Is The #YangGang Too Early For Their Time?

Breaking away, shortly, from the amazing progression and components of autonomous vehicles, another aspect of the progression of autonomy/AI/ML came to my mind, but first, a quick preface:

Personally, I am extremely interested in the progression of artificial intelligence and machine learning. As a computer science and psychology double major, the progress that the aforementioned fields are making is quite ridiculous. With that being said, complete automation for many task that humans perform is becoming more and more controlled and implemented by AI, and singularity almost seems inevitable in the future. While this can be exciting (woohoo less work for regular people), if our economy and political figureheads are not prepared for this, quite honestly it could all become a mess.

---

On time or ahead of time?

Andrew Yang, one of the presidential candidates for the nearing 2020 election, has gained quite a following, often identifying themselves as the #yanggang. While I have no intention to get political in this post, I thought I'd mention how one of the most publicized polices of his campaign, the Freedom Dividend, is seemingly great but ahead of its time for most.

The Freedom Dividend is "a universal basic income of $1,000/month, $12,000 a year, for every American adult over the age of 18" (Andrew Yang, 2019).

To some, that may sound absurd. Where in the world is that money going to come from? Or, does this mean more taxes on us? Ignoring the logistics behind it, I think it is important to consider how there is a revering possibility that with the more accurate and efficient automation becomes, there will be the loss of jobs as a result. The issue now is that many people are not aware of this.

In fact, a two-year study from McKinsey Global Institute suggests that by 2030, intelligent agents and robots could eliminate as much as 30 percent of the world’s human labor, displacing the jobs of as many as 800 million people (@iotforall).

30% is a lot, but there is a good chance the economy will be able to keep producing jobs in some type of fashion. Even with the optimism, many people today still have the above picture in their mind when considering AI taking their job. Nevertheless, this is a big issue today.

When completely neutralizing what Andrew Yang is about politically, as an individual he is aware that AI and ML are becoming increasingly powerful. And to keep the economy stable, a "universal" income for everyone, on top of a person's regular salary, may be the most viable situation to help achieve this. In a time where technology is shaping almost everything we do, it's almost essential to understand where our society is headed.

In other words, if a presidential candidate is aware of this problem but many people who could vote for him are not, does this make him right on time, or too ahead of his time?