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Imitative AI, Universal Basic Income, and the Gravity Well of Money in Politics [1]
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Date: 2025-09-08
Imitative AI does not deliver on its promises. It does not make government workers more productive. It does not improve programmer productivity. It makes doctors worse at their jobs. Agents do not work. It is not improving. This is not to say that there are not circumstances where imitative AI cannot be helpful, but it does point out that the promises of the industry are largely unfulfilled and likely unfulfillable.
Universal Basic Income, the idea of providing cash to people as support, is massively successful. It helps people find better jobs. It helps people star their own businesses and use more health care. It gives people more control over their lives and increases mental health. This is not to say that all UBI programs are successful in all aspects. We do not yet live in a land of unicorns. But the programs have been largely successful, much more so than imitative AI.
Guess which one has political backing?
The simple truth is that imitative AI has money to back politicians and UBI programs do not. No matter the costs of imitative AI, no matter that it has not lived up to its promises, government have been pushed by the billionaires behind it to provide it monetary support and to refuse to regulate it. The simple fact is that money buys influence in this country. Not a huge revelation of course, but something that I do not think we see so starkly all the time.
Since the Citizen United case effectively outlawing campaign finance restrictions, Republican support for climate change solutions, once prevalent and constructive, effectively disappeared. Dark money, money that cannot be tracked back to donors, has increased. Elections have become more partisan, less accountable and foreign money has become commonplace in American elections. Money has warped and corrupted our elections.
Money is not speech. It is a tool to facilitate speech — an important distinction. Money can be corrupting, it can crowd out speech by the less well-off, and it can open elections to outside interferences. It can hide in a way that speakers cannot, and it can move through the system undetected and untraceable, like trying to track a single drop of water in a stream. It is a tool, a weapon, not a conversation.
None of this is new, of course, and none of it will be unfamiliar to anyone who follows politics. But I think it important to discuss and remember even the commonplace. We do not want to be the fish who have no word for water since it is all around them. We want to remember the corruption and distortion of unlimited, untraceable donations. Otherwise, we will perpetually live in a world where failed experiments like imitative AI are seated at the head of the table and successful ones like UBI are tossed out the cellar door.
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