Thanks to the recent efforts of such figures as Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and British Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, the issue of Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been back at the forefront of the public discussion on economic issues, along with the various arguments and justifications for introducing such a policy. While many of these justifications have become quite familiar over the years of waxing and waning interest in UBI, it is interesting to note the recent surge of interest in one particular argument, which sounds more like something from a science fiction novel than an economics textbook. This argument runs roughly as follows: In the not too distant future, rapidly advancing technology will allow robots and artificial intelligence (AI) to perform many of the jobs now being done by humans and to do so more cheaply and efficiently than humans ever could. This will result in robots/AI replacing humans in almost all jobs, making the vast majority of people permanently unemployed, and without Universal Basic Income, how will they (the people) be able to keep food on their tables? Of course, the idea that advances in labor-saving technology will lead to catastrophic unemployment and declining living standards is hardly new, arguably dating back to ancient Greece or earlier, and economists (not to mention the facts of history) have been refuting the idea for nearly as long as economics has existed as a self-conscious science.

Patients in a so-called persistent vegetative state, caught between life and death, appear to be brain dead. Their families often think they are still'in there', but doctors disagree. British neuroscientist Adrian Owen made it his mission to reach these forgotten patients, as he reveals here... When I first met Carol, she had lain in a hospital bed for months without responding or showing any sign of awareness. A scan had revealed substantial damage to the frontal lobes of her brain, which control our important cognitive abilities, such as problem-solving, memory, language and judgment. In July 2005, the married 23-year-old had been hit by two cars while crossing a busy road. A moment's distraction had redefined the rest of her life.

The robot has repeatedly flunked the National Center Test since 2013. The team of creators, including members from the National Institute of Informatics, say they are finally quitting their efforts to make the robot smart enough to pass an entrance exam for admission. Mariella Moon, associate editor of Engadget web magazine, said, "Todai Robot's creators have concluded that since they failed to meet their goal this year, the AI can't become smart enough to get into Tokyo U by their March 2022 target date." It turns out the robot is not good at grasping "meaning in a broad spectrum," said Noriko Arai, a professor at the National Institute of Informatics, who heads the team behind Torobo-kun. Torobu-kun, for instance, did not perform well in English, where it had to link phrases to come to logical conclusions. It received scores of 36.2 in listening and 50.5 in written exams.