The AI Billionaires Are Selling Us a Future Where Nobody Gets Paid

The richest people on the planet are spending hundreds of billions of dollars building machines to replace human workers, and apparently we’re all supposed to be excited because one day they’ll give us free money.

That’s the pitch. Artificial intelligence will eventually do all the work, robots will handle the physical stuff, and the rest of us will spend our days pursuing hobbies, travelling and enjoying a life of leisure funded by Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Sounds pretty fucking good, actually. Sign me up.

There’s just one small detail nobody seems particularly interested in explaining.

Who’s paying for it?

Because the people promising this wonderful future are the same people who currently spend extraordinary amounts of money trying to avoid paying taxes, fighting labour protections and finding creative ways to pay workers less.

But apparently, once they’ve replaced enough of us with AI, they’re going to have a sudden change of heart and start redistributing their wealth.

Jeff Bezos is going to wake up one morning, look at his bank account and decide he’s had enough money.

Elon Musk will discover the joys of wealth redistribution.

And shareholders will happily vote to give away their profits so unemployed people can spend their afternoons playing PlayStation.

I’m sure that’s exactly how it’ll happen.

The billionaires have discovered socialism

It’s been fascinating watching some of the world’s wealthiest capitalists suddenly become enthusiastic about giving people money for doing absolutely nothing.

For decades we’ve been told that people need to work hard, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and contribute to society. Government handouts are bad, welfare creates dependency and anyone struggling financially should simply work harder.

Now the people building AI systems are suggesting that one day there might not be enough work for everyone, so perhaps governments should give people money instead.

Well, isn’t that convenient.

To be fair, UBI isn’t necessarily socialism. You can implement it within a capitalist economy. But a meaningful UBI in a world where human labour has lost most of its economic value would require something the wealthy have historically been reluctant to embrace.

Massive wealth redistribution.

We’re not talking about giving everyone a few hundred dollars a month for Netflix and noodles. We’re talking about housing, food, utilities, healthcare and everything else people need to survive. For potentially billions of people.

Who’s footing that bill? The AI companies? Their shareholders? Governments?

Governments already struggle to fund public services, and corporations employ entire departments dedicated to minimising their tax obligations.

But when the robots arrive, they’ll apparently decide paying significantly more tax is the right thing to do.

The people who won’t give you a decent pay rise today are going to fund your retirement at 35 tomorrow.

It’s a lovely story. I just wouldn’t make any financial plans around it.

UBI is a fantastic way to sell the thing that’s going to make you unemployed

Instead of discussing what happens when millions of people lose their livelihoods, we’re being sold a future where nobody has to work.

Notice the difference?

One sounds like a massive economic crisis. The other sounds like a holiday.

It’s easier to convince people to embrace automation when they’re imagining themselves beside a swimming pool drinking cocktails rather than standing in an unemployment queue wondering how they’ll pay the mortgage.

It’s also useful for companies trying to build enormous data centres, secure subsidies, consume staggering amounts of electricity and convince everyone their technology is essential to humanity’s future.

Don’t worry about the jobs. Don’t worry about the energy consumption. Don’t worry about a handful of companies controlling critical infrastructure.

We’re building a utopia.

The data centres get built today. The shareholders get richer tomorrow. The jobs disappear somewhere along the way.

And the UBI? We’ll circle back to that.

It’s starting to feel like UBI is the complimentary bread they bring out while you’re waiting for a meal that never arrives.

Except the restaurant has already sold your kitchen.

You don’t need to replace everyone to make everyone’s wages worse

I’ve been writing software professionally for over 18 years. I use AI every single day, and I’m probably more enthusiastic about the technology than most people reading this.

I’ve built products with AI-assisted development. I use coding agents, language models and automation constantly. Things that previously took days can sometimes be done in hours.

It’s genuinely incredible technology. I’m not going to pretend otherwise because there are uncomfortable economic implications.

But I can also see what’s happening.

Imagine a company with twenty developers. AI gets good enough that five experienced developers can produce roughly the same output.

What happens to the other fifteen?

And what happens to the salaries of the remaining five when thousands of unemployed developers are competing for fewer positions?

You don’t need to eliminate a profession to destroy its bargaining power. You just need enough people desperately looking for work.

Want a pay rise? Fifty people are waiting to replace you.

Don’t like your working conditions? There’s the door.

Want to work remotely? Management has decided everyone needs to return to the office because apparently seeing people at desks is the only way to measure productivity.

The threat of unemployment has always been used to keep wages down. AI potentially makes that threat considerably more effective.

And it’s not just software developers. Accountants, lawyers, designers, customer service workers, administrators, analysts and plenty of others face varying degrees of automation.

Some jobs will disappear. Others will change. New ones will emerge. But there’s no law of economics guaranteeing those new jobs will pay as well, employ as many people or appear quickly enough.

People love bringing up the Industrial Revolution. Technology has created jobs before, therefore it’ll do it again.

Which is a nice historical observation, but not a contractual obligation the universe has agreed to honour forever.

Telling everyone to retrain is a wonderful solution until the thing you’re retraining for is also being automated.

Perhaps we can all become prompt engineers. That should keep eight billion people busy.

Just learn a trade, bro

Whenever someone points out that AI might replace office workers, there’s always someone ready with the same advice.

Learn a trade. Become an electrician. Become a plumber. Work with your hands.

Physical work is currently much harder to automate than generating a spreadsheet or writing a CRUD application. But have these people actually been paying attention to robotics?

Robots are learning to manipulate objects, navigate environments and perform physical tasks that were extraordinarily difficult not long ago.

There’s still a long way to go. A robot doing backflips in a promotional video isn’t the same thing as one fixing your plumbing.

But robotics doesn’t need perfection to disrupt employment. It needs to become reliable enough and cheap enough.

Imagine a company purchasing a capable humanoid robot for the equivalent of a year’s salary.

No annual leave. No sick days. No pension contributions. No lunch break. No complaining about working Christmas.

It needs charging, maintenance and replacement parts, sure. But once the economics make sense, companies will adopt them.

You don’t need every CEO to be a cartoon villain stroking a cat and plotting the destruction of the working class. They just need to follow the incentives.

If competitors automate and lower costs, everyone else faces pressure to follow.

And before someone tells me robots will create jobs repairing robots, yes, I’m sure they will.

Until someone builds a robot that repairs robots.

Congratulations, you’ve automated away your customers

Let’s imagine the AI companies get everything they want.

AI handles office work. Robots handle physical labour. Businesses automate. Productivity explodes. Labour costs collapse. Shareholders celebrate.

The CEO gets another bonus for his extraordinary leadership in approving a purchase order.

Fantastic.

There’s just one small problem.

Who the fuck is buying anything?

If millions of people lose their jobs, who’s buying the products these companies produce?

Who’s buying the new iPhone? Paying for streaming subscriptions? Booking holidays? Buying cars? Eating at restaurants?

You can automate an entire factory, but you can’t automate customers having disposable income.

A company might save billions replacing its workforce, but those workers were customers somewhere else. And those other companies’ workers were customers of the first company.

It’s possible for automation to make financial sense for individual businesses while creating enormous problems for the economy as a whole.

Everyone saves money firing workers. Then everyone wonders why sales are falling.

It’s the corporate equivalent of setting your house on fire to save money on heating.

Now, there’s a legitimate counterargument. Automation could make goods and services dramatically cheaper. If production costs collapse, perhaps people won’t need as much money to live comfortably.

Worth considering. But cheaper production doesn’t automatically mean cheaper prices.

If Apple discovers it can manufacture an iPhone for $20, do you genuinely believe it’ll sell them for $25? Or continue charging whatever customers will pay?

Housing still requires land. Energy needs infrastructure. Raw materials remain finite.

And landlords aren’t going to reduce your rent because OpenAI released a new model.

Dear tenant, following recent improvements in artificial intelligence, we’ve decided to reduce your rent by 80%. Kind regards, your landlord.

Fucking imagine.

The real divide is between people who own the machines and people who don’t

For most of modern history, ordinary people have participated in the economy by selling their labour.

You have skills. Someone needs them. They pay you money. You use that money to buy food, pay your mortgage and occasionally purchase something unnecessary because you’ve convinced yourself you deserve it.

It’s not a perfect system, but it gives workers leverage. Employers need employees, and employees need employers.

Now imagine a world where human labour isn’t particularly valuable.

The robots build houses. AI writes software. Automated factories manufacture products. Machines handle logistics, agriculture and transportation.

Who owns those machines? The data centres? The energy infrastructure? The intellectual property?

If you own the machines producing wealth, you’re potentially set for life.

If your only valuable asset is your ability to work, and nobody needs you to work anymore, you’re in a considerably worse position.

This is where techno-feudalism starts looking less like science fiction and more like a plausible economic outcome.

Want to start a business? Rent some compute. Want to build software? Pay for a model. Want to compete with an established company? Good luck matching its infrastructure.

Want to live? Hopefully the people controlling the economy have agreed to fund that UBI.

We’ve already moved towards a subscription economy where fewer things are owned by consumers. Software, entertainment, cloud storage, even features in products you’ve already purchased.

You won’t own anything, but don’t worry, there’s a monthly subscription for that.

And if your payment fails, perhaps the robot can escort you outside.

Whoever owns the infrastructure owns the leverage

AI infrastructure is becoming critical infrastructure: data centres, cloud platforms, energy generation, communications networks and systems that businesses and governments may increasingly depend on.

A relatively small number of corporations control much of what’s needed to operate the most advanced AI systems.

Imagine a country depending on foreign-owned AI infrastructure for essential government services, healthcare, logistics and economic activity.

What happens when the interests of those corporations no longer align with the country’s interests? When access becomes a negotiating tool? When a foreign government pressures a provider to restrict services?

And the economic benefits don’t necessarily stay in the countries providing land, electricity, water and resources. Multinationals can generate revenue in one country while recognising profits somewhere else.

If governments subsidise AI infrastructure, they should ask what citizens actually get back.

Tax revenue? Ownership stakes? Affordable access? Some guarantee that economic value generated locally isn’t simply extracted and transferred offshore?

Letting corporations control essential infrastructure while the public carries the costs seems like a fairly terrible arrangement.

We’ve spent decades being told the market will sort everything out. Maybe it’s time we stopped treating that as a serious answer to every economic problem.

UBI might work. That’s not the point.

Before someone accuses me of opposing UBI, I don’t.

If technology lets society produce enormous wealth with very little human labour, some mechanism for sharing that wealth may become necessary.

It could be UBI. It could be social dividends funded by publicly owned assets, sovereign wealth funds, changes to taxation or broader ownership of productive technology.

There are possibilities. But possibilities aren’t policies.

And a billionaire mentioning UBI during an interview isn’t evidence it’s going to happen.

Where’s the plan?

How much does everyone receive? Does it cover housing, healthcare, food and utilities? Does it apply globally or only in wealthy countries? What happens to countries without enormous AI industries or tax bases? How do you prevent multinationals shifting profits? What if the wealthy simply refuse to pay?

And what happens when the politicians responsible for implementing it are funded by the same companies expected to contribute?

These aren’t minor implementation details. They’re the entire fucking problem.

Some countries can’t even agree that healthcare should be accessible without financially ruining people. But apparently we’re going to skip straight to a world where everyone receives enough money to live comfortably without working.

Maybe we will. I’d love to be wrong.

But I’d like to see something resembling an economic plan before we celebrate the end of employment.

People aren’t going to quietly accept being made irrelevant

Work isn’t just about money. For many people, it provides structure, identity, purpose and social connections.

There’s a difference between choosing not to work because you’re financially secure and being unable to find work because your skills are no longer useful to employers.

One is freedom. The other can be devastating.

Imagine millions of people who’ve spent years building careers, paying taxes and raising families being told they’re no longer required.

Meanwhile, the owners of the technology replacing them become wealthier than ever.

Do we really think everyone will accept that? Sit at home playing PlayStation and patiently wait for their monthly allowance?

History isn’t encouraging when large populations experience prolonged economic hardship while wealth becomes increasingly concentrated.

People get angry. They protest. They lose faith in institutions. Some become radicalised. Eventually the instability becomes everyone’s problem, including the people at the top.

You can buy a lot of private security with a billion dollars. Perhaps building an economy where people don’t want to burn everything down would be a better investment.

Just a thought.

I’m not against AI. I’m against being sold bullshit.

I want AI to succeed.

I want robots doing dangerous jobs. Diseases diagnosed earlier. Scientific discoveries accelerated. Food produced more efficiently. People freed from repetitive, exhausting work.

I use this technology constantly. I build with it. I’m excited about what it can do, and I have no intention of stopping.

But enjoying the technology doesn’t mean I have to believe every utopian prediction made by the people selling it.

AI could create extraordinary abundance. It could also concentrate wealth and power on a scale we’ve never experienced.

The difference won’t be determined solely by how intelligent the models become. It’ll depend on who owns them, who controls the infrastructure, who captures the economic value and whether ordinary people have any meaningful say.

We need to stop treating UBI as some inevitable reward waiting for humanity once the robots finish taking our jobs.

It’s not inevitable. It requires political and economic decisions that haven’t been made.

And the people most enthusiastically selling this future aren’t necessarily the people who’ll bear the consequences if it goes wrong.

Maybe AI will eventually make everyone wealthier. Maybe living costs will collapse. Maybe governments will find a sustainable way to distribute the benefits.

I’d genuinely love to see it.

But until someone can explain how we get there without relying on billionaires spontaneously discovering generosity, I’m going to remain sceptical.

Because right now, the pitch seems to be:

Trust us while we automate your job, concentrate ownership of the productive economy and build infrastructure that will make us extraordinarily wealthy.

Don’t worry about how you’ll survive. We’ll figure that part out later.

And if there’s one thing history has taught us, it’s that wealthy people always look after everyone else once they’ve got enough money.

Right?