When will AI necessitate a Universal Basic Income?
So imo, one of the logical conclusions of AI automation is a universal basic income that fully meets people's needs (let's call that a "full UBI"). If one day, 99% of jobs as we know them were automated, at that point I think the vast majority of people would want a full UBI, which is much higher than what most countries offer today, if they have a UBI at all.
But what I'm wondering is: what is the tipping point? Clearly the current level of automation isn't sufficient to get everyone on board with UBI. But some people have predicted that 50% of jobs could be automated within 20 years: if 50% of jobs went away, would you want a full UBI? What about 70%?
I thought it'd be interesting to get people's opinions on this forum, given so many are building with AI, or otherwise have less traditional or more independent forms of employment.
Replies
UBI is useful, period. Depending on the country's wealth, productivity, level of corruption, it can be more or less. But on the whole, the sooner countries adopt it the better.
Parsagon
@yakov_keselman Totally agree, though what I'm talking about is a full UBI, which differs from UBI as we think about it today. Most UBI programs being considered or implemented today give only a very small amount of money. For example, Finland's pilot program gave about 500 euros per month. But if all jobs were automated, and many people fully relied on UBI, you would likely have to give something more like 5,000 euros to have a UBI that allowed people to live comfortably in, say, Helsinki. I'm wondering at what point such an extreme UBI becomes politically feasible/has popular support.
@sand1929 Agreed, but even $500/mo is a huge leap from $0/mo. I don't see it anywhere in the US anytime soon. There have been pilots here and there but their benefits are difficult to quantify.
Interesting thought, and I think you're right — full UBI feels inevitable if we hit a point where a large majority of jobs are automated and productivity gains aren’t distributed fairly. But the tipping point won’t be purely technological — it’ll be economic and political. If 50–70% of jobs are displaced and people don’t have viable alternatives (gig work, entrepreneurship, creator economy), demand for a full UBI will spike fast.
At the same time, we’re not quite there yet. At Growstack, we build AI to automate repetitive business workflows, and what we’re seeing is a shift — AI is reducing “grunt work,” not entire jobs (yet). The immediate impact is more solo founders and lean teams doing what used to take 3–5 people. That’s a productivity leap, but also a warning: the middle layer of work might vanish before we’ve built safety nets.
So yes — UBI will become necessary. But we’ll likely see hybrid models first (partial UBI, job credits, automation tax), especially as AI expands into white-collar work at scale.