Tech leaders have long called for a universal basic income<\/a>, or UBI, to offset job loss due to artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n A universal basic income is generally considered a monthly government stipend for the entire population. It differs from the guaranteed basic income programs<\/a> that many cities and states are experimenting with these days. Those typically provide recurring payments to a specific population based on socioeconomic status. So far, most of these experiments have offered cash payments between $500 and $1,500 a month.<\/p>\n Brundage said on X this week, however, that policymakers should be thinking bigger.<\/p>\n “I think that a significantly more generous UBI experiment than has been tried so far (say, $10k\/month vs. $1k\/month) would show big effects,” he wrote.<\/p>\n Brundage said this would be possible due to the impacts AI will have on the economy.<\/p>\n Related stories<\/p>\n Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know<\/p>\n Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know<\/p>\n “$1k\/month is relevant to what’s feasible policy-wise today,” Brundage said. “$10k\/month is relevant to what will be feasible policy-wise in a few years with AI-enabled growth.”<\/p>\n AI Advancements are already threatening some entry-level jobs<\/a>. Many AI industry leaders<\/a>, including Elon Musk, have championed <\/strong>basic income programs. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman <\/strong>helped fund one of the largest basic income studies,<\/a> which gave recipients $1,000 monthly for three years.<\/p>\n Brundage resigned as OpenAI’s senior policy advisor and head of the AGI readiness team in 2024. In a blog post at the time, he said labor disruptions caused by AI was top of mind for him.<\/p>\n “In the near-term, I worry a lot about AI disrupting opportunities for people who desperately want work, but I think it’s simultaneously true that humanity should eventually remove the obligation to work for a living and that doing so is one of the strongest arguments for building AI and AGI in the first place,” Brundage wrote.<\/p>\n Brundage said our current systems aren’t prepared to address that reality right now.<\/p>\n “That is not something we’re prepared for politically, culturally, or otherwise, and needs to be part of the policy conversation. A naive shift toward a post-work world risks civilizational stagnation (see: WALL-E), and much more thought and debate about this is needed,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Would you be interested in a $10,000 monthly check with no strings attached? That’s a reality that former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,16584,289,290,16579,18,16583,16581,16582,19,17,16588,2686,16585,16587,4727,1045,16586,82,4612,16580],"class_list":{"0":"post-18858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-enabled-growth","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-brundage","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-feasible-policy-wise-today","15":"tag-few-year","16":"tag-former-openai-researcher","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-many-city","20":"tag-month","21":"tag-monthly-ubi","22":"tag-opportunity","23":"tag-payment","24":"tag-reality","25":"tag-senior-policy-advisor","26":"tag-technology","27":"tag-top","28":"tag-universal-basic-income"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/placeholder.png\")
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