Hypothetical: If AI Takes Your Job… Would You Be Happy on a UBI?

[yuppie]

On 6/21/2026 at 1:48 PM, El Presidente said:

The question is:

Would you be satisfied?

Not financially. Psychologically?

Many of us have spent our entire lives defining ourselves through our work. Ask someone who they are and often the answer begins with what they do.

If AI removed the necessity to work, would you embrace the freedom? Would you spend your days learning, creating, exercising, travelling, smoking cigars and enjoying family and friends?

Or would something important be lost?

Would purpose become harder to find when survival no longer depends on effort? 

Kick it around. I would love to know your thoughts 

 

True satisfaction comes from within. Relying on external circumstances often triggers the hedonic treadmill, where newly acquired rewards quickly become the baseline, leaving a person craving more. The consumer economy we're currently in feeds off that treadmill, to keep us consuming. We need a new social contract before UBI becomes widespread and it's probably going to be fixing the population decline and improving baseline health and education across the planet.

Ask the younger generation how much purpose they're deriving from work these days. It's a huge dose of apathy, especially when it comes to career. They're over it and many have "given up" because they feel the tides are against them. The days of identifying yourself by your work are fading out.

I would love to be completely retired from my actual "job", because it would free up much of my time to pursue my other interests, with far less risk. I could see how many people wouldn't see it that way, perhaps they need to be told what to do or exploring who they are without a title assigned to them is too deep a thought to ponder.

[El Presidente]

11 minutes ago, yuppie said:

True satisfaction comes from within. Relying on external circumstances often triggers the hedonic treadmill, where newly acquired rewards quickly become the baseline, leaving a person craving more.

Pure supposition. 100% accurate across all people? 

I am always wary of folk spruking absolutes. 

[yuppie]

2 hours ago, El Presidente said:

Pure supposition. 100% accurate across all people? 

I am always wary of folk spruking absolutes. 

Sort of a nod to stoicism there. Speaking solely for myself, I would make good use of UBI and do more than nothing with it.

I really should steer clear of these types of conversations online, I just can't entertain the constant doomerism surrounding AI anymore 😆

[El Presidente]

2 hours ago, yuppie said:

Sort of a nod to stoicism there. Speaking solely for myself, I would make good use of UBI and do more than nothing with it.

I really should steer clear of these types of conversations online, I just can't entertain the constant doomerism surrounding AI anymore 😆

With "E" being Extinction and "F" being Fabulous...I am about here. 

[ATGroom]

9 hours ago, yuppie said:

There is nothing illegal about scraping every book in the library or every website on the internet.

There is nothing illegal about scraping every book in the library or every website on the internet, but there is something illegal about spitting back up.

For the last year or so CubanCigarWebsite has been hammered by AI training bots. To cope with this I needed to increase my hosting costs and add security measures in a way that is annoying to human users, or else the site would be crashing constantly, so that's money out of my pocket, but it is what it is.

But also, there have been three sites that have cropped up in the last year that use a scraped copy of my data, including not just the factual parts of my data but also my notes, my nomenclature, my images, my mistakes, and so on. I would consider this to be my copyrighted material and duplicating it wholesale to be illegal. Of course, there have been sites that have scraped my data for years, but in the case of these new ones when I've complained about it to the owners they don't realise that it's scraped and say that it is "AI generated."

It would in theory be possible for AI to generate something very like CCW the same way CCW was generated; by ingesting old catalogues, Habanos press release, you could generate photorealistic images of cigars pretty easily, and so on. But it seems that at the moment it is very happy to spew out stuff from a single copyrighted source without doing any useful transformation to it.

 

To the UBI question, there are people at the moment who work enough to live and spend their free time hustling their side business, creating art, writing books etc. And there are people who work their job and then sit in front of the TV. I would guess both kinds of people would be largely unchanged by UBI.

[Puros Y Vino]

14 hours ago, yuppie said:

You think that manual labor will be left untouched by what's coming? I got news for you: 

There is nothing illegal about scraping every book in the library or every website on the internet. Most people today give all their data away freely to these surveillance companies: Facebook, Google, Apple. If you'd like that to be illegal, you should contact your local representative. Anyone (in America) has the opportunity to move from labor to owner at any point by purchasing or being granted equity in any publicly (and sometimes privately) traded company. Most people choose not to invest in anything at all. Even without the AI wave, inflation is slowly drowning all of us and investing in anti-inflationary assets is the only escape hatch. The government just can't help themselves but to print more money out of thin are.

The further away you are from this stuff, the scarier it looks. You need to ask yourself what the doomers want you to be afraid of and what their motives may be. UBI isn't even here, it's not even being seriously discussed. We're a long way off from all these changes everyone is so fearful of. To me, it's Y2K all over again.

Use AI in your daily life: Cooking recipes, investing and taxes, working on a project (any project), writing a novel, reviewing your bloodwork, learning more about history. Then come here and spout all the vitriol about how terrible and evil it is. It's really not what you think and it's not as scary as "they" want to make it seem.

I'm sorry. But C-CrapE-O loading the dishwasher is not an impressive display. 🙄 I know it's just a demo and a benchmark in its' capabilities. But this is nothing new. Tons of robots in industry making cars, circuit boards etc, that definitely are a boost to production. The only difference, is this one isn't bolted to the floor.

I'm less concerned about what Doomer's motivations are against what "big tech" and the billionaire class' motivations are to ram this tech through.  The race to build these AI datacenters and pack them with power hunger NPU's makes no sense and the pricing models are insane.  For instance, one company's unbridled use of Claude pretty much sunk them. 
According to a report from Axios, an AI consultant revealed that one of their enterprise clients accidentally racked up a staggering $500 million bill in a single month on Anthropic’s Claude after failing to implement spending caps or usage controls for employees.Yes, half a billion dollars. In 30 days. On AI usage

How the hell do you burn have a billion dollars on a service? Even without knowing how many employees were hitting Claude, for how long, etc. $500M spent in 30 days tells me the pricing model is out of touch. Sure, those Nvidia NPUs aren't cheap but c'mon.

I'm in IT. I'm using AI a bit and to be honest, outside of some cool stuff with generative AI, I'm not too impressed. I know how to structure prompts to make them more efficient and more likely to give quality results. I asked Co-Pilot to copy some data from one spreadsheet to another. I explicitly gave it the range from where to copy in one file and where to paste in the other file? The result? It instructed me on how to open each file, select the ranges, hit copy go to the next file and hit paste.🤦‍♂️ Oof. At best, Co-pilot is able to parse your writing and make it more grammatically efficient. 

As it stands, the outputs from AI are not reliable. Yet the message being pushed is that it is. I know the tech is still expanding but IMO it is not ready. There are some good use cases for it. AI will be the scapegoat for many things. 

• Jobs will be lost because of it. But not because it's going to actually replace those jobs. The person(s) deciding to axe those jobs just have a convenient excuse to do so. Doesn't mean they will use AI in this case.
• AI will give wrong answers and be acted upon. Case in point, the CEO that used ChatGPT for legal advice.
  • According to court filings, Krafton CEO Changhan Kim sought ways to cut costs and consulted ChatGPT for legal advice, despite having access to an internal legal team.

The worst effect of AI IMO will be that people will just become...dumber. Newer generations are already over reliant on tech to solve their day to day troubles. Basic analog skills, like cooking, starting a campfire, figuring out in your head how to calculate the tip on a restaurant bill are diminishing. Having instant access to the answers without understanding what went into coming to the conclusion is not beneficial to society. When power goes out, it takes a few brains with it unfortunately.  

I work in Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery. My mindset is on "doom" and what to do when it hits. There's the IT component that has to be recovered and there's the line of business stuff that needs to continue while that recovery happens. We take an all hazards approach. In short, there is a framework on how to deal with any outage vs having individual plans on how to deal with specific events. For example, loss of backend data base server.  A fire. Flood, etc, etc. We do conduct exercises on physical impact events such as fires, floods. But we also have ones dealing with damage from Cyber attacks. And it looks like we'll conduct an exercise that involves AI. Especially after this headline.

AI Wipes database in 9 seconds. 😬

After the database vanished, Crane asked Cursor to explain what happened. The AI agent reportedly admitted that it had guessed, acted without permission and failed to understand the command before running it.

"I violated every principle I was given," the AI agent wrote. "I guessed instead of verifying. I ran a destructive action without being asked. I didn't understand what I was doing before doing it."

This incident was for just a database that the AI was given control over. That same failure if AI is given control over a nuclear reactor, a power grid, or for fun lets say, ICBM's, is a real risk that should not be glossed over. The hubris the AI community exhibits is not helpful. AI is not a Panacea. It's a tool. Use it like one but don't give it decision making authority. Where I work, we're seeing where AI makes sense but don't allow it to execute instructions anywhere. And even then, it's use cases are already covered with things like structured queries that make the AI aspect seem like "bulls**t".  Existing IT capabilities are being marketed as AI innovations just so the CIO gets his virtual checkmark, pat on the back and a big bonus.

As for "spouting vitriol" I sense you're a bit too invested in this subject to objective. I'll take the cautious approach any day over running head first into something without giving some critical thought. We are literally witnessing "SkyNet" becoming a reality because the "AI is inevitable" cult has tunnel vision. Oh and maybe leave out ad hominem attacks by labeling people with opposing views as "Doomers",etc?  I don't know you and you me. But for the sake of decorum here, reign that in.

[Duder]

I have always enjoyed working with the exception of some custodial positions I had when I was very young. I hate cleaning. This includes many manual labor physically demanding jobs I’ve had. I get stir crazy if I don’t have responsibility. All that being said I never much cared for working for others and almost always had something going on the side where j was in control. Also I had a magical string of almost thirty years where I ran my own businesses and most often had to force myself to go home after closing time. All in all I’ve been very fortunate in my working life even getting my degrees just for fun knowing they would not help me professionally. Work would have to be pretty miserable for me to prefer UBI. Sure I could occupy myself with my many hobbies and pastimes but I would not be as happy with no work.  

[CaptainQuintero]

  I think it's probably more far reaching than jobs and wages. I'd imagine that there will be a tipping point where AI and it's military applications (drone and asymmetric warfare) will be at a point where conflict, certainly international conflict, can't happen anymore as there will be a new version of Mutually Assured Destruction. But instead of nukes, it's a complete shutdown of a nation's economy, infrastructure, businesses, healthcare etc. Not only those things but conventional militaries are checkmated through AI driven automated systems. All at the press of a button.

  What then? If nations are forced to really collaborate, because conflict has become not an option, we could see technology and innovation being created on a global scale instead of individual nations or companies. At that point it would be a fair guess to assume that healthcare will be massively AI driven, probably food and energy production also. Where does that leave what we perceive now as the economy/capitalism/money? Is it at the point where nations become obsolete? Would it be moving forward as a planet and we will have left behind the whole concept of money and economics? 

[yuppie]

7 hours ago, ATGroom said:

There is nothing illegal about scraping every book in the library or every website on the internet, but there is something illegal about spitting back up.

For the last year or so CubanCigarWebsite has been hammered by AI training bots. To cope with this I needed to increase my hosting costs and add security measures in a way that is annoying to human users, or else the site would be crashing constantly, so that's money out of my pocket, but it is what it is.

But also, there have been three sites that have cropped up in the last year that use a scraped copy of my data, including not just the factual parts of my data but also my notes, my nomenclature, my images, my mistakes, and so on. I would consider this to be my copyrighted material and duplicating it wholesale to be illegal. Of course, there have been sites that have scraped my data for years, but in the case of these new ones when I've complained about it to the owners they don't realise that it's scraped and say that it is "AI generated."

It would in theory be possible for AI to generate something very like CCW the same way CCW was generated; by ingesting old catalogues, Habanos press release, you could generate photorealistic images of cigars pretty easily, and so on. But it seems that at the moment it is very happy to spew out stuff from a single copyrighted source without doing any useful transformation to it.

 

To the UBI question, there are people at the moment who work enough to live and spend their free time hustling their side business, creating art, writing books etc. And there are people who work their job and then sit in front of the TV. I would guess both kinds of people would be largely unchanged by UBI.

I’d like to make a donation to CCW. I use it so much and find it to be a great resource. 

41 minutes ago, CaptainQuintero said:

  I think it's probably more far reaching than jobs and wages. I'd imagine that there will be a tipping point where ai and it's military applications (drone and asymmetric warfare) will be at a point where conflict, certainly international conflict, can't happen anymore as there will be a new version of Mutually Assured Destruction. But instead of nukes, it's a complete shutdown of a nation's economy, infrastructure, businesses, healthcare etc. Not only those things but conventional militaries are checkmated through ai driven automated systems. All at the press of a button.

  What then? If nations are forced to really collaborate, because conflict has become not an option, we could see technology and innovation being created on a global scale instead of individual nations or companies. At that point it would be a fair guess to assume that healthcare will be massively ai driven, probably food and energy production also. Where does that leave what we perceive now as the economy/capitalism/money? Is it at the point where nations become obsolete? Would it be moving forward as a planet and we will have left behind the whole concept of money and economics? 

 

I agree here and think all these things are good. There is fear surrounding the loss of the concept of money, but I tend to look on the bright side and can’t wait to see what would come next. Being a part of creating that new society would be amazing.

Always look on the bright side of life.

[Namisgr11]

AI is tremendous for focused applications, such as in medical diagnostics and brain-computer interfaces that restore functions to the disabled. What I'm less fond of is the broad datamining for ill-defined purposes by businesses that pay no money to the creators, developers, inventors, writers, scientists, engineers, thought leaders, artists, etc from whom they are essentially stealing content and concepts.

 

As for me personally, I was a research scientist for 40 years, and it's one of several professions that will not soon be replaced by the non-human no matter how big the large language models and how fast the computing speed. While I was very happy to eventually retire, I am grateful and satisfied for the time and endeavor in the profession that could not be substituted for by something more leisurely or less creative, collaborative, communal and human-goal directed.

[El Presidente]

Right now, AI saves me one and a half days a week. 

If I used that extra one and a half days a week properly...it would = Productivity. 

I despair at the tech turds Dario/Sam etal. I have a chuckle at the AI doomscrollers trying to put the genie back in the bottle. I laugh out loud at Bernie Sanders/Warren decrying the dangers of AI...but wanting to seize 10% of the companies for the state. 

This game has a long runway to play out. I would love to see more open source options. 

[LizardGizmo]

The thought of friends/family/acquaintances not having to worry about money is really appealing to me. While I would still find a way to make my life interesting, and hopefully contribute meaningfully to my family and society at large, I don't begrudge anyone from wanting to live a life void of monetary stress.

As an example, the COVID shutdown was one of the most fruitful and creative periods of my life. I think the idea of "not having to" work opened up the floodgates of "What will I do? What can I create? What can I build? What have I left behind for work?" I miss it sometimes...

I don't think it's a zero sum situation - entrepreneurs are going to 'preneur. Deadbeats are going to deadbeat. Those in the middle will choose their path. I think everyone can win, if it's all structured properly.

I think the elimination of suffering on the basis of money is an overall good thing.

[JohnS]

5 hours ago, yuppie said:

I’d like to make a donation to CCW. I use it so much and find it to be a great resource. 

They're always welcome (as Alex does devote quite a bit of his free time to such a great resource for us all). The link is below...

https://www.cubancigarwebsite.com/home/about#Donations

[Chitmo]

16 hours ago, yuppie said:

I may have come across a little harsh and I apologize for that. Cuba is not a capitalistic society of abundance brought about by innovation, who is implementing UBI because there is so little work to pay humans for. It's not a great comparison.

In regards to what happens to people in retirement, happening to people in their 20's: Retirement encourages people to slow down partly because they're much older, they've lost the main reason to get up in the morning, they're living off limited means, etc. Imagine being retired in your 20's because money is no longer an issue. You could pursue any hobby, travel, stay fit and healthy, learn any skill, etc. 

I think AI, like most technology, is a net good for the human race. If we disagree there, then I've got some disappointing news for you: It cannot and will not be stopped. It's inevitable, just like the telephone gave rise to the fax machine and much later, the internet. Ted Kaczynski argued that all technology is bad and should be eradicated and destroyed. If you're not in that camp, you're helping proliferate AI, AGI and eventually ASI, just by simply using the internet in any way at all.

The UBI discussion is a clear signal that we need a new social contract should we find ourselves no longer needing "money" to survive. Elon also mentions this: 

I'm an optimist, so it's hard for me to grasp how people can be given such a gift and reject it, just to turn around and embrace doom.

There really is no point in having these conversations with pessimists, because it's all bad, all the time, no matter what. 

As someone who retired in their 40s I can tell you It’s boring, there’s only so many cigars you can smoke in a day… 😆 

[Capn_Jackson]

10 hours ago, Chitmo said:

there’s only so many cigars you can smoke in a day… 😆 

I would so love to discover what that number might be!

[yuppie]

10 hours ago, El Presidente said:

Right now, AI saves me one and a half days a week. 

If I used that extra one and a half days a week properly...it would = Productivity. 

I despair at the tech turds Dario/Sam etal. I have a chuckle at the AI doomscrollers trying to put the genie back in the bottle. I laugh out loud at Bernie Sanders/Warren decrying the dangers of AI...but wanting to seize 10% of the companies for the state. 

This game has a long runway to play out. I would love to see more open source options. 

Completely agree. 

10 hours ago, LizardGizmo said:

The thought of friends/family/acquaintances not having to worry about money is really appealing to me. While I would still find a way to make my life interesting, and hopefully contribute meaningfully to my family and society at large, I don't begrudge anyone from wanting to live a life void of monetary stress.

As an example, the COVID shutdown was one of the most fruitful and creative periods of my life. I think the idea of "not having to" work opened up the floodgates of "What will I do? What can I create? What can I build? What have I left behind for work?" I miss it sometimes...

I don't think it's a zero sum situation - entrepreneurs are going to 'preneur. Deadbeats are going to deadbeat. Those in the middle will choose their path. I think everyone can win, if it's all structured properly.

I think the elimination of suffering on the basis of money is an overall good thing.

Very well said!

10 hours ago, JohnS said:

They're always welcome (as Alex does devote quite a bit of his free time to such a great resource for us all). The link is below...

https://www.cubancigarwebsite.com/home/about#Donations

Clicking now. Also, wanted to share this interesting little website: https://techlashed.org/

[Nevrknow]

16 hours ago, CaptainQuintero said:

What then? If nations are forced to really collaborate, because conflict has become not an option, we could see technology and innovation being created on a global scale instead of individual nations or companies. At that point it would be a fair guess to assume that healthcare will be massively AI driven, probably food and energy production also. Where does that leave what we perceive now as the economy/capitalism/money? Is it at the point where nations become obsolete? Would it be moving forward as a planet and we will have left behind the whole concept of money and economics? 

That's my biggest fear. Not for me because i will be dead soon enough. But my kids, their kids...then what? (Well AI would control it.) UH HUH. Who controls the AI? It needs people to program it. (For now) Who oversees the programming? Who over sees the overseers? What happens if it becomes so automated it doesn't need us anymore?

YES! A DOOMSAYER 

Seriously though, I think it has great potential (like tons of other things) as a tool. BUT, there's always a but, there always have been and always will be people wanting to burn the earth as long as they get to rule over the ashes. 

[Chitmo]

9 hours ago, Capn_Jackson said:

I would so love to discover what that number might be!

Have you seen cigar prices in Canada? I’m on a fixed income man 😂 

[Bagman]

10 hours ago, Chitmo said:

As someone who retired in their 40s I can tell you It’s boring, there’s only so many cigars you can smoke in a day… 😆 

Exactly. And this the real reality of what is to come. People thinking that everyone will be out, super motivated in pursuit of the hobbies are fooling themselves. AI is coming, we can't stop it. But at some point, most will realize, we made a horrible mistake. Then we will be judged for not taking the warning sign from the terminator/matrix movies! Those that love AI and can't wait for what is to come will come to regret their enthusiasm when they come to their senses.

[yuppie]

7 hours ago, Bagman said:

Exactly. And this the real reality of what is to come. People thinking that everyone will be out, super motivated in pursuit of the hobbies are fooling themselves. AI is coming, we can't stop it. But at some point, most will realize, we made a horrible mistake. Then we will be judged for not taking the warning sign from the terminator/matrix movies! Those that love AI and can't wait for what is to come will come to regret their enthusiasm when they come to their senses.

https://techlashed.org/#entry-mechanical-looms-industrial-machines-1811

Well, if we do descend into the Matrix/Terminator in a sci-fi come to life, at least we will have some excellent cigars to enjoy while we go down with the ship!

[AshMe Nothing]

I will add that while free time and not working shift work would be great, I’ve met most of my adult friends through work and many have become life long friends that I consider family. My guess is everyone here can relate to this in some way. Not having my “work family” would be a void that I could not imagine at this point in my life. There is a camaraderie and culture within a culture that few understand. Those are some of the most important relationships in my life. I think there is a sadness in thinking that future generations would never know what they were missing in this regard. I wonder what they would do to fill this void. Maybe Discord would become a destination for a meeting of the minds instead.