Anxiety about being automated out of meaningful work is not new. It’s followed every major technological shift, and predates algorithms and AGI. In his 1930 essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” John Maynard Keynes warned of technological unemployment by which labor-saving technologies could advance faster than society’s ability to create new jobs. Writing amid factory electrification and the spread of the moving assembly line, Keynes anticipated a period of painful adjustment marked by widespread unemployment. That reckoning, as it turned out, never arrived.
Eighty years after Keynes’ death, few have managed to avoid the fear of AGI-driven unemployment. Already, the concept of AGI is disrupting the global economy, tanking entry level jobs and concentrating wealth within an emerging oligopoly. The race is on to create a form of intelligence that can run large swaths of the economy without human intervention. As those forces begin to take hold, calls for a universal basic income (UBI) guarantee are getting louder. Increasingly, it’s being framed as the most “humane” response to an AI-powered contraction of work.
At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos in January, JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon acknowledged that AI will eliminate jobs, not merely transform them. If deployment outpaces society’s ability to adapt, he warned, the result could be social unrest. Dimon went further than many of his peers, suggesting that governments and businesses might need to collaborate on income support for displaced workers, incentives to slow deployment in the most disruptive sectors, and even temporary limits on layoffs.
In the past week alone, signals of this ilk have abounded. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has suggested that companies, including his own, pay employees long after they cease to generate economic value “in the traditional sense.” In the UK, investment minister Jason Stockwood told the Financial Times that policymakers are actively considering whether universal basic income might be necessary. Such remarks are a departure from the familiar corporate refrain that reskilling alone will suffice, and signify an inflection point in how societies plan to cope with labor disruption.
Momentum around a basic income guarantee (BIG), or universal basic income, has been building for decades, and draws support from across the political spectrum. Defined as a modest, regular cash payment, to every legal resident in the community, paid unconditionally as a right, regardless of income, employment or relationship status. Experts see it as an “ideological middle ground” that appeals to both progressives and libertarians. Karl Widerquist, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, argues that BIG’s current and “third wave” began in the 2010s and has strengthened with each passing year.
For some experts, encroaching automation is yet another reason, among many, to support UBI. Dr Guy Standing, a British economist and founder of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), an NGO that promotes basic income as a right, believes that in the era of AGI, the use case for basic income is more robust than ever. “People who are taking from the common; the resources, land, water, and atmosphere needed to power AI are making huge profits at the cost of those who are being denied access to them,” he tells AGI Ethics News. A basic income, Standing argues, could help anchor a new form of social consensus, funded by the proceeds of those shared resources.
Critics warn that unconditional cash payments would discourage work. The weight of evidence from existing pilots, however, points in the opposite direction. Participants who receive a guaranteed income tend to experience improved employment outcomes and greater economic stability. A secure income floor can make it easier to take short-term or insecure work, invest in training, or pursue entrepreneurial projects that might otherwise be out of reach.
Long-running trials evidence broader effects, too. Participants often show more future-oriented behaviour, including higher rates of saving, increased plans for further education and a greater likelihood of developing business ideas. Writing in 2017, the historian Rutger Bregman described a universal basic income as “venture capital for people.” At a minimum, it can allow individuals to step back from the labor market temporarily to retrain or transition into lower-paid but more promising roles. Across multiple pilots, researchers have also documented reductions in infant mortality and harmful substance use, alongside improvements in physical and mental health and modest boosts to local economies. It’s not a panacea, but its effects are hard to deny.
Yet in imagining the economic possibilities for our grandchildren — or, if AGI accelerates as expected, our children — we must resist sliding into a future in which the same governments and corporations that fund income guarantees also prescribe approved forms of activity for recipients. History offers a clear warning. When monetary support is tied to conditions and compliance, it generates stigma and control, not autonomy. Under the cosh of workfare requirements, sanctions regimes, and expanding systems of surveillance, welfare recipients have long been treated as objects of suspicion.
“In Britain, the state spends billions on Universal Credit, chasing people up to see if they’re fulfilling the criteria and they hardly find any fraud at all,” says Dr. Standing. “So why not just stop wasting all that money, and let people find their own way to improve their lives?” The cost, he argues, is not only financial. Conditional systems often erode psychological security, forcing people to repeatedly demonstrate their worthiness in exchange for modest support. A basic income worthy of the name cannot replicate those dynamics in an AGI era. If economic security is granted only in return for approved behaviour, it becomes a tool of discipline rather than a platform for freedom.
Nor is a future with less paid work necessarily one to fear. The greater risk lies in sleepwalking into a world where meaning itself is outsourced. Institutions including the World Economic Forum and McKinsey have suggested that AI systems could help “match” people to purposeful activity as traditional employment contracts. But delegating such judgments to platforms or algorithms risks narrowing human value to what is trackable and ripe for “optimization.”. It raises uncomfortable questions about who defines contribution — and whose forms of work, care or creativity are deemed to count.
If AI systems play any role in allocating income or opportunity, strong societal safeguards and genuinely independent oversight will be essential. Without them, the door is flung open to new forms of coercion and social sorting, particularly for those already marginalized.
Just as crucial will be how any AGI-era basic income is framed. At a time when far-right politics are feeding on narratives of resentment and exclusion, this cannot be presented as charity or a residual safety net for the few. “Alongside safeguarding and improving welfare policy, we’ve got to build this around a promise of basic security,” says Standing. “Any government planning to introduce a basic income should present it as a matter of justice, not welfare.”
AGI Ethics questions raised in this piece:
- How can good actors determine if/when a UBI is necessary?
- What role should society play in identifying ‘meaningful’ activity or work for people on an AGI-era basic guaranteed income?
- What are the dangers of letting platforms or AI systems decide what counts as meaningful activity or work?
Megan Carnegie is a London-based independent journalist who reports on technology, work, and business for publications like Fast Company, Business Insider, and BBC. Her work is underpinned by a desire to investigate what’s not working in the working world and how more equitable conditions can be secured for workers. You can reach her at megancarnegiejournalist@gmail.