Recent advances in artificial intelligence are stunning--but they do not justify basic income

Not a day goes by when we do not hear about the threat of AI taking over the jobs of everyone from truck drivers to accountants to radiologists. An analysis coming out of McKinsey suggested that "currently demonstrated technologies could automate 45 percent of the activities people are paid to perform." There are even online tools based on research from the University of Oxford to estimate the probability that various jobs will be automated. This concern that progress in AI will make most human labor obsolete has led some to call for a (universal) basic income, in which all citizens periodically and unconditionally receive money from the state (see "Basic Income: A Sellout of the American Dream"). Y Combinator, a prominent startup incubator in Silicon Valley, will run a pilot study of basic income in Oakland, California, and its president has stated that "at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we're going to see some version of this at a national scale."