Will UBI Save Us When AI Takes All the Jobs?

Universal Basic Income is gaining support from many, including high-tech execs. With its known flaws, will UBI be a potential solution to the mass loss of jobs to AI?

tl;dr

As AI improves, the majority of people born today will become unemployable before their traditional retirement age of 65. It’s unlikely the traditional social welfare will be sufficient and sustainable to support the majority of the population who are unable to produce much traditional value.

UBI, as first floated by thinkers like Thomas Paine, has resurfaced as a potential solution to the AI-caused-job-apocalypse. However, the old proposals of UBI all fall to the same basic flaw — their heavy reliance on government means they aren’t AI-economy ready.

The AI economy will be fundamentally different than what we used to know. Many old economic cycles would no longer function in the same ways, underestimating this fundamental change will lead UBI to fail along with the old economical mentality.

UBI needs to be sustainable (won’t run dry even if no one works to be taxed), reliable (most people will not have many alternatives to survive), and would not become a wedge that drives a split society where the have-AI and have-less-AI populations separate into two isolated worlds and barely interacts.

UBI can be a catalyst for a good AI-economy if it comes before governments, any change of government will not break UBI, and people do not have to…