- Rapid advances in AI could lead to the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a small elite.
- Anthropik CEO Dario Amodei said universal basic income may not be enough to address this shift.
- He says a broader economic restructuring is needed.
Rapid advances in AI have strengthened power, Wealth is in the hands of a fewThat's why many in the tech industry are calling for universal basic income.
But some AI leaders worry that even UBI might not be enough.
“I guess it's better than nothing,” Anthropik CEO Dario Amodei told TIME magazine, “but I think a world in which everyone can contribute is much better. It would be kind of dystopian if there were a few people who could make trillions of dollars and the government just gave it all away to the general public.”
Amodei, a former OpenAI employee, said: Launching Anthropic in 2021 With my sister, DaniellaHe and five other colleagues at OpenAI believed AI would have a dramatic impact on the world and wanted to create a company that would ensure that AI was consistent with human values, Amodei told TIME, describing the company as one focused on “the public good.”
Many in the tech industry have voiced their support. Universal Basic IncomeThe scheme aims to mitigate the economic impact of AI by providing regular cash payments to all adults in a certain demographic, regardless of wealth or employment status. The idea is that the scheme will act as a safety net for individuals whose jobs are threatened by AI technologies.
But Amodei believes that because AI will fundamentally change society, we need to design more comprehensive solutions: “I think in the long term we need to think hard about how we organize our economy and how humans think about their lives.” Amodei doesn't have an answer, in part because he thinks it needs to be a “dialogue between human beings.”
Amodei isn't the only one thinking beyond universal basic income. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, while a vocal supporter, “Universal Basic ComputingThe idea is that as large-scale language models improve, owning a piece of them will become more valuable than money.
