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The Highwire with Del Bigtree

AI, UBI, AND THE END OF EARNING

The Highwire with Del Bigtree

The Highwire with Del Bigtree

News, Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.93.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2026

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The rapidly accelerating AI revolution raises profound questions about jobs, human purpose, and economic survival as white-collar work is quietly displaced at scale. As universal basic income shifts from theory to political reality, a deeper question emerges: what happens to motivation, creativity, and freedom when human labor is no longer essential?

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Transcript

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0:00.0

I want to talk about a conversation that's a little forward-looking, but it's coming quick.

0:05.5

We've been talking about this before, but this is this rapid rollout of artificial intelligence.

0:09.1

And just see if context, we came out of the COVID pandemic and AI was dropped in our lap.

0:14.8

Coincidence? Who knows? Maybe history will show that. But it's dropped in our lap,

0:19.6

and all of a sudden it's aggressively accelerating

0:21.9

into every aspect of our life. And we as citizens are going around, looking around going,

0:26.8

wait a minute, this thing's moving really fast. We've got to have some big conversations here.

0:31.3

One of them is about jobs, employment, and universal basic income. And an interesting point, Yvall Noelle Harari, he is an historian,

0:40.2

he's also really likes the WEF. He had, he had a point that I want to really spotlight here. Take a listen.

0:47.6

Okay. Now, you can think about the AI revolution as simply a wave of immigration of millions and billions of AI immigrants

1:00.0

that will take people's jobs that have very different cultural ideas and that might try to gain some kind of political power.

1:12.3

And these AI immigrants, these digital immigrants, they don't need visas.

1:17.3

They don't cross the sea in some rickety boats in the middle of the night.

1:22.5

They come at the speed of light.

1:25.9

And I look, for instance, at far-right parties in Europe.

1:30.5

And they talk so much about the human immigrants, sometimes with justification, sometimes

1:35.6

without justification.

1:37.0

They don't talk almost at all about the wave of digital immigrants that is coming into Europe.

1:46.0

And I think they should be much,

1:48.3

if they care about the sovereignty of their country,

1:51.2

if they care about the economic and cultural

1:54.0

of future of their country,

...

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