When people talk about AI and the future, the stories tend to go one of two ways: either AI wipes us out, or it leads us to a life of endless abundance and maybe even immortality.

Both of these are extreme scenarios, and there’s not much most of us could do about them if they were to happen. But honestly, there’s a whole lot of middle ground between those two extremes.

Alternative scenario

Let’s imagine one of those in-between scenarios. Picture a world with multiple competing AIs. Different groups would control them. In places like China, the government might run the show. In capitalist countries, it would probably be corporations and even non-profits, like cooperatives or foundations. For simplicity, let’s just call all these groups “corporations.”

Eventually, AIs will take over almost all the work—whether that’s digital tasks or physical labor via robots. So, how would the economy work in a world like that?

People would still need stuff—food, clothes, entertainment, healthcare. Corporations using AI would be the ones making and delivering these things because they’d be super efficient and cheap.

But there’s a catch: corporations need people to buy their products and services. For that to happen, people need money.

UBI

That’s where UBI (universal basic income) comes in. Think about it: in a market economy, money is like a voting system. When you buy something, you’re saying, “Hey, I like this!” It helps companies figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Here’s one possible setup: corporations would pay taxes to the government, and the government would distribute that money to everyone as UBI. Simple, right? But there’s another scenario to consider.

What if corporations had their own versions of UBI?

Instead of (or alongside) government-run UBI, companies could periodically airdrop their own tokens to people. These tokens would let you buy that corporation’s goods or services. By spending the tokens, you’d be “voting” for what you like.

People could also trade tokens between different corporations. That means you’d not only be voting on products but also deciding which entities you think are doing a good job overall.

Corporations could experiment with all kinds of token systems. For instance, some might have two types of tokens: one for buying stuff and another that acts like equity (basically, a share of the company). Only the first type would get handed out as UBI.

Other corporations might take the simpler route and use a single token for everything—both purchases and equity—which could give them an edge in winning over customers, but would also dilute equity.

Dystopian?

All this might sound straight out of a dystopian cyberpunk novel.

But it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. What if most such entities are cooperatives that genuinely prioritized people’s well-being and the environment? That doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Who knows—this future AI-driven economy could turn out to be just fine.

The real issue might be: what will people do with all this free time and no work? But that’s a question for another blog post…

A detailed draft with bullet points was prepared by Tempe Techie, then turned into a coherently written blog post by ChatGPT, and finally edited by Tempe Techie.