Mr. Elon Musk and his thoughts on UBI. Scary, or a welcome change?

For a long time, tech leaders of the world sidestepped the impending AI-led job loss crisis and said, "AI will create new jobs".

What kind of jobs? They couldn't say. After all, for every person AI replaces, only a (tiny part of) machine is added in a data centre somewhere. And unfortunately, while data centres need a lot of energy, they don't need too many people. For reference, a 12 MW facility typically requires about 20 full-time staff. A 40 MW centre may employ ~45 people, while a hyperscaler with >100 MW can operate with even fewer folks/MW.

So you can imagine how many jobs even an extraordinarily large data centre (like Google's $15B one in Vizag) will create. The answer is, "Not many". (Basically <2,000, if you exclude the construction guys). But the number of jobs it kills? That's huge.

Now despite the abundantly clear effects of AI on the prospects of human labour, tech leaders have been saying some version of, "AI will create new kind of jobs" until now. But why?

Why would they say something so clearly naive, or even dishonest? Why won't they just admit the incoming harm, so it could be dealt with a higher degree of preparedness? After all, a lot of people are at risk, and they could surely use some help.

Well, it's because it's hard. It's hard to be honest about this and take accountability. Because with that accountability will come some version of culpability for all that is going to happen to people, and at scale. If you can keep things hazy with something like, "People thought they're going to lose jobs in the 18th Century as well, but they didn't!" - It's super lame and a painfully obvious misdirection, but it works! The conversation gets entangled in that dumb analogy, and people don't come at you. But if you admit that what you're doing will speedily render scores of people unemployed, it could be a tough conversation.

Also, the next set of questions are even harder. Right now, the primary debate is, "Whether AI will lead to job losses". Dilly-dallying on this is shytee. But if this is settled, the next bunch of questions will be:

>What do you think will all the people who lose their jobs do?

>Do you think Universal Basic Income is even an option?

>How will it affect the society, especially in the transition period before the supposed "utopia"?

>People talk about deflation due to AI, does that even make sense?

>How will people derive meaning if they have no work?

>Will it not lead to extraordinary inequality, even by today's standards?

And so on..

Mr. Musk apparently believes Universal Basic Income is the way to go.

Now these questions are incredibly harder, and the entire tech industry and its leadership has been extremely evasive of them all this while. Considering that, Mr. Musk openly admitting the truth and then putting out his thoughts (no matter how disagreeable and seemingly inadequate) is a welcome move. This is an important debate. No matter how scary.

P.S. I'm incredibly lucky to be building in AI. Hope we can do something different. Godspeed.

Mr. Elon Musk is first amongst major tech leaders to be talking about AI led unemployment and its possible solutions.

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