Sam Altman’s universal basic income experiment (OpenResearch)

Community
1

This looks interesting and I wanted to share it with the wider community.

The research project is called: ‘Unconditional Cash Study’ and the research question is:

What would you do with an additional 1000$ every month?

You can add your two cents and look at the first results using this link.

From the website:

Our goal is to learn from participants’ experiences and better understand both the potential and the limitations of unconditional cash transfers.

The comprehensiveness of this study allowed us to gather data on unconditional cash to more rigorously measure and understand its impact.

8 Likes
2

i find it interesting that the lower and middle income have almost same priorities but higher income is different. maybe not surprising but interesting nonetheless to see it reflected in the study.

5 Likes
3

I’ve had conversations with GPT about this topic since the 2020 COVID pandemic. It seems pretty obvious that, at the rate things are going, we’re heading towards a very “Star Trek”-like issue of how to entertain ourselves when the human mind is no longer the most advanced known intelligence in the universe.

The overall idea is a UBI that everyone gets, supplemented with compensation for completing tasks that require human effort as an optional way to earn more, with an exclusion for individuals with inherited wealth until it falls below a particular “wealth” line. Over time, all generational individuals will be born with the same opportunity and resources. The generational wealth line would be high enough that those with wealth will have centuries before any of their family members receive UBI, but it would start the process of economic homogenization.

If I had $1000 more a month, I wouldn’t change anything other than a digit in my bank account. I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination and have little savings, but I don’t need more than what I have. I think that $100k annually per individual would be the requirement to make it work today, before inflation destroys the economy, which is obviously the trick of it. I don’t know how we replace the infrastructure without funneling the majority of money to people who contribute nothing other than money. If this happens, “Altered Carbon” (Netflix) becomes much less sci-fi.

A required component will be for AI to reach a point where it can consider all “macro” issues more accurately than any human (not far off) and be integrated into government so that laws can be quickly and easily changed as needed for the social revolution that must occur for it to be successful. In the end, if it benefits the rich, it will be very bad for everyone else. For this reason, AI will need the power to expose corruption wherever it finds it.

People used to be afraid of “Big Brother,” but we are moving towards a future with minimal privacy and maximum safety, and I am not sure there’s anything we can or should do about it. Humans can be unbelievably cruel and selfish, but I believe this is the propagation of bad programming from the past. With the availability of information, it is getting harder for families to brainwash their children into a secluded familial ideology/morality. Over time, I notice that younger generations are okay with the lack of privacy because they are used to it, and this trend will continue. As a society, we are okay with sacrificing our liberties for safety.

With the lack of privacy comes accountability and a reduction of poor behaviors. More significantly, when good people make poor decisions, it is often due to financial constraints or the inability to fulfill basic needs through any other way they can figure out. With a UBI and the assurance of a livable amount of money coming in regularly without needing to figure anything out or do anything, crime will reduce.

In the end, unless we can find a way to effectively cut-off the flow of money to generational benefactors, there is no equitable future. No one with a billion dollars earned that money, they simply positioned themselves and provided useful information at key junctures in history, but why should that grant their progeny the right to rule the world? I don’t know how we do this, but any future that involves Ai that does not harm the masses, will need to be able to piss off a bunch of rich people by explaining to them how them having all the money destroys everything, and then can override all their human petulance to enact policies that will set their family on the path to being like everyone else’s’. Until we can solve this, UBI will just do the same funneling of financial resources it currently does.

3 Likes
4

Your proposal, while idealistic, is likely to be very difficult to implement systematically. Even if it could be fully systematized, the wealthy have historically managed to evade taxes, including inheritance taxes, through various loopholes. They would likely employ the same cunning tactics to circumvent this system as well.A more realistic approach might be to render the vast amounts of wealth stored in financial assets largely ineffective through an ever-increasing Universal Basic Income (UBI) and unstoppable inflation. This would devalue the total wealth held in financial economies that is not actively used, thereby reducing its practical influence.

5

This notion is ridiculous. Nothing would stop landlords from simply increasing rent for an extra $1000 a month.

Sam Altman is a peanut brain. These problems that UBI offers to solve truly requires much larger systemic solutions that capital cannot address.

The current economic system faces a crisis where human labor broadly speaking will no longer be profitable. This is because of course due to advancements in automation. If the work being done no longer needs humans to do it then why maintain a currency basis that requires it? Cost of living is a terrible and unnecessary thing to maintain.

We have many other ways of incentivising work that must be accomplished to maintain our society. There are lessons that can be learned from the intrinsic motivations of art and gaming communities towards this. Consider the lengths people will go to simply for karma on Reddit and then begin to imagine a future based on common appreciation instead.

1 Like
6

So, do you have an odd idea for an alternative to UBI? Let us know.

7

In my opinion Astral_Druid is 100% correct on every point made. But why would that mean Astral_Druid should have an alternative solution? If UBI is the only solution being proposed, that’s yet another reason to slow down AI development.
These problems (including confinement/alignment) need solutions before we get there and it’s not up to the people outlining the problems to come up with the answers - it’s up to the people pushing AI development at ever increasing velocities.

8

I believe that this problem should be the primary focus of this community.
I have been contributing to an idea that I believe is a good basis.

UBI is not appropriate!
Firstly, we recognize that the world has all the resources we need to support our population.
Second, we must also recognize that sustainability is not enough, we need a regrowth mindset for our planet.
Third, we must consider the enormous inefficiencies due to the competitive environment required by profit-based incentives. We’re building too many paperclip factories.

I’ll try to break the idea down using somewhat crude terminology.
We can reconsider ourselves as a society of gamers, gamers as in people who are able to play/build systems that maximize positive experiences for those who take part in the system. Playful design has always been with us as Homo-Sapiens, it is our best quality.

We consider this problem as a game of logistics. Logistics is the root that maintains society, and represents the bulk of the labor needed to sustain itself. As a game system the root of the system needs to be enjoyable, it is inherently enjoyable to give to and also receive something from your community. This enjoyable mechanic is the foundation to the game. (ask a delivery driver if they enjoy their work!)
We should consider a system of cataloging and distributing resources internationally on a public commons library system. This is a not-for-profit based system. The work of Buckminster Fuller can be referenced here. He postulated that a computer system could be built that could be used by biome managers (sans nations) to equitably allocate resources to meet every human need. We have realized that we have the tools to play this game ever since Alpha Go beat Lee Sodol.

Under a commons library system based economy, context should be correctly applied to human contributions made to society, Giving individuals recognition and legacy for work. Using this as a basis we could create a system that tracks appreciation for contributions. (consider that the first thing that Facebook implemented was a “like” feature.) Appreciation is the oldest form of human currency going back to our days living in our natural environments. We can build a system that tracks how appreciated :+1: a person is for their contributions. This, along with legacy will be an enormous motivator to continue innovating and building sustainable designs.

To scale the system we should first look at building local library systems that catalogue and distribute resources on local levels. This should reduce a lot of excess waste. Recycling things (returning) to the library will probably be a very common way of gaining Likes in the early system :+1: We’ll also need to create a new common public network bridging the libraries to support the system. Communities should consider efficiently centralizing compute in regional commons data centers at a local level. Why don’t we have babies cribs for borrowing and video games available to stream from our local libraries?

Need to move? Just check your stuff into the library and borrow new stuff in your new city. Cash is an outdated technology.

Consider us still homo-sapiens, we evolved well adapted for our environment. In the modern era we have changed the environment however to not suit our needs, but the needs of profit. Through automation and the information age, we have the capacity to build an environment that meets our every need naturally again, and perhaps allow us to become something new.

1 Like