Many prominent figures, including Sam Altman and Elon Musk, have suggested universal basic income (UBI) as a solution when artificial intelligence renders human labor obsolete. Musk has even promised "universal high income." However, there are serious reasons to be skeptical of this vision. The framing assumes that alignment will be solved but the AIs are aligned to some elite group or they uphold anything like current capitalism with its property rights.

The Trust Problem

Elon Musk has said that "in the benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job" and promises not just UBI but "Universal High Income." However, when he took a government role with DOGE, one of his first moves was to defund foreign aid programs including PEPFAR (which provides HIV treatment), as well as programs fighting malaria and tuberculosis. A government memo estimated the cuts could cause millions of additional deaths, with one analysis projecting approximately 600,000 deaths, two thirds of the deaths being children. Bill Gates remarked that "the picture of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one." While some of these cuts were later reversed, infectious disease programs for HIV are still reduced to about 30% of pre-cut funding levels. 

The Leverage Problem

Your work is your leverage in society. Throughout history, even the worst rulers depended on their subjects for labor and resources. Mutual dependence is why society functions: why you can go to the supermarket and buy food, why housing exists for you, why society is "aligned" to provide you with space to live a decent life. And if you are more useful to others than the average person, you get rewarded proportionally. In a fully automated world, you become a net burden. If we assume that the police and military have also been automated, there is no realistic option to rebel or protest for change either. Resource dependent economies may give us an early glimpse at this, many resource rich countries have an extremely poor population and no democratic institutions.

The Information Problem

If everyone is unemployed, that means all media is automated too. All the information you consume would be AI-generated and AI-curated. We're already seeing how AI-powered social media algorithms fragment society. These systems, currently optimized merely for engagement, have discovered that lies, misinformation, and conspiracy theories often generate the most interaction.

Now imagine a world where not just the algorithms but all the content itself is AI-generated. Imagine algorithms explicitly designed to mislead and divide. People couldn't organize their thoughts coherently enough to even conceive of rebellion or imagine alternative social structures. 

Caveat: We Probably Won't Get That Far

It's extremely difficult to imagine a society where we're all unemployed and humanity is still around. Think about what's required for a mass unemployment scenario: an AGI system powerful enough to run society, automate all jobs including research, police and military. Such a system would obviously be lethally dangerous, therefore if we get it catastrophically wrong, we die. We only get one shot at this and without a promising plan the odds don’t look good.

The Bottom Line

Being useful keeps us alive. This is more fundamental than constitutional rights or free speech. In the real world, we're aligned with other humans largely because we need each other. Our jobs mean we're still useful to the economy, useful enough that others will provide us with the goods and services they produce.

But more fundamentally: we're unlikely to survive long enough to face this dilemma. The kind of AGI powerful enough to automate all jobs is the kind of AGI powerful enough to end humanity if misaligned. And we're rushing toward building it with no credible plan for alignment.