To think the time is coming when a universal basic income is seen as a necessity?

[DoubtfulCat]

AI is replacing a lot of jobs which were previously highly specialised- like translation- as well as entry-level jobs into careers like law. Because the jobs which are hardest to automate seem to be those which are currently either very well paid (like senior managers, politicians, etc) or those at the lowest pay level (like care work, for example) it seems as if more and more people who would once have been gainfully employed will increasingly be competing for a shrinking pool of jobs with half-decent pay, and for those manual jobs. I see a rise in people with no job at all and a huge fall in people earning ‘professional’ salaries and following a reasonable career path. The knock-on would be falling private pension provision, falling savings, rising personal debt, and so on. Increasing hardship and wealth gap between those with and those without.

Do you think that a form of UBI would help to solve that problem?

• more people could work fewer hours each, so more people could have a job which often gives people a purpose in life
• hardship would be mitigated- no-one would be destitute or unable to feed themselves
• people might use their time on creative projects or things that are good for their health and well-being, if they have some breathing space around struggling to survive

The problem is that there isn’t enough money in the pot to fund such a system without increasing taxes so dramatically that those with wealth flee. There’s already a safety net called universal credit, but I don’t see why we should be funding people to not work who are able to

Communism embraced this partly but they did make people work for that equal money

AI may well turn out to be a bubble and burst pretty soon.
I don't know if people who've already lost their jobs to it will get them back though.

I know, it's nuts.
What really freaked me out recently was watching a house being built by a 3D printer. It's still in the early stages, but 3D printing is developing rapidly.

Why would a company stay in the UK where it was facing eye-watering corporation tax?

Google isn’t based in Ireland for the Guinness. Amazon isn’t based in Luxembourg for whatever Luxembourg is famous for.

No company is irreplaceable. We can build our own search engines, we can build our own versions of Amazon, our own version of whatever Musk has put his name on.

And the others undercut it because they aren’t paying uk tax and uk wages

Because work isn't just about money.

There are people who would like to be a politician/PM and people who would like to be a waiter.

No, I really don’t agree with this.

the point is that ai can come for ALL jobs potentially. Not just one industry where the workers can be absorbed into other industries.

AI is coming for the lower growing fruit at the moment, customer service, graduate positions, finance, but eventually more senior positions will go. Also professions like teaching, anyone in creative industries, music, art, film. The potential of ai is huge.

Not to mention in the UK, all the jobs being off shored.

Train for blue collar jobs instead? Well yes, but if ai doesn’t affect those jobs (I think it will) then it will be a saturated industry with all those out of work from the white collar jobs.

UBI would be a great solution, but I just don’t see it.

Giving every adult £1,000 a month would cost £636bn a year. Existing welfare is £250-£300bn a year. So you are trying to fund more than double the amount of benefits from a tax take that is suffering due to loads of people choosing not to work. that doesn’t work at all.

Ds has a 3d printer. I will be honest. Wouldnt want stairs or a ceiling made with that
I appreciate they are very different machines!

Although it seems unfathomable to people UBI is being considered very seriously by the people who are shaping out futures and governments. I think it's quite possible we see some version of it before too long.

Don’t be scared of AI, they’re nowhere near anything yet.

And Sam Altman is a massive goober. Look at what he actually says. Hint: word salads full of nothing.

Look at this, it’s full of his profound quotes:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/make-fun-of-them/

I mean those still expecting say housing benefit and pip to exist ontop of the universal wage to all.

I think that would be a piss take. Either it’s enough so it’s the wage to all or it isn’t. Not double dipping.

Of course some will still work for luxuries and because they want to.

It’s Communism by another name. The only person responsible for my financial freedom, or lack thereof, is me. I have zero desire to be given anything or to be provided with time to “potter”, I am personally responsible for me and will fight tooth and nail to maintain that freedom.

Yes I just can’t see how it works numbers wise

I find it really hard to see the benefits of this.

There are so many jobs available that AI won’t take - people just don’t want them. AI can’t muck out my shed or care for my elderly father.

I seriously disagree with the posters who say we don’t need to work to gain fulfillment. I think purposeful work is the greatest thing you can do for your mental health.

Would UBI genuinely encourage people to not work like the current means-tested benefits do?

Many benefits threads centre around supposed shirkers not working/ working as little as possible to minimise the impact on their benefits.

If there is a UBI, wouldn't more people be encouraged to work full-time, have more income, better their prospects?
If not, should we be focusing more on why people are not inclined to strive for better financial outcomes where possible?

But then wouldn’t the companies just raise prices? Or are you suggesting they would reduce their profits for the good of humanity? They don’t do that now so why would th in the future? The more you tax them, the higher they raise their prices, the less people can affird, so ubi has to be increases, so more taxes etc.

“If there is a UBI, wouldn't more people be encouraged to work full-time, have more income, better their prospects?”

I think the opposite is true. If you need £2000 to live, and the government gives you £1000, then you only need to work part time to make up the shortfall.

Also, those people who aren’t bothered about working now, and are ‘happy’ to live off benefits on the existing system, are not suddenly going to be incentivised to work more under UBI.

This! I was told the same things at school in the early 80s. We were encouraged to look beyond the 'career' .. I'm still waiting for my life of leisure.

I admit I'm completely out of my depth on this subject but as far as I can tell the people who are concerned about AI are saying it's not about listening to Sam Altman it's about reading between the lines of all the guff he talks. If Artificial General Intelligence (broader cognitive abilities of learning and applying knowledge) is reached - and that's what the AI race is focused on achieving with billions of dollars being poured into it - it's really difficult to predict where things will go as once achieved the growth in learning would be exponential and there would be no off switch. Obviously it's still a massive 'if' that they'll be able to move beyond the large language models but if AGI was achieved maybe that would be close to a form of sentience and that does seem very scary 🤷

Yes, I envisage UBI being just that - universal and basic. No top ups, nothing extra for housing etc, except possibly for disabled people who are unable to do paid work. It would be lifelong and replace the state pension.

People could work, train, volunteer, take time out or whatever.

Humans are endlessly creative - many work without ‘needing’ to already - and we want to buy things. There are jobs that can’t be done by AI, new jobs will arise, and in an AI world, things made and done by humans will be more valuable.

I do think sentient AI is pretty scary though.

Honestly, they have nothing. It’s all about the GPU trade. I don’t want to spam with another link but the same writer has a very long and comprehensive piece spelling it all out.

Well we did discover a huge field of oil off the Scottish coast a while back. Sadly the English government squandered all the money from that and here we are.