[zamadatix]

Is this question just for mathematicians in isolation or does it imply the same for most other jobs too? I think the answer for the former is we don't, mathematics would become a hobby the same as we don't hire people to be human calculators anymore because we have machines better st it. For the latter, it depends - some say UBI while the machines do the work, others say dystopia ruled by the machines or their few owners, yet others say anything in between.

Put differently: There is no natural law of the universe of why we pay people to do work. It just works well for us currently. If it stops making sense we do something else that works well for that new currently.

[esafak]

It is for all jobs. We have to be open to new arrangements. I like the recent proposal (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47748123) to tax AI companies that destroy human demand. My point is we have to sort this out now because AI companies are quickly usurping power from labor, and if we wait there will be even more unrest, and worse.

[zamadatix]

This is pretty much the UBI take. I'm not sure I see a rush to get there before we've even figured out which jobs will actually be replaced and how much work that leaves us (paradoxically, we seem to do more and more work lately as technology enables tasks to be done faster) but I think funding UBI via AI is a nice answer as it kind of wraps itself in the scale of the impact it actually has.

There is real risk in doing it too early as well. Imagine if we thought the same ~50 years ago when microcomputers started to appear. If the tech companies had to pay the salaries of every displaced job we would have ended up with severely hampered progress on computers and then a job shortage as we realized there were just different jobs now, not necessarily no work quite yet.