Key Takeaways:
- Elon Musk pushes a Federal UHI to fix AI job losses, aiming for a future era of zero inflation and abundance.
- OpenAI’s Sam Altman warns of machine substitution, proposing a new fund to protect future worker welfare.
- With 100K jobs lost per the Alliance for Secure AI, governments must swiftly test future UHI and tax models.
Elon Musk Promotes Federal Universal High Income As AI Takes Over
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly part of our everyday lives, including the workplace, but concerns about the level of unemployment that a widespread implementation of this tech will cause in the future keep surging.
Industry figureheads like Dario Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have warned about the substitution of men by machines and how society and governments should step in to maintain the social welfare state.
While they have promoted several proposals, including the establishment of AI taxes and investment funds that would benefit workers using resources from AI companies, Elon Musk has recently called for a more proactive approach.
On social media, Musk, founder of X.AI Corp, the developer of the Grok chatbot, reaffirmed his take on the subject. He is pushing his own version of Universal Basic Income (UBI), Universal High Income (UHI), as part of the solution to this upcoming issue, involving the federal government as distributor of this benefit.
He stated:
“Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.”
Furthermore, he ensures that through increased availability of goods and services, one of the largest problems in today’s economy will eventually be solved. “AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation,” he concluded.
Musk’s vision on the subject is very optimistic, as he has discussed the optionality of jobs in the era of AI and the benefits of increased productivity levels. “Everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport, and everything else. Sustainable abundance,” he stressed last year.
Nonetheless, not everyone agrees with Musk, as the number of Americans allegedly displaced by AI reached over 100K according to the Alliance for Secure AI.
