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As new tech threatens jobs, Silicon Valley promotes no-strings cash aid
The rise of artificial intelligence has stoked fears that such technological advances will wipe out millions of jobs. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have thought about that too, and they've long pushed an idea to soften the blow: cash aid from the government, no strings attached.
Now, the first results are out from the latest and largest study on the impacts of free money — research spearheaded by the man behind ChatGPT.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, offered to fund an experiment on what's termed basic income back in 2016.
For three years, 1,000 lower-income people selected in Illinois and Texas received $1,000 a month. (A control group of 2,000 others received $50 a month.)
NPR
"Do people sit around and play video games, or do they create new things?" Altman wrote. "Do people, without the fear of not being able to eat, accomplish far more and benefit society far more?"
Tech-driven job losses weren't his only motivation. Altman mentioned progress toward eliminating poverty, writing, "I also think that it's impossible to truly have equality of opportunity without some version of guaranteed income."
"We see an increase in people actually paying for housing," she says. "So a lot of people were actually doubling up with other people, and they were able to move out on their own."
Many also put money in the bank. The largest increase in spending was actually on helping family and friends.
the study found that the extra cash allowed one woman to take a pay cut for a job with room to advance, and she now makes close to six figures. But that jump in job quality was rare.
Overall, people who got the cash payments worked a bit less — 1.3 hours less a week on average.
Meanwhile, many people reported major declines in stress and food insecurity early on, but that faded after the first year. Researchers aren't sure why.
in certain cases, the extra cash actually led to more unexpected expenses. For example, some recipients were able to buy vehicles, which then broke down and needed repairs.
Supporters say basic income alone is not a magic solution
originally posted by: Shoshanna
a reply to: Dandandat3
From what I have seen, liberals have this attitude of pretending to care about the little guy but they actually don't care about the little guy.
Not caring about drivers being replaced by driverless cars is the same as advocating for open borders because they do not care that people who currently work lower skill lower wage jobs can now easily with the influx of working age people from 3rd world countries replace their entire workforces who will take less pay [think 8.50-12.00 an hour vs Americans who will want 12-15 or more per hour for those same jobs] and treat the workers worse because they'll probably take more mistreatment since they really want to live and work in America than their home countries.
Which is bad for all workers in general. Push down wages and let corporations run rampant.
They are good at crafting this bs image of caring about the poors but they don't actually
"The upper class: keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class: pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there...just to scare the # out of the middle class."
automation has been pursued with the goal of making it so humans don't have to toil away with labor all the time, to make life easier and give them more time for family, friends, intellectual pursuits, politics, art, rest, etc, ubi was also created with that same intention yet you twist it to sound like its some conspiracy to enslave people to corporations even though it would free people of the burden of labor, how is more free time and greater choice of labor going to make you a slave to a corporation?