Every so often one needs to abandon the hackneyed discourses that surround everyday politics and contemplate lasting solutions to tectonic issues. I had this in mind last week when I concluded that the demand for a universal basic income (UBI) is not necessarily motivated by opportunistic vote buying, poverty alleviation or technological job displacement but can be rooted in deeper humanistic concerns. I promised to address this issue today, and must say that I believe that at no point in human history has a more holistic consideration of the human condition been as necessary as now, when mankind faces two existential threats, namely from climate change and technology – the development of artificial intelligence (AI) – both of which I believe result from our natural propensity to seek after the best possible livelihood with the least amount of work. So huge are these threats that it might appear farfetched to tie even a part of the solution to the establishment of UBI – removing the link between consumption and work.
Only diehard climate deniers still need convincing that climate change is an existential threat to human existence that requires extreme moral restraint upon the current pattern and level of our consumption to conserve the natural resources we use and all of our ingenuity to devise climate- friendly technologies to cope with the existing threat and present and future growth and development. Unfortunately, the technological capacity that we are busily expanding to deal with our environmental concerns has already given rise to AI that has become a threat in itself; so much so, that Elon Musk, the technology entrepreneur, designer and co-founder and CEO Tesla Motors, has claimed that AI is ‘our biggest existential threat’ (https://www.bbc.com/news /technology-30290540).