Can Universal Basic Income Tackle AI Impact?

What's the story?

• For years, universal basic income (UBI) has been a point of contention in the U.S., garnering fluctuating political and social backing. UBI is seen by its supporters as a solution to modern day realities and challenges posed by the rising use of AI, such as wage inequality and job insecurity. 
• Estimates from Goldman Sachs suggests that generative AI has the potential to automate tasks equivalent to 300 million full-time jobs worldwide.
• At the AI Safety Summit 2023 in Bletchley, UK, Elon Musk said:

"You can have a job if you wanted to have a job for personal satisfaction. But the AI would be able to do everything. One of the challenges in the future will be how do we find meaning in life."

Arguments for a UBI

• Karl Widerquist, an economist and political theorist at Georgetown University-Qatar, argues that UBI would address the failure of employers to distribute economic gains from automation fairly among workers.
• Other proponents of a UBI argue that it should be seen as a dividend owed to workers for their contributions to developing and sharing knowledge used to train AI models like ChatGPT.
• Scott Santens, editor of Basic Income Today, said:

"We're all the ones who trained AI. We all made it possible. We should receive our cut of all of this productivity growth. Why should only one or two companies get rich off of the capital, the human work, that we all created?"

• UBI experiments show that higher payments don't necessarily lead to workers leaving the job market, but encourage upskilling, retraining, and redefining work to compensate for traditionally unpaid responsibilities like raising children or caring for elderly relatives.

Arguments against a UBI

• Opponents see UBI as a gateway to communism or as an unrealistic vision of a work-free world.
• A 2020 study revealed that 78% of Republicans opposed the idea of the federal government providing a UBI of around $1,000 per person, a central proposal in Andrew Yang's 2020 presidential campaign.
• Joe Chrisp, a researcher at the University of Bath's Universal Income Beacon, argues discussions on automation are pessimistic, emphasizing that capitalist economies naturally will always generate jobs, even if the quality is uncertain.

What do you think? Do you support universal basic income as a solution to address the impact of AI on jobs?

-Laura Woods 

(Image credit: Unsplash)