AI: As far as a Universal Basic Income for everyone on earth is concerned…

(Continued from previous blog)

As AI continues to reshape the labour market, there is a growing recognition for the need of social safety nets.

Even though economic models are being developed by economists, the economists are mostly battling to make the math work. There seems to be a standoff between abundance and math: where is the income going to come from to spend on anything?

And yet we have rights—when AI takes our jobs, shouldn’t it pay our (now departed) salaries? Our lives are going to be upended by a deflated economy. And apart from all that, society has, and will still be, giving up unforeseen amounts of data to AI to make it smarter and more powerful. Even more importantly it also comes at enormous and dangerous systemic risks to us as humanity; our societies, and our fragile physical world. AI is embedded in the biophysical world with huge demands for water, rare earth metals, energy and land; endangering the things we actually value. It can do the tasks, but might break the world that surrounds the task. It is up there, on par with nuclear risk, but with no treaties or rules. The stakes for us humans are very high. 

The AI revolution should be done with us and not to us. We have to take a stand on that; we cannot sign over our rights to a small group of people who decide on our future (and that of our children) on our behalf.

Monetizing AI

If you can drive intelligence, energy and labour to the cost of near zero, upending our entire current economic structure, all will come down to one thing: the question of capturing and distributing the AI windfall. 

The money will be there, and although the lunch will not be free, it will be paid for by a machine. The value is still created—the cash is still there even if we are out of the labour market. 

BUT, what if the AI agents come to the fore with claims for compensation of their own? This will blow any economic model to pieces.  

In theory, it IS possible to eradicate poverty all over the world, IF we can get the numbers to add up.

Classic unemployment as opposed to AI-driven unemployment.

I have taken extracts from The Mosaic Institute For AI Policy (see previous blog) because it offers a blueprint for what to do with the capital windfall, namely monetise the efficiency of the robots. 

It goes on to explain that the surplus money—created by the AI raised productivity, should be captured with VAT as a deflation dividend, but for the consumer, nothing changes at the till. (Normally deflation leads to decreased consumer spending.)

This is referred to as a dynamic upward VAT. Like a negative income tax.

Ring-fence 75% of extra profits for a  public dividend fund. Price at the till stays the same; governments collect and distribute the surplus.  And that cheque needs to clear as a matter of law; we do not want a yearly budget fight. This way, needs are covered, and wants can be negotiated with extras, e.g. : data dividends, windfall levies, land taxes, state taxes. 

The cruel, ancient rule that says “if you don’t work, you can’t eat” could then, hopefully, be abolished. We can decouple human labour from human survival for the first time in history. We can now dream of going from a society of labour to a society of exploration, or care, or creation.

Control 

Rules cannot keep up with pace of change, but one thing is abundantly clear: governments need to step in now to put laws in place, or else a few people will get filthy rich and the rest will be filthy poor, looking for scraps. Some will be protected, others will be deemed dispensable, or the AI models and agents will have their own demands for personhood and autonomy.

The things that need to be discussed now are important, like: who is going to control the law and policymakers?

We do not have time to ‘wait and see’. That urge to first ‘wait and see’ can cause techno feudalism or dystopia. We urgently need to discuss what actions governments will take for us before we reach the stage of ‘regulation by way of crisis’ and society hits the panic button. This is not a matter of any single country or company getting it right. It is about humanity navigating the biggest economic transition in history. Soon we will have to know how to work together for our own good and in order to survive. We should call on lawmakers to wake up and put laws, rules, guardrails, treaties, or even better, constitutions in place now, so that when things change, the channels are already there before capital consolidates opposition, before the status quo hardens. It makes sense to put the laws in place today; set up plumbing before the flood hits. 

Wait until mass displacement is undeniable? By then, it may be too late to pass any legislation.

Conclusion

There are other suggested economic models out there to possibly replace the soon to be defunct Social Contract that had been in place since the 1940’s—namely employers provided fair wages, benefits, stability, and purpose, while employees offered dedication, skill, and productivity.

We will look at some of these economic suggestions in future blogs. For now, the invitation is to act early, or not at all. We should talk and debate about this, loudly and together, while staying calm and not allowing fear to cloud our reasoning. We need a grown-up conversation. Maybe our collective energy and collaborative conversations can shift the inevitable in a different direction.

Then we need public rule making. 

Now.