Lenny Rachitsky argues that knowledge work already functions like UBI, and as AI agents handle more tasks, humans will keep inventing new reasons to stay in the loop rather than accept that fewer roles are actually necessary.
Chapters
You have this hot take on universal basic income. It's completely out of the blue, but I think it's interesting to hear. Please extend me some grace here because I both mean it as a joke and maybe somewhat real. Just depends on which altitude of human nature you look at it. My take is that we already have universal basic income. It's called knowledge work. And I don't exclude my job from it, but if you really look at what we actually need to live and be content, it is a lot less. And we've built this hierarchy. And all these jobs and all these things that are absolutely necessary. And we'll come up with other ways in which we as humans insert ourselves into the conversation around agents. Will it look the same? I don't know. But we are so inventive and we come up with new reasons of why we absolutely must be in that loop.