Even Zoltan Istvan gets AI and UBI backwards
Before today, I had never heard of Zoltan Istvan, California gubernatorial candidate in 2026. I only discovered his existance when one of his posts, about bringing Universal Basic Income to save people from AI-driven job extinction, appeared on my Facebook timeline.
Being the author of this essay and several posts about the real need for UBI and the real dangers of AI, I decided to have a look at his program (Web Archive copy) and... couldn’t believe what I read in the AI and UBI sections. As the plot for political satire, they could be OK, but as real political programs... they’re funny in all the wrong ways.
Reading suggestion: for your convenience, this post is divided in two parts. The first one, “What Istvan proposes”, is a full copy made today of the AI and UBI sections of Istvan’s program, plus a few other points from the same page, with each point numbered to reference it later. The second part, which starts with the “In a nutshell...” paragraph, is my actual critiques. I suggest you just skim the first part and focus on the second, going back to the first to check some points when needed.
What Istvan proposes
THE SPECTER OF AI & CREATING AN AUTOMATED ABUNDANCE ECONOMY
AI will surpass the intelligence of humans later this year.
During 2026, tens of millions of humanoid robots will be mass produced that are both smarter & more physically agile than people.
By 2027, they will start dominating most workplaces, & by the end of the next California Governor’s term in 2030, they will replace half of California workers.
Soon after, they will replace almost all jobs anywhere, destroying the fabric of society as we know it. Yet no politician has a plan how to stop this imminent economic & humanitarian apocalypse. Zoltan does.
Zoltan is an expert on AI, having advised Presidents, world leaders, and policy makers about it. He specialized in AI ethics at graduate school at Oxford and spoke about it at places like the World Bank & World Economic Forum.
Zoltan will help enact laws that protect ordinary people from the effects of AI, robots, and automation. He wants to harness robot labor to dramatically reduce human work loads, creating a plan for 1-2 day workweeks for people. This is part of a grand plan he calls the Automated Abundance Economy, where people work less but have more free time and economic resources than ever before.
As part of this plan, he will make sure within his four years of being in office, every California home will freely receive or be leased at least one full-sized humanoid robot that cleans dishes, cooks food, does laundry, helps with driving, babysits kids, watches pets, and goes to work for people, when possible.
He will implement a Universal Basic Income for all US citizens that are legally living in California. This will offset the effects of AI taking jobs.
UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME
Long before Andrew Yang brought Universal Basic Income to prime time, Zoltan was touring the country telling Americans they must embrace a basic income because of coming AI. This continues to be a huge push for Zoltan’s campaign for California Governor.
On Day 1 of being in office, Zoltan will work on establishing a permanent Universal Basic Income for every legal US California citizen, setting a national precedent for the country.
Zoltan is amenable to any means to establish a UBI, but will focus on the use of taxing robot and AI labor that take human jobs, as well utilizing government land, resources, and crypto.
Zoltan plans to dramatically reduce crime, arson, and homelessness around the state via a basic income. It’s well-known that less crime occurs when people feel they have enough money
Other ideas in the same page
[Who is needed is] someone who can find ways to use technology to totally reimagine what it means to live and work in the coming AI world
Implement new technology all over California that can spot hidden guns and weapons, utilize facial recognition, and predict violence and crime in perpetrators before it happens. Have police drones ready on a moments notice around cities to quickly fly to help stop crimes.
In a nutshell: same old, same old
Where, and how to begin? Maybe from the ultimate police state, which is literally what point 3.2 proposes. You can have a fairly accurate idea of what point 3.2 would be like in practice, by trying to watch simultaneously these three movies:
Surrogates, 2009 (people interacting with society only through... their remote-controlled robot lookalikes)
Minority Report, 2002 (precrime police)
Matrix, 1999 (”stay at home in your pod”)
Civil liberties and human rights aside, there are basically three problems with Istvan’s program: it isn’t new at all; it’s completely unrealistic; it gets the meaning of work and life backwards, and their practicalities wrong.
Under the hood, almost nothing of what Istvan says is (point 3.1) a “total reimagination of what it means to live and work in the coming AI world”. Not at all.
Seriously. There is nothing new there, just the same old childlike, really narrow-minded sermon that the Andreessens, Musks, Thiels etc... of Silicon Valley have been preaching for years: “any tech we and we only can conceive and control is practically and ethically unavoidable, by definition. It’s TINA (”There Is No Alternative”) all the way down baby, so give us money, quick!”
From that program, the Automated Abundance Economy (point 1.6) that Istvan envisions seems a rerun of “Fully Automated Luxury Communism”, just with all the money, power and credit left to the the few already in charge: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine Big Tech stamping on a human face - forever.”
Lack of real sociopolitical imagination aside, what Istvan proposes is way more environmentally and geopolitically unsustainable than the cinematic Matrix, if not physically or economically impossible. You just have to re-read points 1.1 to 1.4 to see this:
artificial “intelligence” will surpass human intelligence “later this year”, which as I’m writing this means less than two months
right after that, tens of millions of humanoid robots will be produced in just twelve more months
First of all, claims that AI will surpass humans all come more or less directly from the same folks who are lending money to each other to save themselves, with the help of those who without AI hype may already be in a US recession. That’s no reason to believe them: that is not AI, it’s not unavoidable at all, and it will fail anyway, soon.
Speaking of robots, instead, there are two things to notice here: first, Istvan doesn’t say that software will “will replace half of California workers” by 2030 and “almost all jobs anywhere” soon after. That may be remotely (very remotely) plausible, but Istvan explicitly says that “humanoid robots” will do that.
Which is baloney, because in any advanced society that actually exists or would make sense, the only workers that any intelligence would replace with humanoid robots are surely much less than 50%, likely way less than 10/15%.
All other workers who could be sacked, instead, would be surely replaced, as it has been happening for decades now, by much cheaper generic robots or by even cheaper software running on some server. Only a really, really stupid ruling class would do otherwise.
Even ignoring money... I keep seeing reports and warnings that large enough amounts of all the raw materials needed to build so much more electronics either don’t exist to begin with, or won’t be available without unbearable environmental or geopolitical costs, a.k.a. even more wars.
Promises or warnings of millions of humanoid robots are just like promises or warnings about the Metaverse, or private cars and smart homes for everybody: prove that they can happen without making an even bigger environmental and political mess, or shut up. Istvan, instead, says (point 2.3) he’ll fund UBI by taxing robots that cannot exist (not to mention crypto, which is another can of worms that cannot explode soon enough).
In general, even if Istvan sincerely believes them, all those“AI and robots will...” certainties are marketing-speak, with little to none visible bases in reality. Trump saying he’d end war in Ukrain in a few weeks was more believable, really.
Speaking of work and life practicalities
Look again at point 1.7: “every California home will freely receive or be leased at least one full-sized humanoid robot that cleans dishes, cooks food, does laundry, helps with driving, babysits kids, watches pets, and goes to work for people, when possible.”
Translation: forget all the money you wasted on falsely smart home appliances or falsely smart cars. Smart puppets is where it’s at now. Dump that dishwasher already, let a much more unwieldy robot clean your dishes (by hand, I assume)! Give your kids even less human contact than you’re already doing with voice assistants or smartphones, years before they’re ready. Just remember to recharge the robot every day, to make your power bill even higher than it’s already going to be thanks to your compulsory financing of AI datacenters!
The only advantage of such arrangements would be that every family could ease their frustrations by finally having something that looks human to boss around in any moment, not just for sex. Really powerful selling point, really bad for public mental health.
Four crucial points that Istvan DOES get right
Yes, even if it’s buried under all the crap above, there is a lot of good in that platform (the parts in Italic are actual quotes, the rest are my comments):
Force conglomerates to deal fairly with the public? Yes, please. Now. Regardless of AI. After all, it’s conglomerates who were the first AIs
Avoid toxic cultural crusades that few Democrats care deeply about: wise words these are, in the US and anywhere else
[The best way forward for education] surely involves more emphasis on real life education and the learning of trades: YES! Let’s get rid of dangerous education myths!
UBI is an idea whose time has come. But it deserves better champions, who understand that we don’t need UBI “because AI”. After this AI crashes, AI done right will be one of the technologies that may finally make it feasible, but we all deserved UBI regardless of AI, well before AI came along. Continues here.
15 minutes cities: no, Istvan doesn’t mention them, but since he is for reimagining what it means to live and work, I’d really like to know if he’d like 15 minutes cities or, as too many still do, hate them for unexisting reasons
Final advice to Californians, and everybody else
As it is today, platforms like Istvan’s are hilariously unreal, but they do try to address serious issues. To do that right, demand proposals that refuse fake AI and AI myths, give UBI the right place, and are generally grounded in reality and fairness, instead of Wall Street speculations or futurist daydreaming. For more food for thought that would help you see beyond the smoke, follow people like me (read here to see why I say so) or, for the financial or more US-specific angles, Dana Blankenhorn.
Other ways to fund my work, see here.