The Gig is Up
As it becomes increasingly clear that artificial intelligence and other technologies are going to be history’s most aggressive job killers, more people (in Silicon Valley and elsewhere) are re-examining the possibility that a universal basic income could provide a solution. But as NYT Mag’s Annie Lowrey reports, “No experiment has been truly complete, studying what happens when you give a whole community money for an extended period of time — when nobody has to worry where his or her next meal is coming from or fear the loss of a job or the birth of a child.” But now, in a few villages in Kenya, a non-profit is looking to run the biggest such experiment yet. And it’s already underway. “Just like that, with peals of ululation and children breaking into dance in front of the strangers, the whole village was lifted out of extreme poverty.” Can test cases in some of the least automated places in the world provide clues to our survival in places where AI is already taking over? This is the future of not working.
+ The Outline: AI and automation are about to implode blue collar jobs. (And AI doesn’t care about trade agreements or what silly, little humans try to do when it comes to securing borders.)
+ “When you talk about God and religion, in the end it’s all a question of authority. What is the highest source of authority that you turn to when you have a problem in your life? A thousand years ago you’d turn to the church. Today, we expect algorithms to provide us with the answer—who to date, where to live, how to deal with an economic problem. So more and more authority is shifting to these corporations.” From Wired: Sorry, Y’All — Humanity’s Nearing an Upgrade to Irrelevance.
+ Last week, Mark Zuckerberg shared his thoughts on how Facebook can improve the world. This week, the always excellent Ben Thompson responds with a piece called Manifestos and Monopolies: “Is there anyone who believes that a private company run by an unaccountable all-powerful person that tracks your every move for the purpose of selling advertising is the best possible form said global governance should take?”