Sam Altman recently proposed ‘Universal Basic Compute,’ in which everyone would have access to a portion of GPT-7’s computing resources. 

“I wonder if the future looks something more like Universal Basic Compute than Universal Basic Income, and everybody gets like a slice of GPT-7 compute,” said Altman, in the recent episode of the All-in podcast.  

He said that this would not be in the form of money but as a share of productivity that could be used, sold, or even donated for initiatives like cancer research, etc. 

Altman said that they began exploring Universal Basic Income (UBI) around 2016. “About the same time, we started taking AI really seriously,” he added, considering the potential changes AI might bring to society, employment, the economy, and even social contract. 

“I am not like a super fan of how the government has handled most policies designed to help poor people, and I kind of believe that if you could just give people money they would make good decisions, and the market would do its thing,” reminisced Altman, saying that he is pretty much in favour of lifting up the poor and eliminating poverty. 

He believes that the existing social safety net is broken. “Giving people money is not going to solve all the problems. It is certainly not going to make people happy. But it might solve some problems. It might give people a better horizon with which to help themselves,” said Altman, adding  that things are now changing and there should be better things to do than traditional UBI.

This new development also comes in the backdrop of Altman’s controversial statement: “I don’t care if we burn 50 billion a year, we’re building AGI.”   

“Whether we burn $500 million, $5 billion, or $50 billion a year, I don’t care. I genuinely don’t as long as we can stay on a trajectory where eventually we create way more value for society than that and as long as we can figure out a way to pay the bills,” he said. 

Meanwhile, OpenAI is gearing up to make some major announcements next week. “Not GPT-5, not a search engine, but we’ve been hard at work on some new stuff we think people will love! Feels like magic to me,” said Altman.

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