When the makers of a new technology continually warn of a white-collar bloodbath and measure their products by how well they replace human knowledge work, they should not be surprised when people believe it is coming for their livelihoods.
Yet a techno-optimist Facebook post from a key South Korean policymaker predicting an era of abundance while musing on ways to offset the pain of its impact on employment has caused an uproar. After market volatility, South Korean Chief Presidential Secretary for Policy Kim Yong-beom was forced to clarify his viral screed that, among other things, floated the idea of paying citizens a dividend using excess tax from AI profits.
The proposal could be premature and certainly badly timed for its chip champions, which are still proving how durable this boom really is. However, the instinct is not radical. If artificial intelligence (AI) delivers both the abundance and labor market disruption its own promoters promise, a dividend would look cheap compared with the populist backlash.
Illustration: Yusha
That this debate has erupted in South Korea matters; the nation is not some AI-skeptical laggard. It has embraced the technology with unusual enthusiasm. At just 16 percent, South Koreans had the lowest share of respondents globally who said they were more concerned than excited about its rise in daily life, according to a Pew survey. It has the world’s highest density of industrial robots and was singled out by Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute as the clearest success story in diffusion last year. South Korea knows tech-led growth can deliver. However, the country of Samsung Electronics Co, SK Hynix Inc and Squid Game is also aware that its economic miracle does not distribute gains evenly.
In the US, meanwhile, attitudes toward AI are hardening. Half of the country is more concerned than excited, up from 37 percent in 2021. The backlash is already manifesting in protests against data centers, anxiety among entry-level workers and even violence. At the same time, leaders from Anthropic PBC to DeepSeek continue to prophesy a looming jobpocalypse. The idea that many working in the industry believe AI could lead to a “permanent underclass” has become an open secret and a nihilistic internet meme. It is also emerging as a defining policy problem. Laying off millions of people while investing billions is more a strategy for political unrest than sustainable revenue growth. The window for companies and lawmakers to get ahead of this is closing fast.
Every period of technological change causes disruption. The optimistic case is that AI would eventually create new jobs we cannot yet imagine, just as the internet spurred social media managers, app developers and content creators. However, there have been remarkably few proposals for how to keep the social contract intact and bridge the divide that is causing real pain for college graduates and jobseekers now.
Offering citizens a dividend is one idea for helping blunt the transition. And Kim’s proposal of finding a way to share the tech spoils is hardly fringe. Silicon Valley leaders including Sam Altman and Elon Musk have endorsed some form of universal basic income in an AI-driven economy for years. A similar proposal has been floated by a US House of Representatives candidate in New York. OpenAI’s own policy recommendations, released last month, call for the creation of a public wealth fund that “could be distributed directly to citizens.” Whether the company would keep championing those ideas once they threaten margins is another matter.
Kim pointed to Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, built from oil and gas wealth, as a potential model. Alaska’s Permanent Fund offers another.
Critics are right that natural resources are not the same as private tech companies. However, the AI model builders have built their systems on a different kind of common resource: the collective data and creativity of billions of people, often without consent or remuneration. That makes claims for broader participation in the upside harder to dismiss.
Still, long-term policy must be sharper than simply mailing checks or a UBI. Besides fanning inflationary pressures, this strategy risks reducing citizens to consumers.
It does not address the innate desire to be productive and have purpose. However, it offers a bridge that gives more ordinary people a stake in this tech revolution.
Retraining has become the default is the lazy solution I hear a lot in tech circles. It sounds constructive until it means telling entry-level jobseekers or laid-off coders to cultivate “emotional intelligence” while algorithms take their livelihoods.
Human skills still matter, but they do not pay the bills on their own. AI also weakens the traditional tools workers use to bargain for their share, such as unions, making the need for creative policy designs more pressing.
If the marginal cost of cognitive work collapses and companies need fewer employees to generate the same revenue, labor’s leverage shrinks.
Lawmakers must start by looking at the data. Companies using software to justify layoffs must disclose where, how and why those cuts are happening.
This would help identify which workers, regions and career ladders are being hollowed out first. Then relief can be targeted. Excess AI-related tax revenue could lower individual tax burdens or help displaced workers cushion the bridge.
The industry also needs to do a far better job explaining how ordinary people would benefit from this technology.
Offering citizens ownership in the boom is one way to start. An AI dividend could sound socialist. It could also be the price of keeping capitalism alive.
Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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