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Let's get into it:
We hear so much about AI, data centers, power plants to go along with them, and all the wonders this new technology will have in store for us. But what does it mean for the average person? The big brains that are thinking all this stuff up and putting it into practice have some ideas for all of us little people: universal basic income.
Once our jobs are made obsolete and we are unable to participate in the economy with our labor, the government will have to provide. So the idea, near as I can figure it, is that these big companies will be taxed by the government, which will then filter down some of that money to us, so that we can still buy things, so that the economy doesn't fall apart entirely.
We will just be blatant cogs in this AI economy that we can't otherwise compete in, we will just be consumers of the goods that are churned out by the AI companies and delivered to us via drone from the far-flung factories in which they are made by machine and people whose labor is cheap enough to be used.
If we believe the hype, this extra "free time" we have in which we no longer have to work to pay for our own survival will enable us to engage in higher, loftier pursuits. But anyone who has seen Mike Judge's masterpiece Idiocracy, or just has a loafer cousin who doesn't seem to do anything but sit on the couch, watch YouTube, smoke weed, and talk about all the wonderful things they will never do knows that the much more likely scenario is that many of us will just turn into "that guy."
Humans need to work for their own survival to feel any kind of meaning or worth. We value winning bread, bringing home bacon, and getting calluses on our hands because we earned our food and shelter. Just look at any 4th-generation aristocracy to see what uselessness those who are handed everything can fall into.
Elon Musk, purveyor of AI and richest man on earth, says that "Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI. AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, also rich, also pushing AI into every conceivable facet of our lives (no, Gmail, I do NOT want AI "help" writing an email, I'm perfectly happy thinking for myself), says the same thing as Musk.
"You hear these ideas like universal basic compute or other things with nice brand name, but really what they mean is just like, instead of the traditional thinking of: we're going to give people a monthly stipend or money or whatever on AI does all the jobs. I think it's way better to say, actually, people are pretty good about knowing what they need, pretty creative about for how to use things, but if people are boxed out of access to this resource, that will be a challenge," said Altman.
"I do suspect that we're going to have to make changes to how we tax, like in a world where AI is doing most of the intellectual work in the world, or at least of the work of today, you know, we probably are going to need to explore some way to tax that instead of taxing human income in the traditional sense.
"I suspect that we will need to provide new kinds of transition assistance, unemployment insurance, things like that. And I suspect that eventually we will need to think about how people get to be an owner in the upside of all of this in new ways. You know, capitalism is dependent on a certain balance between labor and capital, and in fact, it's totally out of whack, then the current system is not going to work, and there'll have to be some sort of evolution.
"What that is, I think, is a very open question. And again, part of the goal here is to throw out some ideas, but there's many more, and I will always leave some room and say, maybe we're wrong, and maybe no change at all is required, and somehow this just works differently than we think. But again, in a spirit of trying to use the time we have to think and debate, seems like a good time to start appreciating that."
And actress Sandra Bullock, who is one of the glitterati, a Hollywood star, etc., but is no intellectual mastermind, said simply at a recent conference that AI "is here, we have to just befriend it in some dark way."
I just keep thinking I should learn how to build some raised beds in my backyard and figure out how to grow some carrots and tomatoes or something because I find the whole AI future for humanity, complete with networked brains and cyborg humans, to be absolutely stomach turning.
Libby