Musk’s ‘universal high income’ serves tech oligarchs more than workers

Elon Musk recently proposed giving government payouts to people who lose their jobs to AI. Specifically, he called for “universal high income via checks issued by the Federal government.”

It’s not often that there are so many things wrong with an idea that I don’t quite know where to start. Even Sam Altman, who once spent $14 million to fund a study on universal basic income, said this week that he had changed his mind about the concept. 

We live in a culture that often elevates successful individuals to a kind of universal authority, amplified by social media. So I think it’s important to note that there are people who are accomplished in one area but incompetent in others. Just because Michael Jordan can dunk a basketball doesn’t mean we should put him in charge of NASA. Likewise, just because Musk is a successful entrepreneur does not make him all-knowing in economics or public policy.  

We must first challenge some of the underlying assumptions made by Musk and others about AI. In this case, there is a growing idea that AI will take away numerous jobs without a corresponding shift in the composition of the labor market. But the composition of work has been changing since the country’s founding. There is little evidence so far that AI represents a greater rate of change........

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