Anthropic CEO says a universal basic income isn't enough to address AI job losses

[midian182]

A hot potato: Many predict that the artificial intelligence revolution will disrupt society and the workplace in an unprecedented manner. Its potential to put so many people out of a job while also concentrating power in the hands of what could be trillionaires has led to calls for a Universal Basic Income (UBI), but Dario Amodei, CEO of AI startup Anthropic, thinks such a plan still wouldn't be enough.

We've previously heard OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talk about a UBI to help address problems caused by the impact of generative AI on the jobs market. Anthropic boss Amodei agrees that something needs to be done, but worries that it needs to be more than just a UBI.

"I certainly think that's [UBI] better than nothing. But I would much prefer a world in which everyone can contribute," Amodei told Time magazine. "It would be kind of dystopian if there are these few people that can make trillions of dollars, and then the government hands it all out to the unwashed masses," he stated, adding, "It's better than not handing it out, but I think it's not really the world we want to aim for."

Dario Amodei spoke with TIME about AI safety, the company's culture, and economic inequalityhttps://t.co/KCLUcY5WVj

– TIME (@TIME) June 23, 2024

Amodei used to work for OpenAI before launching Anthropic with his sister and five other OpenAI colleagues in 2021. The company's goal is to develop "responsible" general AI systems and language models, an ambition that helped it attract a $4 billion investment from Amazon.

Amodei also talked about the prospect of AI doing pretty much everything better than humans, and what that would mean for the world. "I do believe that if the exponential [rate of AI progress] is right, AI systems will be better than most humans, maybe all humans, at doing most of the things humans do," he said.

"I think in the long run, we're really going to need to think about, how do we organize the economy, and how humans think about their lives? One person can't do that. One company can't do that. That's a conversation among humanity. And my only worry is, if the technology goes fast, we'll have to figure it out fast."

OpenAI boss Sam Altman was so concerned about how AI will affect society and jobs that he ran experiment in 2016 showing how a UBI could negate some of these issues. That program gave between $50 and $1,000 a month to more than 3,000 enrollees.

Recently, Altman said he wondered if the future looked more like universal basic compute than universal basic income, in which everyone receives a slice of GPT-7's compute that they can use, resell, or donate. It's a proposition that hasn't received much support.

Elon Musk, whose xAI artificial intelligence company recently said it would raise $6 billion in its Series B funding round, has also called for a "universal high income." He said last year that there will come a point where no job is needed as AI will end the requirement for human employment.

In related news, Anthropic launched its Claude 3.5 Sonnet AI model last week, claiming it outperforms GPT-4o in some tests.

Masthead: Alexander Grey

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Anthropic CEO says a universal basic income isn't enough to address AI job losses

 

[Dimitriid]

I love how none of these snakeoil salesmen ever even mention the obvious: We do not HAVE to implement any AI at all.

In fact, I would even say that this is resembling the Crypto/NFT scams more and more every day: it gets pushed to everyone's faces more and more and the general consensus is that nobody actually cares enough to justify their fever dreams of unlimited wealth but what do they do? Like all scammers, they just double down: Now that AI is underwhelming the general public more widely, they say 'UBI might not even be enough to so much disruption we'll accomplish now!' Just to get more people to invest so they can dump their stock and get out at any kind of profit while they can.

 

[wiyosaya]

More wet dreams from the only people who stand to make a profit from the AI fad. For some reason, people seem to think these AI clowns know what they are talking about - just like all the other "Tech Icons" that have proven to be clueless F's when it comes to real life situations and heck even when trying to apply Tech to the simple things in life. Tech is not the answer to everything, though I can certainly understand why these clowns want everyone to believe that it is the answer to everything.

 

[FF222]

Ideally copyright law should be changed to explicitly spell out that AI model training on unlicenced data does not fall under fair use. That would in instant save about a billion jobs, and even create new ones.

 

[i like foxes]

I wonder which will be cheaper - hiring workforce or AI !? AI needs so much power thus high costs . I cant tell .

 

[noblody]

Assuming AI will work out and replace a lot of jobs, I don't see how most countries will make the money to pay UBI. For example, some services that are externalized from one country to another will not be needed anymore. How will they get the money to cover the UBI for lost jobs? Are they planning to what? redistribute money globally, on what basis? This UBI stinks of utopia. We should know by now that the implementation of utopia quickly becomes dystopia.

 

[dangh]

The technological advance constantly changing the way people do work. 300 years ago 80% of population were living in villages to produce food. Now, they live in cities producing code / services / factory goods.
With factories and code become more and more automated, we should see migration to developing areas, as always before, to use people's ability to grow that up.
Unfortunately, we are reaching a tipping point, where any large success requires automation, and will be bought by some of big players (it's not '60s anymore where you could create a new product and get a market share, now big corpos are crazy better at destroying competition). With large population there is simply not much else to do, and even if many people will go to a manual work like carpentry and so on, there will be much lower buying power to make is sustainable.
Reducing population is kinda good thing to do, but only, if that is a global process. Unfortunatelly, this is balancing now well in strong economically countries, but poor countries keeps generating population without means to provide them with good living options.
Our economy model has been changing through ages. We will see another one coming. Will UBI be good enough to get us through that period? hard to say. I think we should be focusing more on reducing the inequality for now, and then put some solution in place, otherwise we are getting risk of many very angry people getting bit mad.

 

[gamerk2]

Assuming AI will work out and replace a lot of jobs, I don't see how most countries will make the money to pay UBI. For example, some services that are externalized from one country to another will not be needed anymore. How will they get the money to cover the UBI for lost jobs? Are they planning to what? redistribute money globally, on what basis? This UBI stinks of utopia. We should know by now that the implementation of utopia quickly becomes dystopia.

Its worth noting that most recent UBI studies have been largely successful. The general consensus is that the increase in the ability for lower income individuals to get out of debt and spend money covers the cost of the UBI, and sometimes ends up with a slight economic gain. That being said, data is still *very* sparse with the only long-term study that exists is Kenya (which has a low-income UBI that has been ongoing since 2016).

There's also the argument that a UBI could be a *vastly* cheaper alternative to the social safety net which accomplishes the same thing at a lower cost (though as always, cost-justifying overpriced services remains a potential roadblock and thus oversight is still required).

 

[daven]

It's just so short sighted that it's amazing. If AI does "steal" everyone's job then how will anyone be able to afford to buy anything that AI is creating. The govt is already broke from our wonderful politicians taking anything they can to get power so who would even pay the UBI? It's no wonder kids are so depressed today. I just retired and feel just as frustrated as they are. The powerful just never stop. Greed and hate are killing society. So sad and pathetic!

 

[Dreadcthulhu]

Its worth noting that most recent UBI studies have been largely successful. The general consensus is that the increase in the ability for lower income individuals to get out of debt and spend money covers the cost of the UBI, and sometimes ends up with a slight economic gain. That being said, data is still *very* sparse with the only long-term study that exists is Kenya (which has a low-income UBI that has been ongoing since 2016).

My own personal experience with a nearby community that decided about 15 years ago to use their collectively owned business assets to fund a basic income for their members makes very skeptical of the idea. That community has seen their high school graduation rates drop, drug & alcohol abuse have increased, while theft did decline slightly, other crimes like vandalism, domestic abuse, and drunk driving have increased. (I will note this this community has always struggled with a lot of those, but things getting worse and not better is a key point here). This community also has grants to start small businesses, but fewer of their members have bothered to use them since they started the basic income. They have also had to bring in more people from outside the community to actually run their business assets, as fewer of their members want to do any sort of work. Said community is a Native American Tribe that owns a fairly successful casino.

 

[hahahanoobs]

AI replacements don't pay taxes or buy products and services.