By Lakshmi Varanasi
What happens when you give people $1,000 a month? They start thinking about launching a business.
Earlier this month, the nonprofit OpenResearch published the results of a study in which it gave $1,000 a month in cash payments to low-income residents in urban, suburban, and rural areas of the United States.
The study, funded in part by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, was driven by Altman’s belief that recurring basic income payments might be necessary for an age when AI could make many jobs obsolete.
Many in the AI industry support a so-called universal basic income, which would give regular payments to all people regardless of their financial status. Given the political hurdles such a program would face, many cities are experimenting with a guaranteed basic income on a smaller level instead. Altman’s study tested this version of a basic income.
“So technically, this is not a UBI, because if it were, there would be no income requirement, no age requirement. Every single person within a community would get it. And obviously, that’s really difficult to test,” OpenResearch’s director, Elizabeth Rhodes, said on an episode of the New York Times podcast Hard Fork. “We’re testing more unconditional cash.”
Most participants allocated their monthly stipends toward rent, transportation, and food. Over time, though, the money also contributed to a shift in their mindset.
“One of the things that I found interesting was the growing interest in entrepreneurship and having ideas for businesses,” Rhodes said. “And in a lot of ways, I feel like it gave people some space to sit back and think about what would they do if they had more opportunities.”
The reality is that many low-income Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, taking odd jobs, or overnight shifts. “There are a lot of people, I think, now that are just surviving and maybe work is not providing that sense of meaning and they don’t have those choices,” Rhodes said.
