As AI continues to advance and increase its capabilities, analysts warn that intelligent robots could replace much manual human labor. This could trigger a wave of unemployment that would reshape society and prompt the enactment of some form of UBI. Here’s how that might happen.
Will AI Make Universal Basic Income a Reality? Here's How It Could Be Implemented
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Will Big Capital Pay for UBI in the AI Age? Some Believe It Is Possible
The potential substitution of large swaths of human labor by artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent robots has prompted analysts to consider the surge of a universal basic income (UBI) strategy, capable of sustaining the population in a post-singularity world.
Several explanations have arisen to describe how this process will take shape, and pinpoint from where the capital for this new economic structure will come, with UBI at the forefront.
Nic Carter, a cryptocurrency and AI investor, believes that as AI systematically displaces human labour, there will be a backlash of socialist movements rejecting the new system as a response to the change of an era. Ultimately, Carter believes that the new system will be founded on top of UBI, financed by big capital holders, subject to laws enforcing it.
On social media, he stated:
The unemployables (80% of the population) will get UBI paid for by confiscation/tax hikes on the owners of capital. And obviously the owners of capital will have disposable income.
Elon Musk recently stressed that as productivity grows, the price of goods and services will decrease, ushering in a robot-led era of prosperity for all humanity. In response to a post that estimated 2030 as a possible year for this to happen, Musk declared:
There will be universal high income (not merely basic income). Everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else. Sustainable abundance.
It remains uncertain whether AI will achieve the level of dexterity required to render humans obsolete. Nonetheless, Musk has been warning about the need for a UBI strategy since 2017, when AI had not developed to the degree that chatbots and agents show today. “I don’t think we’re going to have a choice,” he concluded at that time.
Read more: $2K per Month for Every American: Andrew Yang Begs Congress to Pass Basic Income
