Jeff Wang Blog

With the rise of AI and robotics, there is a lot of fear surrounding the job market and job losses in the developed world.

In Kai-Fu Lee’s book, AI superpowers, he mentions three potential solutions to the rise of AI

1. Retraining people
2. Shifting people (maybe 3-4 day work weeks?)
3. A general minimum income, or universal basic income

He notes that although a UBI may be necessary, the fear is that the winners of the AI revolution will simply use UBI as a sedative for the real problem

The real problem is that with any revolution, particularly with the respects of technology and the digital era, the winners are becoming bigger winners in the economy.

Facebook has low or no marginal cost for pumping out ads

Advanced AI will be able to do more for less

And the rich will get richer, and instead of finding a solution, governments will put a “bandaid” called UBI for those that fall behind in the revolution

Which is why education is important. Which is why action is important.

a Universal basic income, no strings or restrictions attached, may have the issue of making society complacent.

He proposes instead to instead offer a societal standard income with criteria to meet.

For example:

1. Educators, teachers
2. Public workers, government workers
3. Social workers
4. those who contribute back to society in some way
5. Meeting criteria of education and retraining programs

We don’t want to live in a world like Wall-E, where AI and robots are so advanced that humanity falls complacent, inactive

AI and robots will increase productivity. But humanity needs to continue running the race as well.