"90% Unemployment" – AI Expert Predicts an Economy Where Nobody Needs to Work

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**Patrick Bet-David** (0:30)
Have you heard Elon saying here in the near future, people are going to get paid, you don't have to worry about retirement planning, don't worry about investing your money, you're not going to really need it, everything's going to be. What do you think he's talking about? What world do you think he sees in five years?

**Roman Yampolskiy** (0:45)
So if you have free labor, physical and cognitive, the standard approach of go to work, make minimum wage in US dollars doesn't make any sense. AI would automate all of that. Does that mean there is no wealth? Does that mean there is no rare objects, what are front properties, art, and some way of measuring that? No, of course not. Maybe it's compute, maybe it's Bitcoin. But something there means you can obtain something you want, somebody can sell it, you can buy it. That will not go away. Now, will minimum wage jobs go away? Will all the boring and stupid jobs go away? Yeah, because we can automate them. Would podcasters be unemployed? No, people like you. They want to hear you talk, not a robot. So you'll keep your job because the market says, I want a human to do that job.

**Patrick Bet-David** (1:33)
Yeah, so you think that part will still stick around. But it seems like the way Elon is talking about it is a form of a UBI being done by companies that there's going to be so much money being made that no one's going to need to work. It's just you choose to work. That's how he's presenting it.

**Roman Yampolskiy** (1:49)
That is the existing infrastructure we have right now. We tax wealth, including from corporations, and we give it to unemployed. That's what we have set up. So if everyone loses jobs, they get paychecks and we get it from mega profits of AI companies.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:02)
Yeah, but you're talking about levels of unemployment. If what you're talking about, we're not talking about 7% unemployment. We're not talking about 10% of unemployment.

**Roman Yampolskiy** (2:10)
Even if it's 90, if you have hyper profits, if everything is in abundance and you can make more and more with very cheap labor, your economy is not growing 10%, it's growing 100%.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:21)
So you think we'll get to a point where there could be a possibility of 90% unemployment, the 10% has grown at such a fast rate that it's paying the other 90% through taxes and whether they choose to work or not, it's up to them.

**Roman Yampolskiy** (2:32)
The economy will switch from being driven by humans to being agent, AI, agent driven economy. Again, not super intelligence, just intelligent software.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:42)
What goes away? What does life look like in 2036 in your mind?

**Roman Yampolskiy** (2:46)
I think the jobs you do to get money go away, things you do, you hate your job, but you need money, you need to pay rent, so you do it. That goes away. What stays is things you love doing, and you can't believe they pay you to do it.

**Patrick Bet-David** (2:59)
Such as?

**Roman Yampolskiy** (3:00)
Podcasts.

**Patrick Bet-David** (3:05)
So you do it because you love it, and you get paid by who? The government? Similar to how a...

**Roman Yampolskiy** (3:09)
Well, it depends. So we said some wealth will remain. So if people want to donate bitcoins to you, they can.
There is unconditional basic minimum income. He calls it high income or something like that. But if everyone makes it, it's not high. It's average or below. But I think that's very doable in the economy, which is driven by free labor. What happens to economy if you can hire as many people as you want for free? How well would you scale your businesses if you had access to free everything? Free lawyers...

**Patrick Bet-David** (3:40)
What's the incentive for them, though? What incentive?

**Roman Yampolskiy** (3:42)
Those are AIs. You pay them, what are you paying right now? $20 a month for basic plan? That's how much it costs to have them. That's your lawyer, that's your accountant, that's your graphic designer.