The Highwire with Del Bigtree - AI, UBI, AND THE END OF EARNING

Episode Date: January 24, 2026

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?Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

I want to talk about a conversation that's a little forward-looking, but it's coming quick. We've been talking about this before, but this is this rapid rollout of artificial intelligence. And just see if context, we came out of the COVID pandemic, and AI was dropped in our lap. Coincidence? Who knows? Maybe history will show that. But it's dropped in our lap, and all of a sudden, it's aggressively accelerating into every aspect of our life. And we as citizens are going around, looking around going, wait a minute, this thing is moving really fast. We've got to have some big conversations here. One of them is about jobs, employment, and universal basic income.

And an interesting point, Yvallel Harari, he is an historian. He's also really likes the WEF. He had a point that I want to really spotlight here. Take a listen. Okay. Now, you can think about the AI revolution as simply a wave of immigration of millions and billions of AI-euroids. immigrants that will take people's jobs that have very different cultural ideas and that might try to gain some kind of political power

and these AI immigrants these digital immigrants they don't need visas they don't cross as a sea in some rickety boat in the middle of the night they come at the speed of light and I look for instance at far-right parties in in Europe. And they talk so much about the human immigrants, sometimes with justification, sometimes without justification. They talk, they don't talk almost at all about the wave of digital immigrants

that is coming into Europe. And I think they should be much, if they care about the sovereignty of their country, if they care about the economic and cultural future of their country, they should be far more worried about the digital than about the human immigrants. I mean, it's a good point, right?

Like, focus on the real issue, and it's a trippy thought, right? That for all the immigration and what it can do to jobs, what if it's millions of immigrants that I think you could argue you have the intelligence of a Nobel laureate and are going to work for less than minimum wage? And yet we're just all looking and complaining about other issues, issues and this one is, as he says, moving at light speed right now. Absolutely. And I want to read something that puts a fine point on. In fact, I read this and it

really stopped me in my place. So this is an article called The Great to Coupling. And the title's White Collar Displacement Ignites 2026 UBI Firestorm. It says the United States enters 2026. The long predicted AI revolution has transitioned from a Silicon Valley slogan to a disruptive economic reality. For decades, automation was a specter haunting factory floors and warehouses, but the last 18 months have seen a dramatic shift towards the white collar cliff. This displacement has catapulted universal-based income from the fringe libertarian experiment to the center of the 2026 political agenda. It goes on to say the significance of this moment cannot be overstated. Unlike previous waves of automation that replaced physical tasks,

the current agentic era of AI targets the core of the middle class professional identity, cognitive reasoning, and project management, and specialized knowledge. As corporate earnings, record highs due to AI-driven operational efficiency while entry-level professional hiring has plummeted by nearly 40% in some sectors. The debate over who owns the wealth generated by artificial intelligence has become the defining issue of the year. So as we are given AI to transcribe our Zoom calls and make some better meme images with Google Gemini, corporations are using it to vastly accelerate their efficiency and thus take people out of the job market. So the question is, are we stumbling into a universal basic income?

And we have the State of the Union address that's going to be on February 24th by President Trump. And a lot of people are looking forward to that and saying, is there going to be conversation about an AI dividend or something that's going to be given to the public, some kind of stipend or something because of this job displacement? And that would really be the first specter of this universal basic income we're seeing. And again, I'm going to point to Florida here. because we have a lot of governors and people that are standing up in politics and wanting a different change here. This is Governor DeSantis in Florida. He says, he took the X. He said, why would people want to allow the human experience to be displaced by computers? As a creation of man, AI will not be divorced from the flaws of human nature. Indeed, it is more likely to magnify those flaws. It is

dangerous. This issue, I think, is going to become, you know, more and more major topic on the highwire because it's concerning me. I have a son that's 17 years old, is a junior in high school, my daughter is 11 years old, and I'm trying to imagine what the future looks like for them. I'm trying to imagine, am I in the same position to guide my children forward for their careers and their ideas of who and what they want to be? Am I in the same position my parents were at? Because, you know, my son talks about, you know, perhaps being a lawyer. And I am, I, and what freaks me out is really, I imagine they'll still be. lawyers standing on floors of courtrooms, at least for, you know, the near future. But what about

all the researchers? What about all the entry-level jobs coming in paralegals or all the work that you could do, you know, whether it's an internship? Why is any lawyer going to bring on an intern to research other cases? Can you do some case studies? I mean, when AI is going to do that better than anyone can imagine? You know, why is anyone, how much of medicine is going to get wiped out. If your child wants to be a doctor, if the doctors mostly have become, you know, essentially agents for the pharmaceutical industry, almost virtually, you know, how much of the medical profession is just, here's the drug for that problem. Here's the drug for your reaction to that drug for that problem. Oh, you have another problem? Here's the three drugs. And we know

that's what's going on. AI can do that way better. It's certainly as well as any doctor. That job's gone. So to your point, all of these, what used to be what you wanted your child to go to school for, they seem to be the one, those careers are almost in the firing line more than a plumber, more than an auto mechanic at the moment. I know Elon's working on some robots to do that stuff. I don't know how far down the line, but I'm in a quandary right now on, you know, what is it I want my child to be good at? Right now, I'm like, you just better be good at surviving, being creative.

creative, being able to think outside the box to Bob and Weave because your world is about to be decimated. And then you think about universal basic income. Let's just take away the greatest motivating factor all of us had that got us off of our bed, whether it was in college or after college or going out to get a job. And that's survival. You know, survival is what kept me alive in New York when I was, you know, trying to get that job waiting tables while I was pursuing a career in the arts, simply having to survive it. That was taken away. How many people lose really the will to fight or live?

How much of the society will be what, smoking weed and playing video games? And I guess the great overlords will keep voting for them to get a raise to do that. More UBI for the people that aren't working? I don't buy it. Yeah. And what's it replaced by? That's the question. What replaces that drive?

if in the monastery system is not perfect. I think you and I both agree on that, but we replaces that drive. Is it creativity? Is it some type of blissful life? Or is it more of a dependence on who's giving out the UBI, which is most likely going to be the government? And that's a recipe for disaster, as we've seen throughout history.

Yeah. Well, Jeffrey, I appreciate the reporting. Fantastic work. Again, I think this is going to be a super interesting year. So many things are moving really, really fast. And I love that you're just keeping it all eye in front of us. Let's not worry, you know, yeah, immigration, but what if immigration is coming light speed and it's coming after all of our jobs in a different form?

We've got to keep our eyes on all that.