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# Future of Work

2026-10-31

Keynes Predicted a 15-Hour Workweek a Century Ago: With AI Multiplying Productivity 10x, Where Did Our Time Dividend Go?

[UBI & AI Social Reconstruction · Episode 04] In 1930, John Maynard Keynes accurately calculated that human productivity would grow 8-fold within a century—yet his prediction of a 15-hour workweek never materialized. Now that AI agents multiply software, design, and administrative efficiency by another 10x, why are we still trapped in a 40-hour attendance theater? Drawing on real data from the UK's 61-company trial, Microsoft Japan, and Iceland, we examine how Universal Basic Income (UBI) and shorter workweeks can reclaim our overdue time dividend.

2026-10-30

AI & The New Social Contract | Alaska Has Paid Every Resident Unconditional Cash for 44 Years: From an $80B Oil Fund to the Universal AI Compute Dividend

[UBI & AI Social Reconstruction Series · Episode 03] Critics often claim that Universal Basic Income (UBI) would bankrupt any government within three years. Yet one place on Earth has quietly run a statewide unconditional cash dividend for 44 consecutive years: the Alaska Permanent Fund. Seeded with $734,000 in oil royalties in 1976, the fund has grown to $80 billion while paying up to $3,284 per person—including newborns—without reducing employment. As AI models trained on humanity's collective knowledge automate cognitive labor, Alaska offers the exact blueprint for a Sovereign AI Compute Dividend.

2026-10-29

AI & The New Social Contract | Does $1,000/Month Make People Lazy? Inside Sam Altman’s $60M, 3-Year OpenResearch UBI Experiment

UBI & AI Social Reconstruction Column · Episode 02. Whenever we call for Universal Basic Income (UBI) in the age of AI abundance, critics repeat a 400-year-old trope: 'Give people unconditional cash and everyone will stop working and waste it on vice.' To test that claim with hard science, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman backed OpenResearch—a $60 million, 3-year randomized controlled trial tracking 3,000 people across 36 months. Published by the NBER, the empirical results demolish every paternalistic myth.

2026-10-28

AI & The New Social Contract | When Productivity Is Infinite, Humans Deserve Joy, Not New Shackles: Why Universal Basic Income (UBI) Is a Fundamental Right

Anthropic's S-1 prospectus revealed $16.3B in 6-month revenue as autonomous coding agents replace 10-person engineering teams. That exposes the defining paradox of the 21st century: when AI pushes human productivity toward abundance and marginal costs toward zero, why are ordinary people experiencing layoff terror instead of liberation? In Episode 1 of our daily UBI & AI Societal Reconstruction column, we trace three centuries of social contracts, the public knowledge commons behind frontier LLMs, and the macroeconomic necessity of Universal Basic Income.