Universal basic income to be trialled

Angilion said:
The current socioeconomic system is wholly dependent on two things that are completely unsustainable - a continuous increase in population (because it's a form of Ponzi scheme) and a lot of jobs with low pay (the modern version of the peasantry, just with the farming part removed).

A continuous increase in population is obviously impossible. If a reasonable standard of living is possible, population decreases without other externally imposed pressures (e.g. religion).

Automation will continue to increasingly remove ever more paid work. Why would a profit-driven organisation pay a person to do work a machine can do faster and cheaper? The only reason is if the upfront costs of purchasing the automation are high enough for the endemic short-termism of business to deter the switch. And even that's only temporary.

If either of those requirements for the current system fail, the system fails. Both are failing and the failure is increasingly imminent and increasingly impossible to ignore. People who want to ignore it are reduced to ignoring the population issue completely and claiming to believe that completely new paid work will automagically appear from nothing, in a form that nobody can describe in any way.

So radical change will happen and it will happen quite soon. The only question is the nature of the change. Collapse of civilisation? Most people dying as they're no longer required as labour, with the elite finally being free of the necessity of having the poor around making the place look untidy? Extinction of humanity as humans are superseded by machines? Some workable solution humanity cobbles together at the last minute? Is UBI and the associated radical changes to society that it requires that workable solution?
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I think most people will die and the extinction of our society. When has there ever been anything else?

It may be gradual. People become poorer and poorer. Have less and less kids. Die younger and younger as healthcare becomes private, pensions dry up, and more people become poorer.

As long as enough people are benefiting in the short term, there won't be a switch against AI taking jobs.
It would need to threaten everyone.

You'd have to tax companies enough to make AI too expensive to stop it. And it would have to be world wide.


I think the best we can hope for is a gradual 'chosen' extinction.


People have fewer kids, people are funded or cared for until they pass, and aren't replaced. But we are, at the core, selfish and greedy by nature. So it will probably be more district 9.


All governments, world wide, would have to sort this fairly quickly. The slower it is, the worse the end outcome for the average pleb imo.

How can it not be a slow spiral of unravelling? Only with huge restrictions punishing companies for using AI vs people.

I don't see a long term longevity in humanity really. But it may be needed. We can't endlessly grow in population that is required by traditional capitalism
 
krooton said:
I actually think there will be a run on human created content, like literal organic products in a way.
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I could see it going the other way: AIs that perfectly cater to you robbing everyone's attention.

You give them a basic description of what you want to see, and they use all of your other info, your social media likes, your other preferences to generate a media that is perfectly compelling to you. The perfect story, the perfect characters, the perfect sad moments, the perfect jokes, the perfect fake bloopers even, the perfect inauthentic sense of authenticity. Like a totally personalised Netflix series that hacks right into your dopamine reward system.

They'll fine tune this just like they have with social media to get people totally hooked. It'll be like the perfect manifestation of the attention economy. Normal artworks which aren't nearly as bespoke to the individual will seem boring to most, they will struggle to get a look-in just as independent artists struggle against corporate giants today.
 
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Lightnix said:
I could see it going the other way: AIs that perfectly cater to you robbing everyone's attention.

You give them a basic description of what you want to see, and they use all of your other info, your social media likes, your other preferences to generate a media that is perfectly compelling to you. The perfect story, the perfect characters, the perfect sad moments, the perfect jokes, the perfect fake bloopers even, the perfect inauthentic sense of authenticity. Like a totally personalised Netflix series that hacks right into your dopamine reward system.

They'll fine tune this just like they have with social media to get people totally hooked. It'll be like the perfect manifestation of the attention economy. Normal artworks which aren't nearly as bespoke to the individual will seem boring to most, they will struggle to get a look-in just as independent artists struggle against corporate giants today.
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We have a long way to go before that, I don't think someone's social media interaction history is enough to work out why they enjoy the things they enjoy.

There is a stand up comic that both my wife and I love. But there is another that I love and she hates, and vice versa.

Our preferences for things like comedy, story-telling, music, is way more complicated and nuanced than AI can crack right now, it would need to advance to the point where it understands the human psyche far far faaaaar beyond our current understanding.
 
krooton said:
We have a long way to go before that, I don't think someone's social media interaction history is enough to work out why they enjoy the things they enjoy.

There is a stand up comic that both my wife and I love. But there is another that I love and she hates, and vice versa.

Our preferences for things like comedy, story-telling, music, is way more complicated and nuanced than AI can crack right now, it would need to advance to the point where it understands the human psyche far far faaaaar beyond our current understanding.
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I think having a relatively complete picture of what people already enjoy coupled with a fair bit of A/B testing on some representative groups will get us a lot of the way there without that much need for deeper understanding.
 
Lightnix said:
I think having a relatively complete picture of what people already enjoy coupled with a fair bit of A/B testing on some representative groups will get us a lot of the way there without that much need for deeper understanding.
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Knowing we find xyz funny isn't the same as knowing why we find xyz funny.

Spotify recommendations, Netflix algorithm, all fall pretty flat for me personally.
 
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413x said:
I think most people will die and the extinction of our society. When has there ever been anything else?

It may be gradual. People become poorer and poorer. Have less and less kids. Die younger and younger as healthcare becomes private, pensions dry up, and more people become poorer.

As long as enough people are benefiting in the short term, there won't be a switch against AI taking jobs.
It would need to threaten everyone.

You'd have to tax companies enough to make AI too expensive to stop it. And it would have to be world wide.


I think the best we can hope for is a gradual 'chosen' extinction.


People have fewer kids, people are funded or cared for until they pass, and aren't replaced. But we are, at the core, selfish and greedy by nature. So it will probably be more district 9.


All governments, world wide, would have to sort this fairly quickly. The slower it is, the worse the end outcome for the average pleb imo.

How can it not be a slow spiral of unravelling? Only with huge restrictions punishing companies for using AI vs people.

I don't see a long term longevity in humanity really. But it may be needed. We can't endlessly grow in population that is required by traditional capitalism
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What are you on about? :cry:

People don't half go extreme with this stuff. Barring some worldwide natural disaster or nuclear war, the world will be in a better place in 100 years, 500 years time. The trajectory of ourselves is up and up. People have more food, less violence, more freedom, better health, more education than ever before (western world anyway)... Taking the trough of the smaller sine waves over the long term trajectory is daft as ****. No offence or anything :p
 
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krooton said:
Knowing we find xyz funny isn't the same as knowing why we find xyz funny.

Spotify recommendations, Netflix algorithm, all fall pretty flat for me personally.
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I think like with most stuff to do with machine learning, usually it's good enough to know that it works and the "how it works" and "why it works" are more nice to haves than necessary.

And like with those recommendation algorithms, it can still work most of the time for most people on that basis.
 
The job that will go are train drivers. Any half decent AI could guide a train on time between A and B, not stopping for industrial action and decimating ASLEF and RMT. Also the 'workers' who allegedly calculate council tax in a timely and accurate way.

In fact all jobs where people are protected from accusations of poor performance by unionisation and national pay bands. Here's one, have £1600 per month.
 
Bit of a porcelain thought thats probably crap :D

In a way UBI up to a certain income level may work. For example, people are eligible up to the average wage, which I think is £33k this year, however the calculation for the average wage would need to be based on excluding the UBI. If you receive UBI you would only need to earn £14k to hit the average wage so it would be reasonable then to Tax UBI recipients higher as 4 hours a week on minimum wage would get you to the £14k. A minimum wage job at 37hours a week, 52 weeks is £19k So being able to Grab £5k tax on that £19k (essentially double tax) would ensure the person is at the average UK wage of £33k but also heavily taxing that additional income to rake some of the cost back.


The choice would then be, dont work get £19k a year or work and get £33k a year after taxes. It does kill the part time work option a bit as there isn’t much point in working part time if you receive UBI as you would be taxed heavily on it and I guess it puts the onus on either not working at all or working a fulltime minimum wage job and getting £33k a year. Personally, I would take the UBI and work a min wage job to hit the £33k a year minimum. If anything it might help keep a higher employment rate in the low paid job market.

If you earn the average UK wage at £33k (without the UBI) then you aren’t eligible for UBI anymore and you go back to normal tax on your £33k+ a year job
 
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413x said:
I think most people will die and the extinction of our society. When has there ever been anything else?

It may be gradual. People become poorer and poorer. Have less and less kids. Die younger and younger as healthcare becomes private, pensions dry up, and more people become poorer.

As long as enough people are benefiting in the short term, there won't be a switch against AI taking jobs.
It would need to threaten everyone.

You'd have to tax companies enough to make AI too expensive to stop it. And it would have to be world wide.


I think the best we can hope for is a gradual 'chosen' extinction.


People have fewer kids, people are funded or cared for until they pass, and aren't replaced. But we are, at the core, selfish and greedy by nature. So it will probably be more district 9.


All governments, world wide, would have to sort this fairly quickly. The slower it is, the worse the end outcome for the average pleb imo.

How can it not be a slow spiral of unravelling? Only with huge restrictions punishing companies for using AI vs people.

I don't see a long term longevity in humanity really. But it may be needed. We can't endlessly grow in population that is required by traditional capitalism
Click to expand...
Have you ever considered being an optimist? :p

On a more serious note, we will end up with a more equitable economy, with some form of UBI, sooner or later.

Because if we don't, it's only a matter of time before the 'have nots' have enough....and eat the rentier parasitic rich.
 
Hagar said:
The job that will go are train drivers. Any half decent AI could guide a train on time between A and B, not stopping for industrial action and decimating ASLEF and RMT. Also the 'workers' who allegedly calculate council tax in a timely and accurate way.

In fact all jobs where people are protected from accusations of poor performance by unionisation and national pay bands. Here's one, have £1600 per month.
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Accountants, many rolls in IT ect pretty much anything that’s computer based can be replaced. Investment bankers the list is endless.

Tradesmen will be safe for a while, I’ll be fine if I choose to stay where I am. I’ll happy swap my job to stay at home though.
 
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