Welcome to 2024, Humans. The aim of this post is to set the stage for Human + AI + UBI optimism going into the new year. There may indeed be an AI Tsunami that radically shakes up human culture, politics, and economies… but that event (theoretically) ushers in the coming Age of Abundance. Whether this happens in 5 years, or 50, is irrelevant. There are three key, interlocking technologies that will come to be invented, perfected, and deployed:

• Fusion Energy — to satiate the voracious energy consumption needs of both humans + AI
• Quantum Computing — something has to power all those insane DL/GPT computations…
• UBI — the wealth distribution is getting way out of hand. Time to force some cash from the megacorps to the people. …Sam?

Truly, its all in the Venn Diagram.

UBI 411 : Universal Basic Income

A little deeper exploration of UBI and some thoughts on the matter:

The Big Idea of UBI is this: When AGI is launched… in its full embodiment, which is a combination of wicked smart software intelligence(s), (available both via superintelligences in the cloud as well as stand-alone local “edge” intelligences on your phone and in your toaster-oven), as well as a global army of humanoid robots that are driven by — again — both local intelligence (running on CPUs and GPUs within their bodies) and swarm intelligence (streaming marching orders / guidance to them from the corporate cloud). Once these two factors are in place: cloud superintelligence and swarms of mobile robotic hardware, then there is a decent rationale that a signficant portion — say 30 to 90% — of human “jobs” will be replaced by machines.

a prototype Tesla Optimus human-labor-replacement robot on display in Los Angeles showroom

While Silicon Valley wonks like to use the euphemism “AI job displacement”, using the tired old line of “while old jobs will be made obsolete, new jobs will appear”… this is clearly not the case. We will simply have a large percentage — likely eventually a supermajority — of the human population… unemployed. In today’s world, outside of broken, faltering programs like social security and welfare checks, unemployed = zero income. Zero income quickly leads to a total depletion of savings — if there were any in the first place — and the downward spiral continues into homelessness, drug addiction, and often, mental illness.

Not a pretty picture. Certainly not an AI Utopia. The Solution?

UBI! Universal Basic Income to the rescue! The big idea is this: Those armies of robots on the streets and in the factories, will be making trillions in profit on a monthly basis for the uber-corporations lucky enough to lead the charge. Profits that make today’s kings — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet/Google, Meta/Facebook, nVidia, Tesla… look like lemonade stands. And once we have AI corporations that are driving trillions in profit at 50%+ margins, well… time to levy a tax! Time to redistribute wealth! Time for UBI!

There it is: You take a healthy percentage of AI-driven profits… say, 20 to 50 percent… place it in a public fund, and re-distribute it to the people whose jobs have been “displaced” by the robots. Simple in concept. A bit tricky in execution. Do not think that corporate profiteers will go quietly into that dark night.

So:

If Sam Altman actually raises his desired $7T (T as in Trillion), in order to “kickstart” the AI revolution with chip fabs, energy plants, and millions of acres of AI datacenters, then what percentage of that funding is plowed back into the general population? a $7 trillion dollar cash infusion is, by its very nature, larger than the annual GDP of only a handful of nation-states… it essentialy equates to a taxation of $1,000 per living human on planet earth. SO, humans of earth have a right to ask: “Mr. Altman, what’s our RoI?”

It should be noted that many many many humans have a near zero or negative net worth, and might not be interested in donating to Mr. Altmans fantasy of an AI-driven future that requires half of the planet’s financial & industrial resources to push it out of the birthing canal.

Universal Basic Income, or UBI, also has many names:

• Basic Income
• Guaranteed Income
• Cash Transfers
• Unconditional Cash

Its been tried and continues in several municipalities… Oregon is on the cusp of implementing it statewide, but it is not sensitive to income… so millionaire home-owners and homeless people will all get the same monthly stipend. Yet every pilot program of this type distributes cash in the range of $500 to $1,000 per person, per month… hardly enough to even pay the rent, much less groceries, gas and utility bills. So one might rightly ask: What’s the point?

Is UBI Socialism?

Close. Very close. And honestly, given what AI will do to the employment and cultural landscape, perhaps that (in some form) is in fact necessary.

Witness the current growing gap in wealth distribution, and this is just in America:

The top 1% (1 out of 100) wealthiest individuals in America control almost 40% of the money.

The bottom 60% (6 out of 10 americans) in total, control less than 3% of the money.

This is a bit of a problem. And AI is making it worse.

Other UBI resources:

• Basic Income Lab (BIL)
  at Stanford
• Destination: Home
  working to end homelessness in Silicon Valley
• Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative
  at UCSF

Prominent Silicon Valley Advocates of UBI:

• Sam Altman (OpenAI)
• Marc Benioff (Salesforce.com)
• Jack Dorsey (X, nee Twitter)
• Chris Hughes (ex-Facebook)

Pros and Cons of UBI

I will go into the details of this in a separate post, but lets summarize a cautionary tale: Witness how Native Americans who live on reservations — those who have leased their lands to casino conglomerates — are compensated between $5,000 and $20,000 per month, per adult tribe member. This sounds like paradise. What it manifests as — often as not — is drug addiction, lethargy, unmaintained homes, cars, and yards, and insane amounts of online gambling. In other words, the (UBI-ish) income does not produce true wealth… it only produces a grotesque form of hyper-consumerist poverty. So: be careful what you wish for. Money is not the solution. Education and Purpose is.

So… when?

Hell, let’s put a number on it:

2035 for version 1.0 of all of these.

There you go.