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Artificial Intelligence Can’t Work Without Our Data. We Should All Be Paid For It.

Artificial Intelligence Can’t Work Without Our Data. We Should All Be Paid For It.

For four decades, Alaskans have opened their mailboxes to find checks waiting for them, their cut of the black gold beneath their feet. This is Alaska’s Permanent Fund, funded by the state’s oil revenues and paid to every Alaskan each year. We’re now in a different sort of resource rush, with companies peddling bits instead of oil: generative AI.

Minnesota can reduce police brutality with guaranteed basic income

Opinion: We can reduce police brutality with guaranteed basic income

The recent court-enforceable settlement agreement between the city of Minneapolis and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights could be a historic step in combating police brutality. However, the agreement fails to contextualize police brutality as a byproduct of poverty. By failing to recognize the role of poverty in over-policing, it disincentivizes the city, and the state from instituting long-term, anti-poverty measures, such as guaranteed basic income that would address a root cause of crime that in turn plays a role in police brutality. 

Artificial Intelligence + Basic Income = Innovation

Artificial intelligence + basic income = Canadian innovation

The recent explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the workforce. ChatGPT reached 100 million users in just two months after its launch. It and other generative AI applications have the potential to increase the efficiency of more than 50 per cent of all worker tasks in the U.S., with no loss in quality. A recent report estimates that AI’s boost to labour productivity can increase annual global GDP by seven per cent over a 10-year period.

The circle of obligation and the mandatory-participation “social contract” (Mandatory Participation on Trial, Part 12)

The circle of obligation and the mandatory-participation “social contract” (Mandatory Participation on Trial, Part 12)

Many people have imagined a workers’ revolution that cuts out property owners and establishes a true circle-of-obligation. As always, let me see the plan. Maybe it solves some of the problems I’ve mentioned, but no plan solves the insider-outsider problems inherent in politics. Wishful thinking about everyone becoming better people after the revolution won’t make the self-serving bias of people in power go away.

Are guaranteed-income programs in Illinois working?

Are guaranteed-income programs in Illinois working?

Thousands of Chicago and Cook County residents got $500 a month the past year from programs that are aiming to give people a little financial cushion.

When Jailyn Brown was selected to join a pilot program that gives cash to people struggling to make ends meet, the 23-year-old could hardly get enough hours at the retail store in Chicago where she worked to cover her expenses.

What if everyone were entitled to a universal basic income?

What if everyone were entitled to a universal basic income?

News that a universal basic income (UBI) is to be trialled at two locations in England, paying 30 people £1,600 a month regardless of their work, has sent shockwaves through the tabloids.

“Something for nothing” is the way working-class Conservatives have always described out-of-work benefits, with the implication that those receiving them were “spongers”. The idea of actually paying people a good subsistence wage, whether they work or not, is – well – just not capitalism.

Universal basic dividend as a form of welfare

Universal basic dividend as a form of welfare

Universal basic dividend (UBD) is a mechanism by which each member of a given society receives a regular payment, with no or very limited conditionality, typically based on recognising the value of common resources, or of public investment in the capitalist economy. This post explores the potential benefits and limitations of this idea, summarising the policy brief recently published by the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.