With artificial intelligence (AI) rendering more and more jobs obsolete, some tech titans in Silicon Valley say the solution lies in giving everyone a universal basic income (UBI).

In the 1960s, economists and welfare-rights activists began pushing the idea of UBI as a solution to poverty. Karl Widerquist, a philosophy professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, told The Wall Street Journal that job-loss fears that decade, stoked by the rise of mainframe computers, got proponents wondering if UBI could be the solution to the displacement problem.

At best, UBI is thought of by many as a taxpayer-funded system that rewards idleness. At worst, it’s considered a harbinger of socialism. But tech moguls see a future where AI does the work currently being done by humans and funds revenue that can be shared through an enormous wealth redistribution system.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and Twitter (now known as X) co-founder Jack Dorsey have reportedly poured millions into pilot UBI projects over the past several years and some current UBI trial programs share donor and grant money with individuals or families.

The Proponents of More Cash + Less Work

• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI: Beginning in 2016, Altman funded an experiment that gave $1,000 in cash payments to a group of low-income individuals each month for three years. Elizabeth Rhodes, who ran the OpenResearch study, told the Journal that recipients worked slightly less and spent the money mostly on basic necessities. In a July appearance on Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast, Altman said he now believes in an idea called “universal extreme wealth,” in which everyone could receive “an ownership share in whatever the AI creates,” instead of money. This would allow the wealth generated by AI to be spread across the population.
• Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX: Musk reportedly subscribes to the idea of “universal high income,” which holds that AI will automate most production and the public can share in the resulting revenue. In May, Musk said that universal income could create a “Star Trek future,” complete with “a level of prosperity and hopefully happiness that we can’t quite imagine yet.” He also cautioned that humanity could end up with a “Terminator” future if it’s not careful.
• Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce: An evangelist for UBI, Benioff has said that up to half of the work done at Salesforce is now performed by AI. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he said that the stimulus checks were a model for broader system of income distribution. As automation advances, supplemental income will be needed “for those who cannot be retrained, and even those traditionally not compensated for raising a family or volunteering to help others,” Benioff wrote in a Fortune article.

But not everyone in Silicon Valley, or the general public, believes that UBI is a goal worth striving for.

Silicon Valley’s UBI Critics

• David Autor, a labor economist at MIT: Autor told the Journal that a society in which most of the income is distributed from a few sources is frightening and a “political fantasy land.” The reason tech executives support the concept of UBI is because “they think they’re gonna put everyone out of work [with AI] and they don’t have a better idea for what to do about that,” he said.
• Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist: In his 2023 “techno-optimist manifesto,” Andreessen argued that “[m]an was meant to be useful, to be productive, to be proud.” According to the Journal’s report, he thinks AI’s transformative effects will be felt by nearly every job. UBI is unnecessary, he wrote on Substack, because government will likely step in to subsidize most industries.
• David Sacks, the Trump administration’s AI czar: In June, Sacks posted on X that UBI is a “fantasy” of “welfare” that is “not going to happen.” Tech CEOs looking to profit from the explosion in AI push the idea of handing out free money to ease society’s concerns about potential job losses, Sacks said, but that doesn’t ultimately help people.