Britain’s investment minister has revealed there are talks within government about introducing a universal basic income to support workers in industries likely to be wiped out by AI.
Lord Jason Stockwood, who joined the government in September after a career in tech, told the FT he believed that “bumpy” changes to society caused by AI would mean there would have “to be some sort of concessionary arrangement with jobs that go immediately”.
“Undoubtedly we’re going to have to think really carefully about how we soft-land those industries that go away, so some sort of [universal basic income], some sort of life-long mechanism as well so people can retrain,” he said.
UBI is not official government policy [in the UK], but asked if other government colleagues were considering the need for UBI, he replied, “people are definitely talking about it”.
Stockwood said one of his motives for stepping into the job left by Poppy Gustafsson, the former Darktrace chief executive who resigned after less than a year, was ensuring steps were being taken to prepare for the rapid changes to society and the UK workforce.
Stockwood’s comments come in the same week that the chief executive of Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI companies, warned of “unusually painful” disruption to jobs markets as AI was a “general labour substitute for humans”.
Sadiq Khan, London mayor, also warned this month of a potential “new era of mass unemployment” caused by AI.
Technology secretary Liz Kendall acknowledged on Wednesday that “some jobs will go” as a result of AI, citing initial concerns about entry-level roles in finance and law.
Kendall argued that “more jobs will be created than will go, but I’m not complacent about that”. She added that the government would help people adapt. “We will not leave individuals and communities to cope on their own”.
Stockwood has previously suggested that tech companies could pay a windfall levy to fund UBI payments.
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UBI will never happen. There will be too many right wing grifting gammons like Farage, Lowe and Mogg who continually put it down
More to the point. Taxing enough to pay it. Would make the billionaires investing in AI pointless. So such billionaires will never let it happen.
No one is investing in AI for the good of a nation. Just to save money on their own staffing costs.
Just like here in the states, I have talked to a lot of people who firmly believe universal healthcare is not possible here because we can’t afford it. The brainwashing from the people in power with all of the money telling us we can’t have basic things is pretty crazy.
We can’t have universal healthcare, but we can send billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, which does. 🤡
Exactly. We can’t have universal healthcare but we can have a TRILLION dollar defense budget. Great! And on top of that, our “president” also is getting European countries to increase their defense spending which will eat away at social programs so, that’s cool too. Who needs to directly help improve the quality of life for people when we can have more bombs?
So long as private industry owns the resources necessary to sustain life, there will be no ubi. Ambitious men and women do not willingly give up their wealth and power.
The only reason AI is so dangerous is that many humans completely lose their minds when they hear about it.
I love this meme format.
Paul Revere: “The British are Coming!”
KBal: “The only reason the British are dangerous is because many humans completely lose their minds when they hear about it.”So you’re saying that the reason the British Empire conquered the world was that everyone just spontaneously decided that they were so awesome that it made sense to give them all the money and resources, and invite them to run everything?
Oh no, I agree that the rich have invested too much into AI to have no choice but to evangelize its usage. I just took issue with your framing that humans in general are stupid when it comes to perceived threats, and used a famous line before an invasion to punctuate it
The madness we collectively suffer from with respect to AI comes from vastly exaggerated estimates of its powers, mainly by those who covet the power they think it will give them. That’s all my original comment was intending to say.
Those who are credulous enough to shun AI because they fear that it will soon enslave humanity by the sheer force of its magnificently irresistible intellectual superpowers are also around, but although the pervasive criti-hype is exhausting, it’s obviously not the cause of our current troubles. If that’s what you thought I was talking about, perhaps you are among them?
Anyway I can’t believe the mania hasn’t burnt itself out yet. Maybe next year.
If that’s what you thought I was talking about, perhaps you are among them?
Who am I, but a servant of the great powers sent to dismantle your impassable fortitude…
Jesus calm your tits, plenty of people don’t see AI itself as the problem but the way it is currently being wielded, is. The Luddites weren’t anti-machine, they were more than happy to use the new tech, but not for a loss of livelihood. That. That’s what people refer to when they say AI is bad, and I think you know that.
Yeah — I was just trying to guess at what prompted your initial reaction. I still don’t get it. Now it seems like you’re saying approximately the same thing my initial comment did.
I think we’re in violent agreement with each other, you tit!
It is possible. Because the rich and powerful go totally bonkers when AI comes up.
Why do you think the rich are so keen to see it. Sure as hell not to increase the cost of doing business.
I’ll buy AI will never have the power claimed. But it already has the power to replace a metric fuck ton of jobs. And lots of the so called rich and powerful are working fucking hard to make sure folks feel comfortable relying on it.
You have to be pretty blind to think they are doing that for any other reason then to enhance there own position on the inequality scale.
“AI can’t do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a chatbot that can’t do your job.”
The typical return on investment for spending on AI is zero.
It’s also actively destroying the planet
Yes, because humans completely lose their minds when they hear about it. Mostly the ones with lots of money.
