The End of Work? AGI Will Make UBI a Necessity (Universal Basic Income)

So with the rise of AGI, there has been a lot of discussion with universal basic income and the potential need for a universal basic income. Now, if you don't know what universal basic income is, it's basically a social welfare policy that involves providing all citizens or residents of a country with a regular unconditional cash payment from the government, regardless of their income or employment status. And there are several key features of ubi. So essentially it's a regular cash payment, which is probably monthly or annual to all individuals in a community or a country. And it's always paid without any conditions or requirements like means testing, work requirements or other eligibility criteria. It is paid to individuals rather than households. It is intended to provide a minimum income floor or baseline to cover basic needs. It is paid in addition to any other income from employment or other sources. And it is universal, meaning it is provided to anyone in the given population, not just targeted groups. Now, that is a quick definition of ubi, so it can set the tone for what to understand what we are going to talk about going forward. And UBI is something that is going to be increasingly more discussed as automation becomes more rampant. Now, the reason I've decided to discuss AGI is because something that is constant and something that you may have not realized is that an OpenAI's document where they are accepting investment, they state a few things and there's one sentence, or I guess you could say three words that really kind of stood out to me the first time I read this. And this is a suitable video for me to add this. So they say that investing in OpenAI is a high risk investment. Investors could lose their capital and not see any return. It's wise to see any investment in OpenAI as to the spirit of a donation with the understanding that it may be difficult. And here's where we get to the interesting part. It says it may be difficult to know what role money will play in a post AGI world. So something that we've seen time and time again is that the majority of AI leaders, like people like Demis Asabis, people like Sam Altman, have clearly stated that it's quite difficult to understand what role money is going to play in a post AGI world. Because if AGI is what it says it is, it means that the cost of labor is going to drop to zero, which means that, you know, we run on a labor economy. This is going to be a post AGI world, which means that we move into a post AGI, post labor economy, which means things are very, very different. And the Reason this is going to be very, very different is because humans have always devised the their value from their kind of labor. And it's basically just the basis of capitalism. You do something, you get paid for it. If you are a nurse, you help patients, you get paid. If you're a doctor, you diagnose people, you get paid. If you're a coder, you code, you get paid depending on your cognitive ability. Essentially if you're cognitive labor, you know, if you're a tradesman, it's usually physical labor. But the point is, is that if you have some kind of labor, that's how you have your economic value. But it's quite difficult to understand how money works because we're going to be moving into a post AGI world. So the thing is, is that I would argue that because we're moving towards AGI and some would argue that OpenAI already internally achieved it, just not with the scale, some sort of UBI is going to be needed because the job losses are going to happen sooner or later. We know that there are advanced AI systems coming and we know that these advanced AI systems are always going to going to displace workers, unfortunately. But at least we know this now, which means that there in future, we do know that there's going to be disproportionately continuing levels of people that find themselves without jobs and careers as these kinds of tools get released. And the problem with current AI trends is that the jobs aren't replacing the ones that are lost. Which means that increasingly we're seeing more people out of a job now. This means that UBI is probably in the future going to be needed. Now it might not be needed right now. Some people might find newer work, they might transition to other careers. But when we do have agentix services in 2027, 2028, and we have a real ramp up in terms of technology and companies using these services rather than actually employing people. I would argue that yes, some sort of UBI might be needed and, and there's going to be a wider increase and a wider demand for this because a lot of people who have lost their jobs might not be able to find new ones. And of course, Elon Musk also champions this claim. He says it's hard to say exactly what that moment is, but there will come a point where no job is needed. Musk continued, speaking alongside British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. You can have a job if you wanted to have a job for personal satisfaction, but the AI would be able to do everything. And whilst that does Seem like sci fi. It isn't completely sci fi because it is completely possible with the future advancements in AI that could lead to an incredible level of AI ability where it could really just do absolutely anything. Which means that we're going to be in an incredible position where the economy no longer runs on our labor and essentially we're all going to be out of work. Now of course, I think that AI could be doing everything and I'm going to be making another video, not sure if it's released yet. On why I. On why. I think the flip side is also very important on what human made jobs will be there. But I do think that, you know, this is going to be the future trend and I think it's important to pay attention to this. So I think one of the key reasons that UBI is going to be needed is because it's going to need to eradicate poverty. Okay. And there are two key concepts to this. Okay. I don't think that, you know, and I'm not arguing for co communism or anything like that, but I do see how some people live and it is honestly atrocious how some people are left to fall through the cracks. I've seen some people in certain situations that have literally just been let down by society and it truly is astonishing to how people can fall through the cracks to no fault of their own. They're just bored in a bad neighborhood. Their family is just like already on drugs. Their family is just in and out of the system. They're literally just in and out of care and they've never really had a good shot at life because their entire environment has of course, you know, placed them in unfortunate circumstances. And whilst, yes, these are fringe cases, I think that if we're moving this fast in society, I don't think we should allow certain people to fall through the cracks. There should definitely be some kind of, you know, social safety nets to at least share the abundance that is going to be there. Now of course some people could argue that yes, you need to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, but environment plays a lot into how our future success is impacted more than you do think. And there is even this concept where people are actually actively working, but they're still trapped in a cycle of poverty. So this is something that I can completely empathize with because I do not come from a wealthy background at all. However, I did start a business a couple of years ago and I'm now doing okay for myself. Not in poverty anymore, but in it is something that I realized that not everyone is able to escape due to several issues that like I said before, are no fault of their own. And this is going to be further exacerbated due to AGI and due to automation when people are going not to be able to anymore get back into certain careers and industries that they were once seniors in. So essentially this person you could see, they were evicted. And the working poor is a concept of people who are working but are still poor. So I'm going to show you guys this article because it is truly kind of heartbreaking. But I think we're going to see more and more of these stories that are going to lead us more and more towards the conversation of ubi. So essentially this person talks about something that I guarantee most people are experiencing and it's the rising cost of food, transport and utilities means that the meager amount of money I've been able to stretch to cover my necessities isn't covering them anymore. So this one was truly, it was truly a tough read because I can completely understand how this person was doing. So essentially 16 years ago this person was on their protest about teaching ward negotiations and then they unfortunately broke their leg. The teachers union ended up paying their wage and then, you know, she was having an okay life but her ill health forced her to return to her home country. And then she applied to many different jobs and wasn't able to get anything and was stuck on unemployment benefits. And the problem is is that there are also mental health issues too that nobody talks about. You know, she says there are many issues that have chipped away at my sense of self worth and made my life even hard. Because a lot of people do describe people that are on unemployment benefits as being lazy. People say they're just scrounging off taxpayers money when that couldn't be further from the case. A lot of the times these people do have to apply for certain jobs every week to be even qualified for those benefits. And a lot of the times they are just unable to gain work because their background just isn't sufficient for them to get a new job. You can see that this person said my job provider worsened my depression and comments on social media about lazy doll bludgers reduced my self esteem and increase my resentment and anger. And now the increasing rising cost of food, transport and utilities means that the meager amount of money they've been given just, you know, hasn't covered their situation. And this is something that I think is going to continue right now. It isn't something that is that bad because we do have an economy that, you know, shifts and it rotates and it evolves. But what happens when we start to see large portions of the economy being automated by these kinds of systems where they are adopted? I think we're going to see more and more people start to fall through the CACs and we're going to start to see these kinds of things because this isn't going to be good for the economy at all. If large parts of the automobile are automated, we're definitely going to need to use UBI because we won't have a large portion of the economy working. So they're going to need to have that money to be able to buy goods and services to keep the economy going around. Now one of the problems with UBI is of course inflation. This is something that has been discussed before, but I guess we, we could relate this to something that happened recently. But first I'm going to talk about inflation. So the problem is, is that UBI could lead to inflation through several mechanisms. And if you don't understand what inflation is, it's basically if you print more of the money, the money becomes less valuable. Okay, just think of it simple supply and demand. If there's more something, it's simply less valuable. So when people receive the UBI payments, their purchasing power increases lead to leading to higher consumption, which is good. And the surge in demand can outship the supply of goods and services, which is going to result in demand pull inflation where prices rise because the demand is greater than supply. So we have essentially demand pull inflation which is due to ubi. Then of course we have labor supply reduction. So if the UBI payments are sufficient to cover basic living expenses, some individuals might choose to work less or not at all. And this could lead to even more labor shortages in certain sectors, particularly low wages jobs. And then employers may have to then increase wages to attract workers, leading to higher production costs which are often passed on to customers in the form of higher prices. And of course currency depreciation financing. UBI could involve large scale government borrowing or printing of money which we saw recently. And if this is not offset by spending cuts or increased taxes, this is going to lead to a devaluation of the currency causing imported goods to be more expensive, thereby contributing towards inflation. And there are many different more things. But we did see this during COVID with the stimulus checks and basically in 2020. The Care act in March 2020 provided a one time economic impairment payment of up to $1200 per adult and $500 per child qualifying under 17 and this was something that helped out, but the problem is, is that they printed so much money that the dollar, some people are arguing it's now worthless and that's what's contributing to this cost of living crisis, why the wages are stagnating. And whilst, yes, it is good, you kind of have to manage everything because everything affects everything in the economy. And I'm not going to say I'm going to do a. But inflation is not great. Now, essentially, of course, there's inflation which could threaten how UBI is implemented. But I think there is also the funding for UBI because some people talk about, okay, if we don't want to print money, how on earth are we going to fund it? So some people are arguing that once these giant companies manage to capture all of the world's economic value, or at least 10 to 5 to 3% of the world's economic value, which is trillions and trillions of dollars, those trillions and trillions of dollars could be used to pay for it. So it says companies like OpenAI could make unthinkable profits from successful AI. Will they share the wealth? So this is something that I've spoken about before, but essentially, if you have a company that doesn't really use any people and everyone kind of needs that company, then some people are saying that there's going to be a robo tax in which effectively those taxes are redistributed to the economies where it is being used the most, and then that's how those economies can benefit from it. Now, I think there's also another way, and I do think that Winfield are pretty good, but I would argue that companies are probably going to fight this to the death. A problem with robo taxing is that companies already evade taxes in crazy ways. Some of the biggest corporations literally don't pay any tax. They've got companies in the Cayman Islands, they've got companies in Ireland. Apple has all of this shady stuff that they do. So I think whilst, yes, this is very, very, I guess you could say, idealistic, it largely, I don't think it's going to work because companies want to give money back to their investors and they want to just keep shooting up their stock price so they can make their profits even higher. So if they can find any kind of loophole to avoid this, I can guarantee you they're going to completely do this. They're going to avoid that robo tax. Okay, so then we have, of course, here, programmable money. And I would argue that this is probably the most likely scenario in which UBI is going to happen. However, this isn't going to be as good as you think. Now I'm not stating any conspiracy theories or anything like that because of course nobody knows what the future is going to be like. But CBDCs can be good and they can be bad because these essentially crypto that are issued by a central bank. So the Federal Reserve can give you money. Now anyone can use crypto. Anyone knows what crypto is. It's just like money is just like on the blockchain. But the problem is is that programmable money can come with certain restrictions. For example, I'm not stating that this is what they're going to do, but it is possible in the future because it's programmable and they're able to do this. And I'm going to explain why this is how UBI is probably going to be implemented. Remember before how we spoke about high UBI and inflation? These things kind of go hand in hand. You know, there's all this, you know, labor supply reduction, cost pull inflation, all these kind of, you know, cost push inflation, currency depreciation, all of these kinds of things which aren't good, that could kind of be offset by programming the cbdc. So what they could have is they could have incentives to get people to spend more. So they could have, you know, $1,000, $500 or $200 a week that expires and can only be spent in certain areas. And the reason that I think this is probably going to happen, it's because if the government wants people to spend more money in a certain area, they could literally just program the money so that it literally is spent in that area. And I know that whilst that does sound crazy, if you do do research on it, you can see that programmable money, programmable CBDCs are likely going to be coming in the future. The Federal Reserve is working on them. All of the major companies and major world economies are going to be working on them. And I think that's fundamentally going to change our economy in the next 20 years. Because if we do need UBI, it's going to be easily available. You're going to be able to easily onboard people. There's of course going to be a digital ID rolling out sometime in the future. And if you're able to program the money, you're able to effectively distribute it equally and you're able to understand exactly where it goes. So I think that this is probably going to be how it's invested. But of course this does have its stipulations because programming money, I guess you could say there is an element of freedom that isn't there because if the government can control exactly how you spend that money, then I guess they could, you know, control how certain companies benefit. What industries are booming, what industries aren't. I mean, there's all sorts of different things going on there. But I do think that this is definitely going to be one of the ways that UBI is probably going to be distributed. Now I would also argue that UBI could not happen because sometimes governments don't always look after you and many people do fall through the cracks. And the problem is, is that with governments is that they basically just do the bare minimum. You know, some countries, you know, what we often see is that we see that the rich are living in these, you know, luxury high rises, whilst, you know, not far often we see that there are homeless people nearby. It's this very almost dystopian kind of city and society that we're already living in. And I mean, how crazy is it going to look in the future when this situation gets even worse? Are there going to be people in that are just left behind because the government didn't create a social safety net and the one that they did create just wasn't enough? And so some people have just been left behind. I mean, it's already happening now. What's to say it's not going to get even worse? So I've put here that governments don't always look after you because they literally don't. They literally just do the bare minimum. And we know that this capitalist society can be very, very, very unforgiving. And the problem is, is that an increasing trend that we're seeing is that the middle class is currently getting crushed. An increasing tre that we've seen that the middle class is not making as much money and the upper income is just steadily increasing and the lower incomes haven't changed at all. So it's important to pay attention to these trends. And I think a large scenario of UBI reason why it's probably going to happen is because the wealth gap is likely to widen. Okay? If we think about how society is right now, right now, things are not too bad, okay? But here's why things could get worse. If we take a look at how society is right now. I mean, you probably should have Sam Altman here and Microsoft here. But if we look at who owns the current AI infrastructure, who owns the tech and who is set to benefit the most from AI, you know, and AGI, it's the big Tech players, okay, once everything is automated, we have to understand humans lose their economical value and they don't really have as much agency, which means that these billionaires are going to be capturing the majority of the economic core value, which means that their net worths are probably going to skyrocket in exponentially. And the average person, they don't really own AI, which means that they can't profit from it or benefit from it as much as these guys can. Now, I'm not hating on them, of course they've created a company, they benefit. This is the system that we exist in. But what this means is that the wealth gap just simply widens and then there's that concentration of power. So that is going to be something that of course is going to be discussed with ubi. And when you have only a handful of people that have billions or even trillions of dollars and it argues that, is there going to be a real need for ubi? Because the problem, and the need for UBIS as well is as I've said, as these guys own the AI and as AGI is going to be pretty much able to do anything, most people won't have a job. As Elon Musk said, the problem with that is that there won't be any social mobility. Whilst, yes, some careers will still exist, you'll still be able to improve. Think about it like this, okay? So right now, if you want to improve your life, you can study hard, you can get better grades, you can get to a better university, you can get a better job, you can, you know, make yourself better in the interviews, you can get better experience. But the problem is, is that in the future, an AGI level system will likely surpass you in all categories. It will be faster than you, it can work for 24 hours, it can remember everything and it can do anything you can do on a computer, but better. So you have to ask yourself, how in that digital world can you increase your income in a way that you can surpass a company needing you? Because previously companies need people in order to increase their company's value. But what happens when companies no longer need people, they just need an AGI system? It's going to be pretty hard to beat out an AGI system, especially when it's cheaper than you can run for 24 hours, doesn't need sick pay, isn't going to complain, there's going to be no lawsuits. I mean, it's going to be pretty incredible in a few years. Okay? And I think this probably will happen in the next 15 years. But how do you improve and how do you gain economic agency in this society? That's why a lot of people are stating that yes you're going to need some AGI because if there's no economic agency then there's literally no way for you to earn an income and I do think there will be some industries of course there's going to be new industries and stuff like that but I think that it's going to be a lot harder than it is now so there's definitely going to be some policies and stuff that will need to be implemented because as the trends we've seen UBI is something that I think is almost certainly going to be needed because we're moving towards a post AGI world and that means the current economic landscape is about to change and shift in a way we haven't seen before so what are your opinions on ubi? I think it's almost necessary but I think that if it isn't done right it could definitely be a dystopia unfortunately.