Post-AGI without UBI: building jobs around professional verification and liability
DasBootBoy · reddit · 2026-10-07
A long Reddit essay proposes an alternative response to advanced AI: rather than blocking automation or relying on UBI, shift the economy toward verification, validation, and professional sign-off.
- When generating text, proofs, software, and designs becomes dirt cheap, the bottleneck moves from creation to deciding what is trustworthy.
- For AI outputs that can cause serious external harm, qualified professionals should be legally accountable for verifying and signing off—e.g., math/physics auditors vetting an AI-generated theorem used in aircraft systems, bearing liability like a structural engineer whose bridge collapses; similar for doctors, CPAs, and licensed electricians.
- An institutional layer of second-order jobs follows: liability insurance, standards bodies, accreditation, compliance, expert witnesses, audit software, and auditors of auditors.
- Universities could partly become third-party validation centers, as replication and robustness checks gain value when novelty is cheap.
- The mechanism acts as an indirect tax on innovation that redistributes wealth, tunable via breadth (which fields require assurance), depth (internal vs. independent reviewers), and trigger thresholds, tying verification jobs to AI innovation output.
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