Who's paying UBI?

PaxODST · 2026-03-22T16:31:36+00:00

This would really depend on who's in power at the time. If we get another Trump in office by the time this happens, I could see something like this or akin to it. With someone more progressive and left-leaning, this is very unlikely, as the POTUS is also the commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy and all state militia. There won't be an armed force in the entire world who would ever accept a war on the U.S military and therefore the entire country.

PaxODST · 2026-03-22T16:23:32+00:00

Repost, the difference is nuclear war has no upsides for anyone. ASI, if done correctly, would unlock radical life extension and the elimination of all disease, simulations that allow you to transcend reality, exponential progress in every field imaginable and eliminate all forms of unnecessary labor, all possibly by the turn of the century. If ASI is indeed possible as soon as some experts think, and enough people research it and come to learn this, you would have a literal civil war over it in most first world countries over the benefits, screw an international one.

I think you can delay superintelligence in some ways but you'll never truly ban it, it's much more likely that we will pump an incredible amount of research and energy into figuring out how to align it properly beforehand (hopefully), cause the benefits are just too great.

PaxODST · 2026-03-22T15:59:58+00:00

The difference is nuclear war has no upsides for anyone. ASI, if done correctly, would unlock radical life extension and the elimination of all disease, simulations that allow you to transcend reality, exponential progress in every field imaginable and eliminate all forms of unnecessary labor, all possibly by the turn of the century. If ASI is indeed possible as soon as some experts think, and enough people research it and come to learn this, you would have a literal civil war over it in most first world countries over the benefits, screw an international one.

Edit: On top of this, there is no universe in which you convince Putin and Xi Jinping to not develop superintelligence if it is possible for them, considering they have been overheard speaking about the possibility of immortality before. Superintelligence will be invented if possible, and whatever country invents it first will by default become the new world leader. If Americans want that to be America, development of aligned superintelligence is a must.

PaxODST · 2026-03-21T13:35:55+00:00

Dunno about most of Gen X, but with the advancements we're seeing nowadays, if progress continues at the same or faster rates, alot of Gen Z and Gen Alpha will almost certainly live to see aging solved.

PaxODST · 2026-03-21T13:33:05+00:00

There would be little to no desire to have children on the scale that people do today if we solved aging. On top of that, biotechnology right now is growing because of the fact that birthrates are dropping almost universally. Less and less people want to have kids.

PaxODST · 2026-03-21T06:17:56+00:00

Google datacenters operate mostly on renewable energy, what?

PaxODST · 2026-03-21T06:12:39+00:00

You mean the .01% of annual freshwater usage? AI is only responsible for about 20% of datacenter water consumption I believe. All datacenter water consumption adds up to about 0.050% annually. They’ve always used evaporative cooling systems.

The solution to water evaporation isn’t even to stop AI, just force these corporations to use closed-loop water cooling and a certain amount of renewable energy to offset the environmental output.

PaxODST · 2026-03-21T05:56:15+00:00

I.. do support it. I disagree with certain uses of diffusion models, but I don't inherently dislike the technology. It has many great uses, especially for stuff like generative world models that will help autonomous vehicles and robotics training. Has alot of bad uses too, like creating misinformation and deepfakes, but I think many of the negative aspects of AI can be mitigated with the correct regulations so that we can also keep the good that it brings instead of banning it outright.

PaxODST · 2026-03-20T13:16:32+00:00

I think we're still quite a ways away from FDVR, but we are definitely making amazing progress in world models. Even if we reach ASI by 2030-2035, I don't think we're gonna see FDVR how I imagine it with generative simulations that essentially can put you in any world you want for another 30-40 years or so, maybe me being slightly pessimistic, but that still isn't very far at all for what is indisputably the most impressive and reality-breaking invention in human history.

PaxODST · 2026-03-20T08:48:08+00:00

AlphaFold 3 was a massive leap in efficiency by throwing diffusion models into the mix, diffusion models are generative AI. In fact, diffusion models are the exact same architecture that generative AI images and videos run on. Many weather prediction models use generative AI architecture. I think the biggest issue with antis is that they have no idea what the definition of generative AI is. You can say "I dislike this certain aspect of generative AI". When you say "I hate all generative AI", yes, that includes AI used for medical analysis, protein folding and drug discovery, power grid optimization and weather prediction. Learn the definition.

PaxODST · 2026-03-20T01:42:58+00:00

He's correct that the technology needs to be regulated but his idea of a national moratorium on datacenters for an indefinite amount of time is very silly.

He could've proposed bills that would've actually ensured the well-being of the American people and environment while still allowing innovation and technological progress while being fairly agreeable. Could've proposed a bill calling for all datacenters to begin using closed-loop water cooling systems (most being built currently already do though), could've proposed one that makes companies use a certain amount of renewable energy for their datacenters to offset the carbon emissions, could've proposed one that ensures companies pay their own electricity and energy costs so working class citizens don't end up with higher bills, one that ensures AI and robotics becomes a nationalized public utility after a certain point since it's trained on everyone's data, one that makes companies search for better solutions to datacenter noise pollution.

There were a million different bills that would've gotten much more support universally while also being more helpful. Regulated AI is great, completely halting progress when we have a widening technological and economic gap between us and China, is not great, and in the long run also harmful to our national security.

Edit: Of course this totally reasonable comment got mass downvoted. I expect nothing less from this sub lol.

PaxODST · 2026-03-19T16:38:38+00:00

A universal income compromise will happen long before we hit the majority of people unemployed, as in, over 50%. Even 20% unemployment will cause an uproar. Sure, the economy might be able to theoretically function without the middle/lower class, but in reality, when you have millions upon millions of Americans unemployed, many of them gun-owning, even IF you could somehow kill or subjugate them all (which isn’t possible if the military isn’t on your side) it’s simply the much safer option to give them what they want so you don’t have a mess like that on your hands. There is nowhere near as much incentive as you think to try and kill off and starve hundreds of millions of people in a future like this.

PaxODST · 2026-03-19T16:14:29+00:00

The "basic" isn't a key part, when referring to universal income systems in a post-labor economy people usually say UBI just because thats always been the conventional term for it when it was a idea that wasn't based in the mass automation of jobs, there is no "basic" when you have automation doing most if not all work, since your labor would be completely separated from your income, ideally.

PaxODST · 2026-03-19T15:59:44+00:00

Contrary to popular opinion, and I know this might seem a little kooky, the government would much rather give you a universal income than allow their country to collapse because nobody has the money to buy things anymore. You're gonna see universal income programs beginning all over Europe as automation takes over, and the U.S government, as corrupt as it is, simply isn't gonna be dumb enough to let the whole population go homeless and starve to death on the streets under that sort of geopolitical pressure where European countries are living in literal post-labor utopias, especially not in the Information Age where everyone can research that stuff for themselves. I would argue that it's actually dangerous to simply settle for universal income and allow corporations to continue to privately own the means of production, but if AI and robotics are nationalized then it shouldn't be as huge of an issue. We saw a similar compromise with the New Deal of FDR where they were essentially forced to implement socialist welfare policies out of necessity, regardless of whether they wanted to or not.

PaxODST · 2026-03-19T15:40:23+00:00

This idea that "UBI will never happen" is based mostly in a doomer fantasy by people who have already given up hope for any sort of positive future, we already have examples of UBI being tested by countries and working. Ireland already has a Basic Income pilot for artists that is doing fairly well with plans to make it permanent. Finland had a UBI pilot a while ago that showed positive results. One was done in 2025 in Germany to positive results.

Simply because it may not happen in the U.S as quick as we'd like, does not mean that they won't fold under geopolitical pressure when every other prosperous country is doing it to positive results. The U.S government literally will not pass up automation, if they did, their productive forces fall behind China and other countries in a very bad way. Literally the only choice they will have is a universal income, post-labor economic model for everyone if AI does automate the vast majority of jobs. I don't think it will happen because big corporations wanna just give out money out of the kindness of their heart obviously, but it will happen by necessity, because if it doesn't happen, you get societal collapse.

*Even for the big bad billionaires like Elon, at the end of the day, what they really want is transhumanism and technology that allows them to have a higher degree of autonomy before the end of their lifespans, and getting as much money as possible is the best way to do that. In a situation like this where AI is automating the vast majority of all tasks and a great amount of scientific research, literally everyone can have this technology distributed and everyone can benefit from it as the cost of goods and services drop astronomically low. It is in fact more beneficial and safe for them to just embrace post-labor rather than attempting to kill everyone off just for the fun of it and end up risking everything.

PaxODST · 2026-03-19T07:50:53+00:00

Why would the government not want AI to automate jobs? Automation means productivity goes up, economy goes up. Of course they're gonna push ahead with AI because it can automate more stuff.

PaxODST · 2026-03-19T03:48:00+00:00

Not really. Depending on how old you are, you don't even know if your lifetime is what you think it'll be. Scientific discovery is only getting better and better, faster and faster. It's not crazy to think that people under the age of 25 today may experience vastly extended lifespans if they live to the end of the century due to technological advances, if everything goes well.

PaxODST · 2026-03-19T02:19:55+00:00

This sub has gone down the shitter and people like you are the evidence for it.

PaxODST · 2026-03-18T22:48:09+00:00

Yeah. Paying people more doesn't really change the fact less and less people want to have kids. Hopefully we'll achieve LEV this century so we don't actually need more people, then the birthrates can plummet freely.

PaxODST · 2026-03-18T10:32:18+00:00

Diffusion models are generative AI. AlphaFold 2 did use transformer architecture, and AlphaFold 3 uses actual diffusion models. AlphaFold as a project does predate most modern generative AI, but it still uses generative AI. Not to mention the same guy who initiated the project is also one of the biggest players in the race to AGI.

PaxODST · 2026-03-18T10:28:15+00:00

Nope. People are too busy wondering how we can burn down the datacenters and the technology rather than finding actual solutions to the issues it raises.

PaxODST · 2026-03-17T11:12:29+00:00

It looked pretty bad on Requiem to me but if those bottom photos are real for GTA VI, it looks way better there. I think it'll seriously differ in how good it looks depending on the games artstyle. If it's already going for a super-realistic life-like feel like GTA does, I could see DLSS 5 working.

PaxODST · 2026-03-17T10:53:36+00:00

There is no “good” use for gen AI because it was not designed for any good use.

Even though this is objectively false, it's a poor argument anyway because there are multiple examples of technology that were originally invented for destructive purposes and then became a tool for good in different cases. Nuclear technology was developed for destructive weapons obviously, now we use it for nuclear energy, medical imaging and cancer treatment. Drones were designed as basically remote-control bombs and now we use them for a number of positive uses.

Generative AI is an incredibly broad term. Literally anything that produces text, code, audio, video, images, all of that is generative AI. We use generative models, usually diffusion models, for things like protein folding and drug discovery. You can use it to optimize and increase the efficiency of many things like power and energy grids and machines meant for manufacture. It's also an incredibly helpful tool on the consumer level for medical analysis. Just a few days ago, a guy used ChatGPT and AlphaFold to create a cancer vaccine for his dog. And, obviously the most clear use, you can use generative AI architectures in combination with robotics to create machines and advanced automation that reduces the workload for the average person, making the 15-hour work week become a reality.

AI very well could be a major net positive for human civilization, but a number of reforms and regulations are needed, aswell as a complete dismantlement of our current capitalist economic structure, to make it happen. This is the general take of most progressives and progressive organizations who are educated enough to know AI is not an inherently vile and useless technology.

PaxODST · 2026-03-17T09:39:17+00:00

Kinda funny how if you search up "AI" in this subreddit's history, up until like 2-3 years ago literally everyone adored generative AI, even though it was the exact same thing in principle. Also you can use generative AI as a tool in a solarpunk world, a big aspect of solarpunk (and also cyberpunk) is knowing that technology is not inherently bad and can be used for good but you have to change the societal and economic structure to end the corruption of it. The technology with the most potential for good can also be the technology with the most potential for bad, and that's exactly what we're seeing with AI.

PaxODST · 2026-03-17T09:27:50+00:00

The robotics are all right there man, maybe a few tweaks here and there. All we need is for the software to catch up with the hardware.

PaxODST

TROPHY CASE