The investment minister Jason Stockwood's remarks come as research shows the UK is losing more jobs than it is creating because of AI. The investment minister Jason Stockwood's remarks come as research shows the UK is losing more jobs than it is creating because of AI. Lord Stockwood says people in government'definitely' talking about idea as technology disrupts industries ESTLast modified on Thu 29 Jan 2026 03.59 EST The UK could introduce a universal basic income to protect workers in industries that are being disrupted by AI, the investment minister Jason Stockwood has said. "Bumpy" changes to society caused by the introduction of the technology would mean there would have to be "some sort of concessionary arrangement with jobs that go immediately", Lord Stockwood said. The Labour peer told the Financial Times: "Undoubtedly we're going to have to think really carefully about how we soft-land those industries that go away, so some sort of [universal basic income], some sort of lifelong mechanism as well so people can retrain."

The automation of work, understood as the process by which human labour is replaced by machines, is also a cause for scholarly concern across different disciplines. For some scholars, the large-scale deployment of AI in the workplace amounts to a'Fourth Industrial Revolution' or a'Second Machine Age', threatening to render human work--nay, humankind in its entirety--obsolete [3],[6]. Even despite the potential introduction of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), which could in principle guarantee citizens' livelihood, it is argued that policymakers would still need to safeguard work, since it bears intrinsic value that transcends the instrumental value of a paycheck [8]. AI-driven automation is, hence, largely framed as a threat to be counteracted by law. Nonetheless, the axiological superiority of work as an intrinsically valuable activity and the insistence on its preservation, even if humans' sustenance could be otherwise secured, should not be taken for granted.

Silicon Valley billionaires and anti-poverty activists don't have a lot in common, but in recent years they've joined forces around a shared enthusiasm: programs that guarantee a basic income. Tech entrepreneurs like Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, have promoted direct cash transfers to low-income Americans as a way to cushion them from what the entrepreneurs anticipate could be widespread job losses caused by artificial intelligence. Some local politicians and community leaders, concerned about growing wealth inequality, have also put their faith in these stipends, known as unconditional cash or, in their most ambitious form, a universal basic income. Dozens of small pilot projects testing unconditional cash transfers have popped up in communities around the country, from Alaska to Stockton, Calif. Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur, put the idea of 1,000 monthly payments for all adults at the center of his 2020 presidential campaign.

When Elinor O'Donovan found out she had been randomly selected to participate in a basic income pilot scheme, she couldn't believe her luck. In return for a guaranteed salary of just over 1,400 ( 1,200) a month from the Irish government, all the 27-year-old artist had to do was fill out a bi-annual questionnaire about her wellbeing and how she spends her time. "It was like winning the lottery. I was in such disbelief," she says. The income, which she will receive until September 2025, has enabled her to give up temping and focus instead on her art.

The idea of a guaranteed income for all has been floating around for centuries, its popularity ebbing and flowing with the passing tide of current events. While it is still considered by many to be a radical concept, proponents of a universal basic income (UBI) no longer see it only as a solution to poverty but as the answer to some of the biggest threats faced by modern workers: wage inequality, job insecurity – and the looming possibility of AI-induced job losses. Elon Musk, at the recent Bletchley Park summit, said he believed "no job is needed" due to the development of AI, and that a job can be for "personal satisfaction". Economist and political theorist Karl Widerquist, professor of philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar, sees it differently. "Even if AI takes your job away, you don't necessarily just become unemployed for the rest of your life," he says.

The tension between technology and work is at least as old as the economics profession itself. A question some people are asking now is: if computers run by artificial intelligence can do the job of humans, will work disappear someday? Two economists are proposing a couple different scenarios in a new paper that is part science fiction and part mathematical models. In one scenario, lower-paid workers who are not highly valued by society – say, McDonald's hamburger flippers – are more readily replaced by computers than a scientist searching for a cure for Alzheimer's disease. This will drive down wages for a larger and larger segment of the lower-paid labor force.

This article was contributed by Valerias Bangert, strategy and innovation consultant, founder of three media outlets, and published author. The debate around whether AI will automate jobs away is heating up. AI critics claim that these statistical models lack the creativity and intuition of human workers and that they are thus doomed to specific, repetitive tasks. While AI job automation has already replaced around 400,000 factory jobs in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007, with another 2 million on the way, AI today is automating the economy in a much more subtle way. Take the example of writing jobs.

This article was contributed by Valerias Bangert, strategy and innovation consultant, founder of three media outlets, and published author. The debate around whether AI will automate jobs away is heating up. AI critics claim that these statistical models lack the creativity and intuition of human workers and that they are thus doomed to specific, repetitive tasks. While AI job automation has already replaced around 400,000 factory jobs in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007, with another 2 million on the way, AI today is automating the economy in a much more subtle way. Take the example of writing jobs.

Can be really good or really bad whichever is more rhetorically useful.

Andrew Yang will not forestall the robot apocalypse from the Oval Office, but he may get to do it from New York City Hall. In the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the former entrepreneur's quirky campaign found a surprisingly robust audience, attracted by Yang's warnings about automation and his promise to mail every American a "freedom dividend" (or, at least, by his math jokes and laid-back, open collar). In the end, the Yang Gang only got their guy as far as the New Hampshire primary. But thanks in part to the name recognition and national network of donors he accrued during that race, Yang is actually leading the polls this year's contest to be the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor. On Friday, Henry Grabar and Jordan Weissmann, two of Slate's native New Yorkers, convened to debate whether this is a good thing. Their debate has been edited and condensed for clarity.