Universal Income Needed for a World Where AI Puts People Out of Work, TV Host Suggests
"Daily Show" host revives proposal from the 2020 presidential campaign
A future in which artificial intelligence begins putting human beings out of work may well require implementation of some sort of universal income, according to a popular TV host who once worked for President Barack Obama.
Actor Kal Penn raised the issue while hosting Comedy Central's Daily Show.
From ChatGPT and other applications, artificial intelligence — or AI — is advancing quickly, and is thought to someday soon begin doing jobs which today are filled by human workers.
Penn featured news about a new, more advanced, update on ChatGPT on his program.
“And the other big update with this new version is that this can analyze images. Like a photo of what is in your fridge. I don’t want that! ‘You have too many candy bars, alerting Michelle Obama,’” joked Penn, who has appeared in television series and popular movies, as well as having worked in the White House during the Obama administration. “The big picture here is that A.I. is going to do so many things so well that at some point, it’s going to put a huge amount of people out of work. So what do we do? I have two ideas.
“One: implement universal basic income,” Penn added, to audience cheers and applause. “There you go. Or two — and hear me out here — we let the machines eat all the surplus people. No? Okay, yeah, less popular, I can tell. Enough about machines killing people.”
Universal basic income, or UBI, is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a guaranteed income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment (i.e., without a means test or need to work). It would be received independently of any other income.
The concept of universal income gained prominence in the United States during the 2020 presidential election when political newcomer Andrew Yang touted basic income as his core policy. Competing for the Democratic Party nomination, Yang referred to his policy as a “Freedom Dividend,” and would have provided American citizens $1,000 a month.
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