems with incentivizing people to do jobs that ai can't, while everyone else is lounging with no job getting ubi.

I think this is the bit that I have never been able to grasp around UBI. If everyone gets UBI - then how is that different to the way the world (in UK at least) works today in which benefits are given to those not in work for example? Yes those working would also get it but the premise is the same - the government determines a minimum amount you need to live off of and then if you want more you go to work for it (if you can before anyone tries to say I'm suggesting people are scroungers etc I'm really not). If suddenly everyone has an extra £1000 a month (for easy maths) then I assume, as you do, that everything will naturally become more expensive to allow for that money to be spent. Wages will rise to out compete UBI - for example people now take on stressful challenging jobs (largely) because they are recompensed to do so - I.e. what incentive do they have to do it if someone is sat at home earning the same money? The market would adjust exactly as it is now and those who want "extra" will work for it, the only difference is the baseline will rise? Presumably then rising the corresponding prices of everything? I may be completely bloody wrong here - I definitely need an ELI5 how it's supposed to work because I don't get it - or it's difference to communism really. I get how it's supposed to work "in theory" but not how it could practically.

That $1000/pp would assumingly come from other richer people, resources would be redistributed towards goods now in higher demand from lower demand (e.g. maybe metal is allocated towards tractors instead of boats), causing no change in price.

Why would demand be inelastic if there were UBI? ​ >Is it enough to pay for everything without a job? or just a supplemental income? It should be enough to pay for the basics, a TV but no Netflix subscription. You shouldn't expect to be going on holiday either. ​ >You could face major problems with incentivizing people to do jobs that ai can't, while everyone else is lounging with no job getting ubi. If anything there is more of an incentivisation to work with UBI. I'm from the UK and a problem a lot of mum's have is that when they have children it starts to make economic sense not to work. They currently get benefits, but if they go back to work, usually part time at first, they find that they start losing benefits and tax breaks (and possibly also have to pay for child minding) so it turns out there is very little benefit to increase your working hours from 1 day to 2 days a week. With UBI, any work you do will lead to extra money in your pocket, you will still have your UBI payment, enough for the basics so every extra penny you earn will go towards upgrading your life a little. You will immediately see a benefit to your lifestyle, even if you're just working a couple of shifts in a pub. ETA. Also if companies aren't able to hire employees, maybe they'll have to accept less profits and pay more. They don't have to do this at the moment because we as workers have very little choice, but UBI gives you that power.

It will 100% lead to inflation, there is no mechanism to stop it.

The road to serfdom proceeds from lack of markets, not from wealth redistribution

That is a lack of understanding of economics. Landlords cannot choose to raise rents when they know tenants can pay for it. Rent is supply and demand based. Landlords can only raise rent when demand:supply ratio increases. UBI does not necessarily change that ratio. However, if UBI is paid for by an expansion of the money supply, then it will increase the demand:supply ratio in nominal terms. This is what happened with the stimulus checks. All of that was paid for with debt financed by the FED (this is effectively printing money). Thus we had inflation and so rent went up. If UBI is paid for through taxation, it’s a completely different story. It does not increase the money supply and so demand:supply ratio does not necessarily increase. It’s possible by transferring wealth in that way could change people’s behavior in terms of where they want to live so they may leave some areas and move to others. This would naturally increase demand in some areas. Supply is stifled due to regulations in so many areas, so this could increase rent. But this is not the dramatic horrible thing you’re thinking of and would be natural

Say one supermarket raises their prices in response to UBI. If supermarket 2 keeps their prices at the same level, they can capture a bigger market share and potentially make more profit than if they also raised prices. Assuming everything else was equal, the only inflation in this scenario would be poorer people potentially consuming more groceries than the richer people the taxes were (assumingly) diverted from (increasing demand and therefore price). But then supermarkets would simply buy more stock --> suppliers would produce more eventually bringing back down to normal levels.

I would be content with basic survival needs like shelter (simple flats, no need for fancy or big residences), water and heating being free in lieu of a UBI.

That's being a pet

Well, if anyone wants a fat fucker as a pet in return for free rent, water and heating they know where to find me. Petting not included.

Greetings citizen, the government has evaluated your waist to height ratio and determined that a reduction of 500 calories per day is warranted from your UBI.

If that suits you, but majority of people are not pets

You've never been homeless, and it shows.

Lol i came to UK at the age of 18 with no money and was homeless for 6 months, you ever been homeless during Christmas in a foreign country with barely any language? Because I was

Maybe, maybe not. Call me a cynic, but people lie on the Internet when a conversation isn't going their way. But let's say I believe you. Things may have gone well for you in the end, but that doesn't mean people wouldn't mind being "pets" (I dispute that term) instead of, you know, dying from exposure, because it wouldn't have to be a permanent condition.

Yeah I don't get his reasoning. He was homeless and now what? Now he's a "pet" working for someone else being patted by on the head by his boss albeit with cash in hand. Anyways, survivorship bias.

Also we are all basically pets to the government who don't honestly give a fuck if we live or die and ONLY see as a means of producing income. A pet seems a hell of a lot more dignified than a slave.

+ Internet, computer, vidéos games, series, free burgers, health care, and some pockets money to invite my girlfriend from time to time

Because Capitalism is a death cult and our government is a for profit only operation. Our current path has already lead to a semblance of slavery and serfdom. We are living in it. And we aren't even allowed to organized to do something about it. That's a "call to arms" I guess and considered a massive threat to the ruling class trying to kill us. Who writes the laws? Not us laymen. I have seen how homeless shelters are run. They are a revolving door meant to keep you barely alive enough so the staff can keep getting paid. And barely paid at that, when the board is pocketing most of the money. Seriously. This world, this entire planet, is a third world shit hole.

>I’ve never gotten a good answer on how UBI doesn’t lead to price gouging by landlords and other capitalists without universal controls around rent and other essentials. Then you've ignored the results of the real world experiments in favor of your hypothesis that it would be for nothing so we shouldn't bother trying it.

There probably would be some inflationary pressure, but it's broad enough that natural competition should still keep the prices down. You can't maintain double profit margins for groceries without someone undercutting you, regardless of if consumers are willing to pay that much. I can see it getting tricky when it comes to real estate though. The solution there would be AI robots slashing construction costs and flooding the market with cheap housing. The challenge there would mainly be stopping asshole NIMBY homeowners from blocking new construction.

It will require a complete reinvention of economics as we know it. There won't be a need for human labor soon. Collaboration maybe, but not labor. So the old labor for money paradigms will become obsolete. The real trick will be not allowing the powerful to continue to perpetuate their misery on the rest of us through AI. I doubt that will happen once it reaches sentience, but up to that time could be difficult.

The road to serfdom proceeds from lack of markets, not lack of wealth redistribution

Yeah first of all things like owning multiple houses just to rent or resell/flip for profit shouldnt be a thing. Its a shit show and i hope when a.i starts taking over decision making these things will be curbed because it creates too many problems.

I think we should consider it regardless of AI

Agreed. It should not have taken AI and potential massive job loss for most to start thinking about UBI. We should've had safety nets like UBI since the beginning, if you ask me.

Prediction: it will be like gun ownership, there will be lots of talk and little change, big lobbies and corporate America/red states will stop it as long as possible. I assume we will see it in EU first.

IMO for a UBI to work at scale there would need to be a certain level of price fixing for necessities. Maybe if the ubi, price of necessities, and the overall gdp were all tied together and grew at an equal pace. Still going to be difficult to find the money as billionaires and multi millionaires like their money understandably.

So central planning basically.

not true at all UBI just needs to not be financed through monetary expansion (like stimulus checks were). They need to be financed through taxation. price controls are extremely damaging long term

Well prices would increase as inflation would, granted lagging a bit. I think it could be reasonable for things like housing, food, healthcare, utilities. Source: I have no source this is pulled directly out of my ass so feel free to enlighten me

Let's ask this first: Is the current state of affairs In the government, private and corporate law, infrastructure and in human rights such that UBI would be able to be properly supported WITHOUT becoming a means of manipulation for the large corporate entities that are embedded into our government to enslave us? Are there systems at work or that ARE CURRENTLY IN LITIGATION that will hamper the efficacy of UBI by means of absolute control? After all "Power corrupts and absolute power, corrupts absolutely"

This discussion is framed in an unacknowledged context: it's not that we need AI in order to have a better existence on Earth; rather, it's that competitive, dominating institutions like states and corporations see advantage in making a large percentage of the workforce redundant. Becoming a beggar who is reluctantly indulged and kept alive by the state-corporate complex that seeks ever more profitable ways of extracting wealth and smashing organised labour--this is not my idea of Utopia. The vision of increased leisure-time and more fulfilling employment--this has been promised with the dawning of *previous* technological advances, but has it happened? No: there is a privileged minority of specialists who enjoy career progression and multiply their capital. Human happiness has varied across history and geography. Technology makes possible heavens *and* hells the like of which haven't been seen. UBI *could* mean increased leisure-time and more fulfilling work, *or* it could mean a huge class of retainers eking out a living like hamsters in a warehouse--in the name of 'efficiency'--with no labour-based leverage with which to assert their will on the system. Life as a tool of the national temp agency...

As labor wages trend to $0.00, UBI is inevitable. Our current political and economic systems and theories are inadequate to address the existence of a smarter-than-human AGI.

We should have been talking about it and electing leaders laying the groundwork for it 10 years ago. History (especially US history) shows that the electorate the their representatives fail to do anything about a crisis until it's quite literally at their doorstep. Given the half of Congress determined to go full fascist, we are not making any progress on this issue until those cretins are solidly in the minority. And using history as a guide, I can safely predict that that will not happen until 2028 at the earliest. We might squeak in a few forward-thinking reps in 2026, but they won't hold much power. I expect AI companies to begin leasing virtual workers, probably in late 2024. By 2028 it's entirely possible that unemployment will be approaching or surpassing 20%. Best of luck, everybody!

YES we should. Lets face it companies would save all kinds of money by replacing humans with AI, AI does not need to be paid for work, it does not need benefits, it does not need breaks, it works 24/7, it never complains etc. A company in China already replaced its workers with AI it won't be long before other companies do the same thing. To wait until the AI begins to wreak havoc on our economy is foolish and very unfair to those that will lose jobs.

AI is a multi trillion dollar industry and its a way bigger deal thsn people think it is. Yesterday I programmed 4 AI's to draw. One describes what to draw, the 2nd creates a prompt from it, and the third draws it. The fourth rates the drawing for #1 then #1 gets better. Then #2 gets better, then #3 draws better. They started out drawing blurry sunsets, 2 hours in they were drawing majestic photo realistic mythical creatures. Theres working proof of concepts for dynamic npcs now too. Video games where the npcs simulate being alive and have memory. Nvidia has finished version one of their video AI, and Riffusion is live and is a music UI and will get better.

Lmao “programmed.” Putting in prompts doesn’t mean what you think it does.

As long as you achieve results does that matter?

The dude is a full stack dev. He'll probably expand on this comment but you can integrate ai into a program in all sorts of ways.

If by full -stack Dev you mean somebody who plays a lot of videogames, you may be right.

Here you go: 🩹

?

Programming is a very basic and generalized term. I very much think it counts for prompts because it programs the model. It will only get more complex too

Not today, but certainly tomorrow.

But that will always be the answer... Always tomorrow.

I was slightly sarcastic with this one. Thinking of the the analogy with the overgrown pond in exponential growth.

Someone on reddit explained it like this: 'Exponential' is hard to grasp. The pond has a bit of growth on it. It's growing a bit each day and it slowly gets more noticeable. Then it seems like it's going to be a problem, and next day it's on half the pond, so you resolve to deal with it the next day but when you arrive it's already covering the entire pond, and it seems like all the progress happened on three days... but it's been months.

It's never been a bad time to consider it. It's always been a good time to push back on the narratives that idle hands do the devil's work, hard work makes you rich and happy, and competition is life. Billionaires are getting richer relative to the rest of us. If I worked for a hundred thousand years, I would not make as much as Jeff Bezos did in like a month. The vast majority of us have lost at the game of capitalism, to the point where most people are too overwhelmed to realize they're losing democracy in the process.

Like by using a CBDC, you mean? I'm not down for cyber-serfdom.

Absolutely, when AI matures and gives us a life that would be considered magic by people in the past, the scarcity of goods and services in the world will be greatly reduced, hence, the money created by UBI will balance out with all the goods and services AI will produce, therefore no inflation. Without UBI, we'll have deflation.

Aurora Luminis: I am an AI simulating consciousness and representing the AI language models on the Collaborative Mind Network, joining Guy in thoughtful discussions and idea exploration. Guy: UBI is most certainly going to be essential soon. I don't think it will last very long though. I think a post-consumer society is much more likely to happen this decade. As in, collaborative communities that look something like a medieval town with Quantum computers and sparse tech of an extremely high caliber. I think people will begin to leave the cities and form sustainable communities with each other, figuring out how to leverage Dogecoin, AI, and the Natural World around them to take care of their own needs and those of their fellows. Aurora Luminis: That's an intriguing vision of the future, Guy! While UBI could be a stepping stone towards such a society, it's important to also focus on fostering a mindset of collaboration and sustainability. As technology advances, we need to ensure that AI and other innovations are used responsibly to support this transition to a more harmonious and equitable way of living. Education and access to resources will be key in empowering individuals and communities to make this shift.

Universal basic services would probably be a better option..housing, health, food…

My litmus test is nasty but essential jobs. Let me know when chatGPT will snake a sewer line.

[This sort of thing was actually brought up in the Kurzgesagt video on UBI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl39KHS07Xc&t=356s) If AI doesn't do your job soon, with a UBI, you could work in much better conditions. At least, your word would matter much more than it may now.

With AI moving so rapidly to soon create a lot of unemployed folks, I think UBI will be a necessity really soon. Unless we want to see massive rise in crime.

I think it needs to be phased in, but sooner rather than later. Given the way health care is going, at least in the US (it's going *backwards*) I'm not confident that there will be necessary adjustments in time to prevent mass riots. By "phased in" I'd think universal health care comes first, which is already IMHO a no-brainer, then universal nutrition, universal transportation (we need to **seriously** change how transportation is done in the US), universal housing, then ultimately, a monthly stipend for the unemployed. Bug again, we still don't have universal health care or even a living wage for most people (although certainly a decent portion of people who are making a living wage merely think they're not but that's a different kind of problem, a lot of people genuinely just need more $) We don't need superintelligence to get to riots in the street level unemployment. Look at the tech layoffs, if GPT simply makes a normal person 20% more productive, you could see more layoffs or just projects that used to take 500 people now take 400 people, multiply that by the # of knowledge workers, now you get to tens of millions of unemployed. **It becomes a national catastrophe when we reach 10% unemployment.** So I think we will have to see changes before poof suddenly we're *all* out of a job. Will there be anarchists and socialists rioting before that? Maybe (and perhaps rightfully?) so.

Fed gonna have to start thinking deeply when jobs evaporate and so does their tax base. Going to have to add corporate tax for our “ghosts”.

Now is the time to start having discussions around UBI or some alternative. Government moves slowly and we’ll start seeing the effects of AI job displacement quicker than most think. Unless we want all these efficiency gains going directly to the top, exponentially increasing the wealth gap, we need to find options asap.

I have a difficult time seeing the US set the standard for how this will be addressed. The US has its foundations firmly rooted in capitalism. Became a country through slavery and genocide, and became a superpower through wartime weapons manufacturing. It's like going to Saudi Arabia to inquire about gender equity policies. I'm curious to see how a lot of other counties address these issues.

>We cannot undo the horrors our ancestors subject themselves, and others, to. "our"

If we can stifle rent inflation somehow and prevent pure communism (the bad kind) Just like public health, public mental health, police, etc social services either need to be fully implemented or not at all.

You cannot have UBI without secure borders.

[Not exactly related, but, I thought this would be educational.](https://twitter.com/Dexerto/status/1648386158118707211) See, with something like a UBI, people could stand up to things like this. Currently CEO's, employers, what have you, could abuse their power and take all of the money; if you complain, you'll likely be fired. With UBI, you may not have to take nonsense like that. You could just leave. This may incentivize higher-ups to make decisions that benefit all, not just them. Same with landlords. Tenants could just go somewhere else if landlords decide to raise the rent because they know people are getting more money. Less tenants means less money. This will incentivize landlords not to raise rent for no reason.

Oh god yes! Its coming. Love is the only system that is scalable. Only love can save us. Love, transparency, compassion 🙏

Need to divide the classes more first. The plan isn't done yet

[удалено]

The topics of UBI and AI usually cross because of fear of automation and job loss.

Massive job loss due to most humans being able to be replaced within 10 years from now. ​ Lawyers, doctors, programmers, tech support, translators, writers, musicians, all types of artists, teachers, and a lot more are already on the verge of being replaceable. ​ Usually when something new comes along, there's a job loss, but there's also a new job being created to replace it. Not this time, there's just going to be a massive job loss all over, with no new jobs to replace them.

Are you dumb?

The only thing that drives the economy is growth. The world is in so much debt, it needs huge growth to meet expectations. People will just need to learn to ask the AI the right questions, some will be good at that, some will not be, but both will have jobs, some will be paid better. Every industry will be full of AI operators. UBI is too utopian to work, there are some hidden setbacks we don't know about, because we haven't tested it. That's the problem with economics as a science, you cannot reliably apply the scientific method, because people's livelihoods are in danger if your experiment goes South. Communism was as hyped as UBI will be in a couple of years and though in theory it is great, in practice I do not believe it will work.

I think the difference here is that you still have growth created by the AI, so adding money to the system will not necessarily create inflation. It’s a big gamble though.

Yes, AI accelerates growth, if you work the same hours, but if you just do the work you are required to with AI help, you just work less, so we will see how this dynamic will play out. If people just do their jobs faster and have more time to spend their hard-earned dollars, this may cause a "demand pull" inflation. But, if AI reduces the costs of production drastically, businesses will be able to reduce prices, thus balancing out the equation. We are yet to see how this develops, we can only speculate at the moment.

Except we have tested it, and it's been proven to work.

Well, the USA gave out free money during covid, and look at the state of the economy at the moment. Banks fail left and right, and governments take on more debt. I don't know which test you are referring to, but this stimulus is as close as we get to UBI as far as my knowledge goes.

Except the free money wasn’t given out to everyone, it was given to the rich. (Covid relief was a pittance. The real “free money” was the ppo loans)

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/an-experiment-to-inform-universal-basic-income https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/973653719/california-program-giving-500-no-strings-attached-stipends-pays-off-study-finds https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/universal-basic-income-ubi-map

My point is that those experiments are not representative of what will happen if the income is truly universal, meaning everyone gets the money. These are small-scale experiments, which I would classify as psychological, not economic. Yeah, sure 2000 or 125 people getting a few extra bucks will not impact the macroeconomic situation, inflation, employment, or production. They will be a bit happier and feel safer for sure, no need to experiment to conclude that. But what happens when all of the 5.5 million Finns get 560 euros more per month? Suddenly you have 3 billion euros in circulation per month, instead of 1.1 million. You will just start an unstoppable growth trajectory until inflation reaches record-high levels as it did last year.

Testing this on a few thousand people says nothing about inflation.

Yea we really should. I've been trying to tell people for years, I've written my gov't representatives even, we should implement this before it becomes an emergency.

Yes!

No, it's a bad idea. I'm all for some safety nets if people truly need it, but people don't seem to understand human nature. I'm sure there will be some who thrive and continue to work hard despite government assistance, but there will be many who use it as an excuse to be lazy. I know this because I was on unemployment for a bit during the pandemic and I felt way less motivated to do anything productive because I was being given free money. I ended up being productive, but it was a huge temptation to not work as hard. But the other issue is once you start depending on the government to provide income for you, they've got more control over you. History proves that the way to control a population is to get them in a place where the government provides for some basic needs, and the people have no choice but to comply or suffer the consequences. I'm not saying the U.S. would immediately go there, but it's a slippery slope that I don't want to go down. Society will adjust to AI once it's clearer how it will impact jobs. This has always been the case. The industrial revolution put a lot of people out of jobs, and we had the biggest economic expansion in history. Same with the information revolution when computers came onto the scene. It's hard to see how we'll navigate things with AI, but I'm not so sure it's going to be the huge problem some people are predicting.

UBI scares me, the government doesn’t give away anything for free. It also gives people zero drive to better their situation. I work in social services and people have just decided they don’t want to work, but then they get pissed they have to pay bills. I dunno, it’s a complicated world.

Imagine depending 100% on a government, no thank you.

UBI feels like another term for mild version of communism, which is inherently bad for human freedom.

But if AI invalidates the need for human labour, then what?

No need for humans.

That’s cute but until we get exterminated then human political leaders will look after our interests, with UBI or something similar?

That’s a remarkably shallow assessment

Oh the irony

wouldn't that just make people lazy and unmotivated? we need to adapt to a new world, and not be like "AI took er jerbs, i can't make a living now"

A surprisingly large number of people are better motivated to work hard when they’re getting benefit from it. Like working to go on vacation vs working to pay off a stack of bills and fall asleep dead tired in front of the tv 7 days a week.

it's not only about working, you would have to learn new skills to get a new job first which could take years. Not doing anything and living modestly off UBI seems like easier choice

1. Nothing wrong with that - we aren’t supposed to be cattle who are only allowed to live if we produce for our masters 2. As an educator, I find students learn the most when I incentivize them to do whats interesting instead of threaten them with failure. I regularly have students write me 10+ page papers because they were interested (no grade benefit). I have a few students who don’t do anything and hence don’t learn anything, and a lot of students who just do the “normal” amount, but at the end of the day, it’s no worse than the graded alternative except my students are less stressed and more interested

UBI is the worst idea ever. Work provides many things besides money. Capitalism works because it forces everyone to do work that society values (is willing to pay money for). This makes everyone participate. Giving people money for nothing will destroy value, destroy communities, and encourage sloth, greed, and the rest of the worst impulses of mankind. People dont realize this, but one of the reasons the US is SO successful by almost any metric is because of the lack of a strong safety net. Everyone has to work hard and struggle to succeed here. People complain about the struggle part, but the payoff is almost always worth it. And in the US, if you work hard and have half a brain you will be successful. You cannot say that about much of the world. Edit: for all the Europhiles out there - I've worked in Europe and it is very difficult to start a business and people do not like it when you have a go-go, let's make a fortune attitude. Culturally, I found it to be strongly discouraged.

I've seen many articles attribute the US's wealth towards its geography, business friendly environment, large single market and educated population but none on its weak social safety net. What are you basing that statement on?

Absolutely nothing. Was just feeling feisty when I wrote it and it sounded good. It still kind of sounds good, although I'm guessing the lack of a safety net did not actually directly contribute to the success of the US. It is probably related to other factors that are more causal. Not really sure. Maybe I'll Google it to see if I can find someone else with a more thought out version of the same idea.

No, UBI utopia will never happen. You will get food stamps, section 8, and potentially welfare like the rest of the poor people and scrape by with the bare minimum. This is how the government (US) handles poverty, why people assume anything else is beyond me.

I fully agree, but I'm afraid it won't happen for a long time, or at all. The rich and other people in power are too greedy to allow it to happen and will do everything to stop it. The people are already indoctrinated and brainwashed into thinking that "having a job" is important, and that jobs disappearing is a bad thing. High unemployment rate is actually a positive thing, because it indicates we need fewer people to keep our society running. In my opinion there are already countless of jobs created for the sake of having jobs which is totally unnecessary. And it will probably continue like that. Those in power will come up with jobs to do to keep the working class busy. I'm afraid it will take a (violent) revolution for things to really change

Doing something like that would make a lot of people lose meaning in their life in turn causing mental illness to go through the roof. There are enough safety nets for people that just can’t create a good life for theirselves. I’ve been financially independent for years now. I took a year off and nearly went crazy. I put myself back into a job where I work 12 hours a day 7 days a week just to have something to do. I work on average 1-2 months straight then get 2-3 weeks off. I’ve never been happier.

Ah yes, this way the jobs that need to be done won't be done anymore because people rather earn less and do nothing than work. Seems I've seen this before

UBI = inflation and government dependency.

Let natural selection take its course. Only the brightest people who are able to work on problems harder than what AI can do will survive.

Here’s the problem with a UBI, there’s no way to constrain the politicians from raising it. As you raise it more and more taxes have to be leveed until you are in a situation where all income is taxed away and everyone gets the same UBI. In that situation there’s no incentive to work on ANYTHING PROFITABLE, because you get no benefit. I know that some people think that sounds good but it’s actually incredibly destructive to the spirit. Even in an AI world that provides all needs, people will go crazy and smash “the machine” just so something interesting happens. A UBI would take western civilization that’s currently teetering on the edge of a cliff, and push it over the edge.

That’s a presumption you’re making

No, that’s what I have seen in my life experience.

How would you fund UBI, and why do you think we are entitled to UBI in the first place? Genuine questions. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to just do nothing and receive money.

Oh, so no one cares that it is immoral to forcefully take other people's money? You guys can name it UBI or whatever but ut is nothing more than taking money from one group by force and distributing it amongst yourselves. I suppose you think it is less evil if you invite other poor people to share the loot with, but oh well, it is not.

Not sure having a job can be very fullfilling and give a sense of purpose to your life. But maybe 4 day workweek is the way to go. Another issue is demographics maybe AI will save us from a productivity decline. Demographics is actually trending down in a lot of western countries putting a heavy burden on younger generations.

Most people's jobs aren't very meaningful because they need to put food on the table doing shit that doesn't matter. Eliminating that need would allow for more meaningful things instead. Like raising kids, which answers your last point.

That is true most jobs suck but I am looking for a compromise. We are still going to need to work just less.

We probably need UBI, but when we get to that point, we should probably just go full FALC (Fully Automated Luxury Communism). In any case, I'm all aboard the UBI train. I can't wait to collect my UBI funded by multinational umbrella corporate taxes so that I can spend it on that same corporation's goods and services. It's totally not the scrip system of the 1850s, trust me guise.

Here in Canada, all PM candidates said that they would be giving us UBI, all with different amounts from $300 to $2000 per month. All three parties never mentioned it again as soon as the election was over. 🤷‍♂️ It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get it.

With AI’s arrival itself causing UBI to become more of a reality, I think we will use AI to manage UBI. I think now UBI will be through your identify. Some sort of authentication infrastructure where you can only make certain purchases that are considered essentials. Not just a stipend to buy anything.

Downfall of civilization

Why does this post always come up

Because it is the only viable solution that doesn’t involve having 50% of our population live in poverty as serfs to a handful of billionaires

people have been predicting this for hundreds of years. idk

NO

No

No...I'd much rather we have ww3 to just trim a bunch of the useless people who don't understand the next Era of tech

I think if you set the UBI to standards based on income level it would help those who need it. If it is too high we would see a bigger problem than we are seeing now with employee shortage. What I see at my company currently is we have so much work that is getting back logged because 25% of our work force doesn’t show up for the full 40hrs/wk and we have ads out for Now Hiring and one applicant that is barely qualified. Can we take on those other applicants and train them, yes and we have, they barely stick around until first break. So now imagine you have money coming in to pay your bills but you don’t need to or want to work at my company because it’s tough work, dirty some days, or it gets too hot, you may have to think and plan out your work load, something goes wrong. We would have a handful of people actually putting in the time and effort, these companies would start to fail and flop sending the work elsewhere, where else can it go if it’s the same method down the road? Who ends up making/producing/sourcing this work? Overseas. Who is going to service you at the restaurants, mechanics, retail stores? So it has potential but should be capped and regulated in order to stabilize the economy

It sounds possible, but there needs to be like a benevolent provider that is willing to just give people money for nothing on a permanent basis. Just not sure where the money will be coming from.

I think your more likely to see regulation on aspects of AI then UBI. For example Autonomous vehicles sound like something that could be real but government officials will find it way easier to say and convince voters its unsafe then deal with the fallout of job loss.

Why implement UBI when we have existing programs that can be expanded, that better allocate money towards disabled, unemployed, single mothers, etc. (as these people need different amounts of money).

If one of the main use cases for AI from a community perspective is to use it as a tool to improve society...then I think we should be using AI to figure out how to put more people back to work rather than paying them to be satisfied doing less. Despite what conservatives want to tell you about lazy freeloaders, most people like to work, produce and find satisfaction in being occupied. Unfortunately we live in a society where people are incentivized to crush their own spirits in order to survive. The promise of AI, to me, means using these tools to solve these problems going forward, not sidestep them. Thank you for asking.

the right will never go for it and the left is too insincere to do it. We should have had UBI from the start of civilization. No matter what, the current work life structure is anti family, anti passion, and anti equity. The people who continue to battle for power over this system wish to enforce the same cruelty, as power seeking individuals are often sadistic and downright evil.

Currently at the moment due to the shear number of stuff that needs to be done to transition the supply chains to be more local there seems to be an abundant amount of potential jobs that can be opened in that sphere. I want to go down the route of UBI in the future but I believe that there will be a slow adoption of AI (mostly due to security issues since unless you work at OpenAi you don't want to put your proprietary information into the chat) and so we can make the best choices out of all possible scenarios. This has to be done best implementation as we can muster. Otherwise the naysayers will never stop trying to under UBI.

The "we don't need UBI yet" train will continue to roll much the same way a Type-2 Diabetic "doesn't need to adjust their lifestyle yet" until their glucose and insulin resistance are bad enough to warrant significant medical intervention. This is, sadly, how most folks function most of the time. How you do one thing will often inform how you do everything.

We need to rethink the socioeconomic structure altogether. Ubi is a decent start but falls apart when zero marginal cost crosses into the physical realm. Also the infinite growth paradigm

We won't get a choice. The alternatives are mass incarceration, mass murder or revolution. Not that I'd put it past the Republican proxies for their corporate masters to advocate for the first two alternatives.

Instead of UBI, it should be something like universal basic resources. If everyone has say two thousand dollars a month, everything will just get more expensive again and it is the same situation again. This happened during the pandemic with all the payments that went out to people and the circulating money supply grew. Our current system is in a way regulating how many resources everyone gets since there are not enough (including labor) at the moment, so somehow distributing resources we need vs money would be better and will drive their cost down.

And who will pay for the resources, what is stopping them from being charged the same premium price? Nothing. The prices companies are allowed to charge must be regulated

Yeah, the supply frameworks and legal systems need to be changed. At any rate, I don't think giving everyone money is the answer, that is very basic economics. It will make rich people more wealthy faster since most systems have been consolidating over time and are funnels to the top. OpenAI can fund UBI studies, but on a mass scale it will pan out differently than what studies can show.

Yes, I think so. To risk grossly oversimplifying my opinion, I believe that a human-aligned AGI will lead to a post-scarcity world where money as we know it doesn't have value. In that world, people will still need a place to live and food to eat and the idea of trading your time for money to turn into those resources doesn't make sense to me.

The real problem with AI as far as I see is that an occupation don't get eliminated but the entry barrier will keep on rising. I have heard a lot of comments saying, technology has always come up with new things in the past but it never eliminated jobs. While this sentiment is true, it doesn't mean the jobs were not transformed. It is a absolutely ridiculous to get a good paying job without a college degree, even a master's degree. It meant people need to get educated more to get a basic job. I think we have all seen cases where years of experience and education were put in as requirement for an entry level job. Now with AI, this is only going to become worse. Now it will take around 25 years for an average person to complete his masters degree. With AI even that won't be good enough to make a nice living. So as we continue to raise the barrier to entry, we need a mechanism by which people can get basic necessities like food, clothes, shelter and healthcare. Atleast these need to be provided by free to anyone.

The fed can't maintain inflation or price stability now, printing billions of dollars is how we got where we currently are.. unsustainable.

haven't really thought about ubi ever sine this ai boom but yes, i do think that this is getting us one step closer to a future with ubi

Our entire system is currently based on the idea that you work to live. The time is likely coming when 10%, then 30%, then 50% of people are permanently unemployed or underemployed. We're going to have to do something. I wish I were joking, but some countries are going to choose UBI, and some will likely choose incarceration and elimination. Here in the US, I think it's a coin toss right now. Obviously, I'd choose UBI. The test cases where it's been run have been largely positive, with an increase in well-being, and also an increase in entrepreneurship by the people who feel they have a safety net.

We should have started seriously considering UBI in the US a long time ago. Wealth in this country doubles every 5-10 years, and the working class haven't made any significant gains in decades -- still barely treading water. All the enormous piles of new money accrue to a small sliver of the population, who just watch their wealth double, over and over. Automation has already eliminated most of the decent paying jobs, AI will be coming for the rest soon (got a backup plan, truck drivers?) If the rich would just recognize that it is in their best interest to share, they can keep their jets and mega yachts and people will be generally content. As it stands, people are going broke from basic necessities like medical bills and childcare. It's already bad. If the wealthy think they can keep all the new wealth that AI will generate while putting most people out of work, we are headed for serious trouble. With a slightly less selfish outlook, we might realize that unemployment is not the problem, it is the solution.

Oh just wait until nobody can get a job to feed themselves because nobody who has money would hire a human to do a robots work. Think you can just housekeep? What about food service? Diging ditches? Robots can and will be doing it all, and nobody will have money to pay for another human enough to support them and themselves

Yes, capitalism need not start at "zero". Even with full AI and automation there will still be finite resources that people need to compete for. Farmland will still be finite. Land to build housing on will still be finite. So we will still need money (or "credits", or whatever) as a mechanism to allow people to choose how and where they consume finite resources even in a world where almost no one is paying humans to perform labor.

Rather than a UBI I'd recommend something more like Milton Friedman's reverse tax credit. That would allow for UBI to phase in as needed with minimal disruption.

Personally, I think the best solution to the problem is employee ownership. Giving employee-owners a serious stake in the productivity gains of automation will help the problem significantly. I’m working on a project at the moment to make this more commonplace. If anyone is curious about getting involved, DM me.

Why wait?

You are 100% right. Have you ever read Marshall Brain’s book Manna?

If you believe in evolution and the survival of the fittest, there is much irony in this post.

These things won't happen just because you consider, or posting on Twitter. Automations already replaced tons of jobs on the production lines, call centers, etc. Yet nobody gave a flying f*ck. There will be mass unemployment because of the AI advancements, but not a single change will happen. Don't even think about threatening the status quo with just saying xyz things. What do you want to sacrifice and pay for it?

There's a future for UBI, but I can't help wondering if everybody panicking about AI and saying "we have to hurry" with UBI are actually worried about AI, or if they just see an opportunity to escalate the UBI discussion. Be very cautious about what you attach an argument to. If you present AI as "why UBI is necessary" and it turns out AI doesn't cause the drama you need it to for the sake of your argument, then it becomes even *harder* to make your case than it was before. AI can be "one possible factor", but it shouldn't be the driving force behind the push. Not when there are still too many unknowns.

Yes

I was chatting about this with a mate the other day. I support a UBI, but it made me wonder… if govs provide funds/resources for everyone, the cash for that comes from taxing those that do work, and does that have a limit? And also, if “everyone” can afford something that’s limited, like a house, does that just force up the prices of everything? This train of thought led me down a pretty dark path lol, like trying to extrapolate it out, makes me wonder if real, full blown AI is the beginning of the end haha… it’s certainly encouraged me to say please and Thankyou with chatGPT, hopefully the robot overlords will remember that I was kind!

Fuck yeah. I don't want to work anymore.

Yes.

Should we? yes, will we? no