Ep.126: Freedom in the Age of the Algorithm

About this episode

Tech bros like to blabber about AI and the end of the world. But the more plausible catastrophe they'll unleash is severe inequality and economic distress. As anger and panic grows over the automation of labor, the technology industry is casting around for a new social license to operate. One vogueish idea is some form of Universal Basic Income, or UBI: a regular cash income paid to all, on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. The most important experiment to date into how a basic income could work was funded by Sam Altman of OpenAI, the organization that developed ChatGPT. One thousand people in the US states of Illinois and Texas were given $1,000 a month obligation free between 2020 and 2023. But Altman's vision for how the new-look social assistance would work is deeply flawed. That's the verdict of Philippe Van Parijs, the celebrated philosopher and author of a landmark book on basic income (Harvard, 2017). Altman's recent proposals, where the public gets a share of a promised AI bonanza in exchange for innovation without limits, would fail to protect the public against the vicissitudes that a basic income is meant to address. In this live recording fro