Will artificial intelligence bring a new era of giving people free money?
As AI reduces the need for human beings to do some jobs, a few big names in technology are embracing the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI), welfare for everybody.
“Whenever you see bad ideas, they tend to resurface, and then resurface, and keep resurfacing,” said Richard Stern with the Heritage Foundation.
The heads of OpenAI and Salesforce which have moved heavily into AI, say it will produce so much wealth that it will make sense to pay people who don’t work. So does Elon Musk. He says AI will create an era of prosperity in which UBI will make sense.
Stern said their experience does not apply well to an issue like UBI.
“You have people who are very wealthy, who have all kinds of notions about how society should be run,” he explained. “That doesn’t mean they understand public policy more than anybody else.”
The founders of Twitter and Facebook have tried out UBI pilot projects but Stern cautions it’s the concept itself that is flawed.
“A UBI is fundamentally a welfare program,” Stern warned. “It destroys innovation from the people you are taxing, and it gives people who are getting the benefits, reason to not work. At the end of the day, UBI is a financial transfer that actually throws a wrench in the engine.”
“UBI is psychology,” he continued. “UBI sounds good when you’re the person getting the benefits, but you don’t want to live in a society where everybody is getting robbed and nobody works and nothing gets produced.”
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