> The easiest way would be a straight tax on AI usage, and using that tax to pay a universal basic income

Every call for UBI should be qualified with two estimates:

1) How much money you think UBI will pay out

2) How much money you think the tax will generate

Creating a UBI program with AI taxes sounds like a clean solution to something until you do any math.

If we estimate today’s AI revenues across all the big providers at $100B annually (a little high) and divide by the population of the US, I get around $24 per month per person.

So a 100% tax on AI plans would allow us to give UBI of about 80 cents per day.

Even 10X the revenues wouldn’t make bring that to parity with UBI expectations. A 100% tax would also be an incredible gift to foreign AI companies that could offer similar services for half the price to everyone else in the world.

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cortesoft 14 hours ago | parent [-]

This is based on the assumption that AI is going to take all our jobs. If this is true, than as more jobs are absorbed by AI the revenue would increase.

	▲	Aurornis 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You’re assuming that this AI will be in the same taxable jurisdiction as the people whose jobs were replaced. The work that is most replaceable by AI is work that is mostly digital. That work most easily moves to another country. When the work is replaced by AI you can relocate it to another country much more easily than when you have to relocate workers.