I was thinking about this and realized that if we want an AI boom to lead to UBI, AI needs to start replacing the cushy white collar jobs first.
If you start by replacing menial labor, there will be more unemployment but you’re not going to build the political will to do anything because those jobs were seen as “less than” and the political class will talk about how good and efficient it is that these jobs are gone.
You need to start by automating away “good jobs” that directly affect middle/upper class people. Jobs where people have extensive training and/or a “calling” to the field. Once lawyers, software engineers, doctors, executives, etc get smacked with widespread unemployment, the political class will take UBI much more seriously.
I suspect elites will build a two-tiered AI system where only a select few get access to the cutting-edge stuff, while the rest of us get stuck with the leftovers.
They'll use their clout—money, lobbying, and media influence—to lock in their advantage and keep decision-making within their circle.
In the end, this setup would just widen the gap, cementing power imbalances as AI continues to reshape everything. UBI will become the bare minimum to keep the masses sedated.
needing a lawyer and needing a doctor are very common cases of bankruptcy in the US. both feel very primed to be replaced by models
Incidentally it seems to be happening in that order, but laborers won't have a long respite (if you can call it that)
i think that the factor determining which jobs get usurped by AI first isn't going to be based on the cognitive difficulty as much as it is about robotic difficulty and interaction with the physical world.
if you job consists of reading from a computer -> thinking -> entering things back into a computer, you're on the top of the list because you don't need to set up a bunch of new sensors and actuators. In other words… the easier it is to do your job remotely, the more likely it is you’ll get automated away