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.

We initiate a principled study of algorithmic collective action on digital platforms that deploy machine learning algorithms. We propose a simple theoretical model of a collective interacting with a firm's learning algorithm. The collective pools the data of participating individuals and executes an algorithmic strategy by instructing participants how to modify their own data to achieve a collective goal. We investigate the consequences of this model in three fundamental learning-theoretic settings: the case of a nonparametric optimal learning algorithm, a parametric risk minimizer, and gradient-based optimization. In each setting, we come up with coordinated algorithmic strategies and characterize natural success criteria as a function of the collective's size. Complementing our theory, we conduct systematic experiments on a skill classification task involving tens of thousands of resumes from a gig platform for freelancers. Through more than two thousand model training runs of a BERT-like language model, we see a striking correspondence emerge between our empirical observations and the predictions made by our theory. Taken together, our theory and experiments broadly support the conclusion that algorithmic collectives of exceedingly small fractional size can exert significant control over a platform's learning algorithm.

Citizen Sleeper is a sleek, cyberpunk-style video game, where you play an android with the mind of a human, who has sold their flesh-and-blood body to the corporation Essen-Arp. When you start the game, you've just escaped Essen-Arp in a stolen robot frame, transported to a spaceship colony, where you don't know anyone and have only a vague memory of who you once were. The game takes place in "cycles" in which the player rolls virtual dice to perform tasks, with each roll of the dice determining the outcome of actions like working, asking for directions, stealing, fighting, or making friends. The higher you roll, the better the odds you have at completing those tasks successfully. As you work, you earn money, which can buy you food and resources, as well as a "stabilizer" that you need to repair your robot frame, and thereby survive. The rules of the game can be seen as a critique of the cruelties of the modern economy.

Last month, Facebook parent Meta unveiled an artificial intelligence chatbot said to be its most advanced yet. BlenderBot 3, as the AI is known, is able to search the internet to talk to people about almost anything, and it has abilities related to personality, empathy, knowledge and long-term memory. BlenderBot 3 is also good at peddling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, claiming that former US President Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and calling Meta Chairman and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg "creepy". It's not the first time an AI has gone rogue. In 2016, Microsoft's Tay AI took less than 24 hours to morph into a rightwing bigot on Twitter, posting racist and misogynistic tweets and praising Adolf Hitler.

From manufacturing to marketing, businesses across multiple industries are leveraging artificial intelligence to optimize their processes and services. As AI technology continues to advance, some sectors will be radically transformed in the years to come. The experts of Forbes Technology Council are always looking ahead to the latest trends in cutting-edge technology. Below, 16 of them share the industries they believe have the most to gain from implementing AI as well as how the technology will be specifically applied in 2022 and beyond. Members of Forbes Technology Council discuss the industries and functions that will significantly benefit from AI in 2022 and beyond.

ArtificiaI intelligence (AI) is on the rise across business in general. But the foodservice industry may be another matter, as it isn't usually considered to be the fastest sector when it comes to adopting new technology. Whilst the industry's disruption by the gig economy did indicate new pathways, the recent stock flotation of food-delivery startup Deliveroo has found itself beset by the same ESG issues over workers' rights that have long dogged the likes of Uber and Lyft. In such cases, AI may be the game-changer that other sectors see it as; a GlobalData report from 2020 predicts the global AI platform market will be worth $52bn within three years. While it may not solve the sort of labour disputes faced by Deliveroo, AI-powered automation is what foodservice should be taking note of, and in some cases already is.

The world's workforce faced a massive upheaval the moment Uber came on the scene. Uber was not the creator of the gig economy, the gig economy had existed for as long as we can remember, but it did signify the "mainstreaming of gigs". Uber's disruption of the transportation industry was powerful not because it got drivers to do gigs, that was already possible. It was powerful because of its powerful use of AI and technology to connect random drivers with the riders via their powerful app. This signified the first most publicized foray of AI into the industry and it quickly became the norm.

The emergence of smartphone apps and online marketplaces have given rise to what has become known as the'gig economy'. Independent workers are hired for short-term projects or ad-hoc jobs, usually as independent contractors or freelancers. Nowadays, these'gigs' have come to be associated with the real-time delivery of goods or services, especially through digital mediums like Fiverr, Uber and Upwork which went into serious overdrive during the pandemic. The gig economy has exploded in popularity since then, and the Everest Group estimates that US gig work will surpass the permanent workforce by 2027, growing 40% by 2027 to reach 86 million gig workers. The economic challenges and supply chain breakdowns over the past year has seen many businesses relying on the gig economy in order to scale their customer support and sales services quicker, while slashing their fixed cost overheads.

It started not with a stroke of creative genius, but with a rain barrel that Mike Evans '99, MEng '00, wanted to install in his garden. Fourteen calls later, he still hadn't been able to hire anyone. He started researching the home maintenance sector and discovered that many US trade schools have closed in recent decades, creating a shortage of handypeople. That's how Fixer was born. "What it comes down to is there aren't enough people to do the work," says Evans, who founded Fixer in 2017.

Once he takes on the job, however, it's a different story: walking through trackless miles of forest unrolling a reel of cable is not only gruelling for the flabby, middle-aged Ray, he's in competition with both more experienced cablers and a tireless little spiderlike robot that dogs his path – if it overtakes him, he loses his route. Even weirder, the fake electronic ID he used to get the job used to belong to someone else and is loaded with points that give him a serious edge. Where did that come from? And what does it portend? A sly, satirical slice of lo-fi sci-fi, Lapsis comes to us from writer and director Noah Hutton.