Musk: I Know How to Contend With AI-Driven Job Loss

Elon Musk has a fresh spin on universal basic income, and it's not small change. In a post on X, the billionaire argued that the "best way" to handle job losses from artificial intelligence is "universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government." Per Mandatory, Musk's proposal goes beyond the standard idea of a modest safety net. He envisions substantially larger payments funded at the national level to counter widespread displacement from AI and automation.

Anticipating criticism about inflation, Musk, who has long sounded alarms about AI's impact on society, contends that advances in AI and robotics would generate goods and services "far in excess" of any spike in the money supply, which he says would keep prices in check. Forbes notes that other tech bigwigs have expressed their own support in the past for UBI, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Not all, however: Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote in late 2023 that UBI "would turn people into zoo animals to be farmed by the state. Man was not meant to be farmed; man was meant to be useful, to be productive, to be proud." Whether Musk's "universal high income" idea is workable policy or just theory is unclear, notes Mandatory, but it lands as governments and workers increasingly confront what an AI-driven labor market might look like.