Anthropic CEO says we need to think bigger than a universal basic income if we want to solve the AI inequality problem
- Some fear that rapid advances in AI may concentrate power and wealth among a small elite.
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says a universal basic income may not sufficiently address such a shift.
The rapid advances in AI could consolidate power and wealth in the hands of a small few, which is why many in the tech industry have called for a universal basic income.
But some AI leaders say even UBI, a recurring cash payment to those in a given population regardless of their wealth or employment status, wouldn't be enough.
"I certainly think that's better than nothing," Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Time. "But I would much prefer a world in which everyone can contribute. It would be kind of dystopian if there are these few people that can make trillions of dollars, and then the government hands it all out to the unwashed masses."
Amodei, a former OpenAI employee, launched Anthropic in 2021 with his sister, Daniela, and five other OpenAI colleagues. They believed AI would have a dramatic impact on the world and wanted to build a company that would ensure it was aligned with human values. Amodei described the company to Time as one focused on "public benefit."
Many in the tech industry have expressed support for universal basic income to mitigate the economic impact of AI. The idea is that it would act as a safety net for people whose jobs have been threatened by the technology.
But Amodei suggests that AI will alter society in such a fundamental way that we need to design a more comprehensive solution. "I think in the long run, we're really going to need to think about how do we organize the economy and how humans think about their lives?" He doesn't have the answer, he said, in part because he believes it needs to be a "conversation among humanity."
Amodei isn't the only one thinking beyond universal basic income. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, while a vocal proponent of it, has also proposed the idea of a "universal basic compute." The idea is that as large language models advance, owning a slice of one will be more valuable than money.