Universal Basic Income (UBI) is often served up as the neat solution to AI job disruption. Lose work, receive a payment, and everything will be OK.

In this episode, Elliot and Matt come at that promise from different positions. Elliot makes the optimistic case for the freedom UBI could unlock. Whereas Matt is more sceptical... especially of those who treat it as a silver bullet.

They explore the targeting problem and what a flat payment means for workers facing vastly different income losses. Then there is the big question: who pays, and how do we ensure the companies capturing the productivity gains contribute?

Chapters ➡

00:17 Introduction to Universal Basic Income
03:04 Historical Context and Examples of UBI
05:43 Concerns and Critiques of UBI
08:12 The Role of Technology and AI in UBI
10:49 Funding UBI and Economic Implications
13:40 The Future of Work and UBI
14:29 Conclusion and Final Thoughts on UBI

Watch and subscribe to the channel now as well as our substack and on your favourite podcasting channels at: https://worthknowingpod.com

What happens if AI transforms work faster than Australia can adapt?

In the first episode of Worth Knowing, Matt and Elliot explore what AI job disruption could mean for Australian workers, and why the unemployment rate may not tell us the full story.

The Caldera Institute’s AI Work Cliff modelling stress-tests a scenario in which 20 per cent of Australia’s AI-exposed workforce experiences job loss, reduced hours or income downgrading. The result: 1.08 million workers affected and $48.9 billion in household income at risk each year.

Most may remain “technically employed”, even as their incomes fall. Australia could enter a hollow boom: productivity, investment and GDP keep rising while the wage base supporting households quietly erodes underneath them.

AI will create opportunities as well as disruption, but the warning signals are lighting up the board. What should workers do now? And how do we make the transition planned and intentional?

Chapters ➡

00:00 Highlight Teaser
00:30 Introduction
00:45 The Impact of AI on Jobs
11:21 Understanding AI Job Disruption
17:22 Industry's Role in AI Transition
19:57 Navigating the Future of Work
23:14 The Upside of Disruption
24:37 Wrap Up

Watch and subscribe to the channel now as well as our substack and on your favourite podcasting channels at worthknowingpod.com

Coming soon: Worth Knowing is a weekly podcast about the forces shaping politics, power and technology, and how they affect you.

Created by co-hosts Matt Kendall and Elliot Costello, Worth Knowing is an antidote to the polarised media landscape of grifters, bots, sock-puppets, rage baiters and a never-ending firehose of rapid-fire disinformation, hot takes and angertainment.

Each episode slows down and calms your info metabolism by taking one complex issue, looking at it from different angles and asking what is really happening, who is shaping the story, how it could affect your life and where it may be heading.

We take the big abstract issues that are having an impact and make them real and meaningful for you.

Watch and subscribe to the channel now, as well as our Substack, and on your favourite podcasting channels at worthknowingpod.com