AI, Universal Basic Income, and the Risk of a “WALL-E” Future

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AI and universal basic income. a guest appearance this morning on a radio show that I love doing. And it was actually the question came up. They were quoting Elon Musk and what Elon Musk thinks of AI and what’s going to happen in the future and this possible need for having universal basic income here in the United States. Remember that was Andrew, Andrew Wang?

I’m not mistaken. He was behind that when he was running for president in the day. I certainly hope not. What I most I mean, I don’t like the the occult movies, the exorcist stuff, but those movies scare the crap out of me. But there was another movie. It was a Pixar movie. Pixar movie that was frightening to me. And that movie was WALL-E. And you’re not familiar with the movie. It’s basically

Earth is uninhabitable. We wreck the planet and there’s this robot that goes around and basically cleaning things up. Anyway, human beings are living on this spaceship where all they do is they sit in a chair and they get overweight and just do nothing. It’s basically sedentary lifestyles. Again, it creeped me out. It really did. We’re not designed.

for this. We’re not designed to do nothing. To do nothing. Again, I remember Nancy Pelosi talking about the wonders of handouts and giveaways. I can’t remember what the exact context was. I don’t know if it was expanded, expanded unemployment, whatever it may be. I remember she said, oh, you can spend more time sitting in your basement working on your art or something like that. I can’t remember.

Exactly, was paraphrasing, but it was something like that. saying that’s awesome. Every deep dive, every study into entitlements and welfare and what it does to people when they get addicted to it. And again, I’ve long talked about the need to, you know, all these social safety net programs, which I have no problem with if they’re constructed properly is the idea is to get people off.

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I do think that human beings are wired to overcome obstacles and achieve goals. And this idea that’s being floated, that there’s going to be some wonderful world where you’re not going to need to work and you’re just going to get a check. I I like fishing as much as the next guy, but let’s be honest here. To be honest here, I mean, there’s only so many fish you can catch, just doing it for a living. so many rounds of golf.

you can play. wish, because sometimes I think about it, if I didn’t have to sleep the amount of time I would have to read books, I get all that. understand all that. But human beings, human beings were not wired to do this. And it kind of harkens back, was that really kind of a neat scene in the movie, The Matrix, where the agent, is torturing Morpheus and he’s…

He was telling him something like, we just first designed the matrix to be some sort of utopia and human beings didn’t take to it. know, crops fell off and human beings would die. Yeah, yeah, no, it’s not going to fly. And had a good, every conversation that I have when it comes to AI, do I think it’s phenomenal tool that we still haven’t completely figured out how to use? Absolutely. But in the same way that

I look at it this way, the same way that contractors move from hammers to nail guns. That’s ultimately, think what’s going to be. Do I think there’s going to be massive productivity gains? Absolutely. But every single time we see massive productivity gains, always going to offer up new opportunities. Maybe it’s wishful thinking. Maybe I’m whistling past the graveyard. But human beings, OK, we are not wired.

to do nothing. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.