by Peter Knight | May 16, 2026 | Featured, News
Photo by Steve A Johnson on Unsplash
Steven Bartlett has interviewed separately three leading experts on artificial intelligence (AI) and a business strategist as part of his podcast series, The Diary of a CEO. These fascinating in-de[th interviews all discuss UBI as a policy for mitigating the social impact of expected massive unemployment accompanying the achievement of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI — a hypothetical type of AI that can match or surpass human cognitive abilities across virtually any intellectual task) through an exponential process known as recursive self-improvement. AGI poses an existential threat to humanity if it proves impossible to solve the “alignment problem” — the challenge of ensuring that AI systems act in accordance with human goals, ethical values, and intentions.
To view the interview of Geoffrey Hinton, click here.
To view the interview of Stuart Russell, click here.
To view the interview of Tristan Harris, click here.
To view the interview of Daniel Priestly click here.
by Peter Knight | May 13, 2026 | Featured, News
Jorge Drescher of Kyiv, Ukraine has written two thought-provoking articles posing conceptual issues related to wages, work, and basic income.
The first article “Wage Negotiation — Observed by a Third Party”, raises a number of doubts concerning the process by which wages are set. “Consent is present. But is freedom?” Is it just? How would the wage negotiation have proceeded if the employee had a Universal Basic Income? Drescher sugests “Perhaps we need to rethink negotiations altogether: not as a game of asymmetric information, but as an encounter on equal footing. As a dialogue that doesn’t just ask, What are you worth? but: What do you need to be free?“
In the second article, “When Income from Work Becomes a Structural Problem”, Drescher argues that the “primary” form of work is undertaken to satisfy basic needs of existence. But when basic needs are satisfied, people undertake more meaningful activity: “cultural, symbolic, identity-forming.” Income, like work, is a socially constructed phenomenon. “Therefore, the social question is not: How do we enable someone without income to earn money through work? But rather: How do we ensure that all people can live in dignity and security, regardless of their economic utility?” The first step toward answering this question is establishing a UBI, a social dividend that enables freedom.
To read”Wage Negotiation — Observed by a Third Party” click here.
To read “When Income from Work Becomes a Structural Problem” click here.
by Peter Knight | Apr 28, 2026 | News
Due to overwhelming interest in the 25th BIEN Congress, we have extended the submission deadline to Sunday, May 3. This is the final opportunity to submit — no further extensions will be granted.
The response to this year’s call has been remarkable, and we want to ensure that every voice that belongs in this conversation has the chance to be heard. If you’ve been sitting on an idea, the time is now.
The Congress convenes August 20–22, 2026 in Toronto under the theme Basic Income in a Time of Polycrisis. We welcome research, advocacy, lived experience, roundtables, posters, film, poetry, and more across our three framing areas of Knowledge, Action, and Connection.
The final deadline is Sunday, May 3. Submit now at https://bien2026.net/call-for-proposals/
Questions? Contact us at biencongress2026@gmail.com.
by Peter Knight | Apr 19, 2026 | Featured, News
Beginning with Andrew Yang’s proposal for a $1,000 a month “Freedom Dividend” during his Democratic Party primary campaign (2019-2020), Basic Income has become salient as a means to mitigate the social and economic turbulence caused by rapid adoption of robotics and AI. BIEN has published an increasing number of News and Research items on BI and related guaranteed income pilot programs around the world here on this website, Such pilots now number in the hundreds. AI, a term first coined at a Dartmouth College summer workshop in 1956, is currently becoming a increasingly prominent topic and figures to become an object of political debate worldwide.
In this article I review two books on AI just published in the first months of 2026.
Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, We Are As Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance
Diamandis and Kotler’s latest book challenges the reader to explore “A feedback loop of recursive AI self-improvement that accelerates progress beyond comprehension or control.” This as AI and robotics are taking mankind into a turbulent period of social and political change at warp speed. What can we do not only to survive, but flourish? Read this book as a guide.
David Brin’s latest book draws from his diverse CV, with degrees in astronomy (BS), electrical engineering (MS), astronomy (PhD), a post-doctoral fellowship at the California Space Institute and another at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies; a wide range of advisory and consulting gigs; and author of tens of science fiction and non-fiction books. In Alien Minds Brin analyses different perspectives on AI (both Artificial General Intelligence – AGI and Artificial Superintelligence – (ASI): doomers (like Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares), optimists (e.g. Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis), transhumanists (if you can’t beat them, join them) e.g. Hans Moravec, Brin himself, and perhaps Elon Musk. A fascinating characteristic of this book is the inclusion in each chapter of “asides” addressed to “our newest children” – AGIs and ASIs. Brin concludes that the best way of “aligning” AGIs and SGIs to human values is through the creation of a “disputation arena” in which competition between individual Ais avoids the doom scenario
