NPR, July 22, 2024, As New Tech Threatens Jobs, Silicon Valley Promotes No-Strings Cash Aid
The rise of artificial intelligence has stoked fears that such technological advances will wipe out millions of jobs. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have thought about that too, and they’ve long pushed an idea to soften the blow: cash aid from the government, no strings attached.
Now, the first results are out from the latest and largest study on the impacts of free money — research spearheaded by the man behind ChatGPT.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, offered to fund an experiment on what’s termed basic income back in 2016. In a blog post that year, he said some kind of national payments would likely be needed as technology killed more jobs even as it generated massive wealth for others. So, he said, it would be good to study what might happen if people got regular paychecks from the government.
