How AI might accelerate the onset of a universal basic income

The core argument remains static. Universal basic income is never completely universal, it’s far from simple and, at present, it doesn’t really offer sustained or sustainable income.  

But I still support the idea of it and of trying to find a way to make it work. This is hardly a unique position. The overarching plan is straightforward – if you provide everybody in society with a certain amount of income, the corrosive impact of entrenched poverty, the fears and the lack of opportunities that are carried through when the only concern is the howling lack of money, are blown away.

And this isn’t about an opposing view to the core ethos of Big Issue. The idea of giving all of society a base level of income does signal a hand out rather than a hand up. But it would provide a very different sort of hand up that then allows futures to be built with real agency. 

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The other aspect is one that goes beyond poverty, and that is the shifting nature of work. At the turn of the year the IMF warned that up to 40% of jobs globally would be impacted by AI and that this will increase inequality. It doesn’t mean that all those jobs will be lost to either automation or machine intelligence, but a huge number will.  

So, the wider and more radical question then arises of how people will find a way to make an income. Tied to this is also a question of where income taxes will be raised from. 

To the second point, there really is no consensus. Bill Gates, for example, has suggested taxing the machines that major organisations will use to replace humans. Those corporations will be saving huge amounts of money, so for the greater good some of that should return to national exchequers. This gets close to the idea of massive taxes on the super wealthy to help support those with less.

A refrain that returns when this is floated is that such taxes will drive the wealthy away and damage the economy. It is hard to find evidence to support that thesis. And the counter makes more sense – we can’t afford to maintain the superwealthy. A weird tremulous fear of upsetting them is holding nations back. 

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Which brings me to Sam Altman. He’s a tech billionaire. Sitting beside the monster funds of Musk or Bezos or Zuckerberg, Altman is small beer. He’s worth just a couple of billion dollars. But he’s more interesting than most of the others. Rather than getting lost in self-serving boys’ toys vanity projects, he is attempting to wrestle with big oncoming global problems.

Altman’s great success has come through AI. His company, OpenAI, is responsible, among other things, for ChatGPT. He has driven the future. And clearly he sees what a box he has opened.  

Some level of universal basic income will be necessary to people, he believes. Altman has been working with a major-scale UBI trial for several years. So far, $60m has been put into it. And last week the first findings were published. 

The project involves 3,000 people in parts of Texas and Illinois. They have been given $1,000 a month since 2020. Participants are aged between 21 and 40 and are on around average income, which was set at $29,991 a year.  

There is also a control group who were given just $50 a month.  

The results are, so far, not massive. They show that those with the $1,000 monthly boost were more likely to look to move home, to spend more on dental care and to give more money to help others. The idea that universal basic income means people will bin work and instead sit at home in their pants playing computer games is not borne out. Within the higher income group, people worked 1.3 hours less a week than the control group. But they were using their time to find other things to do outside of work, to broaden their lives. 

This was not the case for the lower income group.  

There are more results to come with deeper analysis in the coming months. One thing is clear though – when people have money, they are more likely to live better. Surely helping that happen is worth sticking with. 

Paul McNamee is editor of the Big Issue. Read more of his columns here. Follow him on Twitter.

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