The person making this claim, Miles Brundage, has a distinguished background in AI policy research, including being head of Policy Research at OpenAI from 2018 to 24. Which is all the more reason to ask skeptical questions about claims like this.
What economists agree with this claim? (Where are citations/sources to back this claim?)
How will it come about politically? (Some countries are so polarised, they seem they'd prefer a civil war to anything as left-wing as UBI).
What would inflation be like if everyone had $10K UBI? (Would eggs be $1,000 a dozen?)
All the same, I'm glad he's at least brave enough to seriously face what most won't. It's just such a shame, as economists won't face this, we're left to deal with source-light discussion that doesn't rise much above anecdotes and opinions.
Former OpenAI researcher says a $10,000 monthly UBI will be 'feasible' with AI-enabled growth
Former OpenAI Head of Policy Research says a $10,000 monthly UBI will be 'feasible' with AI-enabled growth.
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
32 Comments
>What would inflation be like if everyone had $10K UBI? (Would eggs be $1,000 a dozen?)
$1000/dozen is probably an exaggeration (eggsageration?), but they would very likely be much more than they are today.
Feasible? Even if so not a fucking chance the poors are “allowed” 120k a year
1) this person has no idea what he’s blabbering about
2) having your mean of sustainance tied to the goodwill of corporate overlords and politicians it’s not a good idea
$3K monthly UBI is feasible now, yet we don’t do it.
I am so sick and tired of this bullshit.
EVERYONE rattles on about UBI this and UBI that and this guy spouts $10,000 a month.
HOW IS IT FINANCED?
No one actually tells us that ,its like a magical money pot will appear from no one working or paying taxes.
Big business is taxed through the roof to pay for it? Sure, then big business basically controls government.
The uber wealthy get hyper taxed to pay for it? Same challenge.
UBI is not some panacea for the AI challenge its just a buzzword to shut everyone up and make us think things will be fine. Dig under the buzzword and there is nothing of any substance because no one has come up with a real idea to fund it.
And no I don’t have the answer – thats way above my pay grade.
Bruh, we literally need to take out all of the billionaires (with taxes) or this planet is fucking cooked. Ain’t no AI fucking enabled growth gonna save anyone as long as billionaires suckin out all the money from all of us.
This can’t work. Demand and supply can’t work. People HAVE to be poor for the richer people to enjoy luxury, and I doubt they want to give up luxury. Your 10k will feel like 2k. But at least you won’t have to work anymore and on a 15 minutes radius you will be able to reach all you need.
I can’t speak for economists, but I’m the cofounder of a nonprofit think tank whose mission is to study the macroeconomics of UBI.
We emphasize that an inflation-free UBI is possible right now.
By gradually adjusting a UBI upwards, we can discover how much UBI is sustainable without any loss in production.
New developments such as AI do not enable UBI; they increase the ceiling on how much UBI is possible.
Even if the UBI is funded entirely through deficit-spending, inflation can be avoided by calibrating the UBI appropriately. Calibration ensures that aggregate nominal spending does not become excessive.
There are real limits on UBI spending, and these limits are determined by the economy’s capacity to produce goods and its need for labor.
As long as we mind these limits, a UBI is entirely consistent with traditional price stability goals / need not cause inflation.
My colleagues and I have published working papers online that go into the theory and mechanics of UBI in detail.
http://www.greshm.org/resources
To be clear, that is more than 10x what the fed collects in income tax annually.
These tech leaders literally don’t even realize the hyperbolic garbage they spew out about AI’s capabilities, growth and the timeline to get to superintelligence. Every failure and missed deadline is somehow just a minor blip/setback.
If it was at least to pump up your stock price, while still bad, at least there’s a rational reason.
These guys actually believe what they’re saying is true, which is so much worse.
Targeted government assistance and Medicare for all is feasible now. That doesn’t mean oligarchs or our authoritarian government will do it.
Former open ai head spews garbage comment that triggers the poors and non technocrat masses.
Some of these people need to be Marie Antoinetted for thier “let them eat cake” style comments
VCs be like: “Or….and hear me out now, 100 people can get $1B monthly!”
Feasible? Of course. Actually convincing the dumbfucks to implement it? Lol no.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-openai-miles-brundage-ubi-ai-jobs-market-2025-8
Feasible (plausibility aside) has ZERO relevance to expecting altruism from those who have control of that money.
How is someone from OpenAI remotely qualified to comment on economics?
I mean, it’s feasible right now through, uh, *checks notes* progressive taxation.
Lies told by the butcher to the sheep to shear the wool one last time. Disgusting.
If history shows the rich only grant reforms when their power is threatened, why should we believe UBI is a gift of compassion rather than a new leash? The exploiters need the exploited to keep working , but with automation making workers redundant, do they offer UBI out of care, or just to manage the “surplus population” so revolt doesn’t break out? Is it welfare, or is it crowd control?
TLDR: unemployed man says “$1k/month is relevant to what’s feasible policy-wise today,” and “$10k/month is relevant to what will be feasible policy-wise in a few years with AI-enabled growth.” No source. Kewl. :/
Here’s my take. This claim is just some random number that he spouts but something like that is definitely possible, and it’s not quite the same as the idea of UBI being touted now.
So UBI right now at any substantial level is not going to work, primarily because goods have to be produced by people and simply distributing more money will not magically create more wealth (as in actual goods, services or housing). The consequence will be runaway inflation and a decrease in everyone’s standards of living since there’s more money but less housing, goods and food to go around (unless everyone starts working much longer hours under UBI; it’s likely to be the opposite!).
Now if the production is done by robots, and the robots are massively productive, enough to create 120k in annual value per person (e.g., they grow food, cut your hair, cook, entertain, educate, etc), then UBI becomes possible. In this scenario, UBI just becomes a way to distribute and ration the machine-generated wealth across all humans. Of course if robots are so productive it would also imply that humans wouldn’t have jobs since very few humans are currently productive enough to generate 120k of value per year, most people’s work would be negligible compared to the robots’ output. That’s what this UBI claim implies: we’d have robot slaves that would do literally everything AND the wealth would be shared equally amongst all humans. Although this is an unlikely scenario, it is economically possible.
What Growth? The Bubble’s about to burst precisely because of the over estimates of ai capabilities to take over tasks.
Yeah, even if this is economically with the realm of possibility (which I highly doubt), there’s no way in hell that all the billionaires and their pets in Congress are going to allow this.
They already treat their employees and customers like utter crap even when they genuinely need and rely on them, even when it’s outright detrimental to their own business, why would they decide to be nice when they no longer needs us for anything?
This just gets so fucking ridiculous – clearly their business plan is to just make shit up.
Isn’t that socialism/communism though? I thought those Billionaire class people are against helping the less well off…
Did AI hallucinate and write this? $120k / year UBI will put inflation into the stratosphere.
You have to be so totally out of touch to think the wealthy will give people UBI when their jobs are replaced by automation. Given the choice between a sixth yacht and UBI, they’ll choose to just let you fucking die and enjoy the yacht. Non-inflationary UBI is possible right this minute, there’s a reason it’s not happening.
since when have technological efficiencies not just resulted in unemployment and more work for those left standing?
They just cut taxes to the ultra rich monopolistic corporations and took away health insurance from people who need it the most. Sure, they will give $10K/mo without a revolution.
# “Former OpenAI Head of Policy Research” doesn’t understand(purposefully or not) how economics or inflation works.
Am just hopping the bubble would pop soon enough, no one is buying this shit anymore