· 23 comments · Save ·
News & Current Events May 12, 2026 at 2:49 PM

South Korea floats ‘citizen dividend’ using AI profits

Posted by self-fix2

South Korea floats ‘citizen dividend’ using AI profits
The Straits Times
South Korea floats ‘citizen dividend’ using AI profits
Samsung's labour union has threatened an 18-day strike starting on May 21. Read more at straitstimes.com. Read more at straitstimes.com.
🚩 Report this post

23 Comments

Sign in to comment — or just click the box below.
🔒 Your email is never shown publicly.
magic-karma May 12, 2026 +15
Said a slightly different way, this is AI companies paying a Basic Income for the jobs are automated.
15
nextkevamob2 May 12, 2026 +5
Are any AI companies making a profit? Does this mean they have to pay in if they take a loss?
5
Deadman_Wonderland May 12, 2026 +8
AI companies are losing money but the shovel makers, Sk hynix and Samsung are making bank.
8
self-fix2 May 12, 2026 +7
Samsung and SK Hynix alone are projected to make a combined operating profit of 650 billion USD by 2028 driven by the prolonged High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and AI-led semiconductor supercycle.
7
Twodogsonecouch May 12, 2026 +7
Thats for selling chips though. Thats not for being an AI company.
7
space_force_majeure May 12, 2026 -3
It's still profits from AI, even if they aren't physically running the models. Edit: downvotes because I read the article, classic Listnook. From the article: "Presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom said in a Facebook post that a portion of the profits and tax revenue derived from the artificial intelligence boom “should be structurally returned to all citizens”. These profits are derived from AI, like I said 🙄
-3
Kamakaziturtle May 12, 2026 +1
Which is profiting off of AI companies, not being a profitable AI company. We are in a modern gold rush. Everyone knows that the general store supplying prospectors makes money, but how many of those prospectors are actually striking it rich?
1
space_force_majeure May 13, 2026 +1
No one said it has to be limited to being a profitable AI company, they said the profits from the AI boom should be distributed. You guys are making up these weird qualifiers and saying it doesn't count lol
1
self-fix2 May 12, 2026 -3
Those LLM companies would not exist without chips. It's still an AI company. Additionally HBM4s are tailor-made for each AI company due to the logic function of the 4nm base die.
-3
Twodogsonecouch May 12, 2026 +8
No Are AI companies making profit Is very different than How much profit has been made by companies who are producing the hardware used by AI companies AI hardware is a real product with fixed costs. AI however is far more speculative at this point
8
OopsWeKilledGod May 12, 2026 +27
Universal prosperity fueled AI is the latest lie they are trying to sell. We are going to be rendered unemployable and left to battle for the scraps. Do not hate AI. It is just a tool. Don't even hate the people that generate the slop that pollutes everything and drowns human creativity. Hate the people who design, implement, and deploy AI. Sam, Dario, Elon, and all the rest. *They* will crucify mankind on a cross of silicon.
27
ruledbyoligarchs May 12, 2026 +7
Our oligarchs rule us with division and distraction
7
manachar May 12, 2026 +9
Universal prosperity was argued for industrialization, the Web 2.0 revolution, and just about every technological improvement for the last 200 years. The tech could do that. But it hasn’t, and it hasn’t because capitalism is entirely built for the few to hoard resources. As long as the productive class (workers) are not the ownership class, there will be no universal prosperity. We could have fusion power and we would still make sure people are chained to making the ownership class more money.
9
darkandark May 12, 2026 +2
the bad part is them pocketing the money and not redistributing.
2
Dingcock May 12, 2026 +2
If it wasn't Sam, Dario, Elon it would just be different techbros instead. I don't hate them because they're not particularly special. AI very much seems inevitable to me. Maybe it could have been be delayed by a few more years but eventually it wouId be invented.
2
Haru1st May 12, 2026 -5
How similar this sounds to how people were talking about NFTs, you should hear yourself.
-5
Dingcock May 12, 2026 +1
Did you know that nature has independently evolved snake type animals multiple times ? True snakes, legless lizards, eels, lizard moles, worms etc Because that body shape inevitable... NFT people didn't invent the concept of inevitable development lol
1
Mind_Altered May 13, 2026 +1
And how everything wants to evolve into a crab, the ultimate pinnacle of attack and defense and aura
1
RecursiveCook May 13, 2026
UBI is a given if AI goes the distance we hope it does. The issue is the % of profits going into UBI will never be agreed upon. The elites will always feel it’s unfair they have to “work” while the masses don’t, so they will want to leave the proles with almost zero. While everyone else will demand more than AI would probably make.
0
No_Specialist6036 May 13, 2026
ubi is pointless, its of no use if everyone gets the same amount of money, the money loses its value, maybe people can sustain but thats it theres no going back to pre-AI standard of living, market prices will adjust to the fact that everyone has the same amount of money.. on the flip side, there are real risks to UBI, as it can incentivize people to reproduce more than what the planet can sustain human creativity and innovation is the only real way to exist post-AI (if at all the AGI hype comes to fruition -current models are purely inferential and the current math or anything that we have on the horizon or beyond is not equipped for providing an abstraction for AGI)
0
Mindrust May 13, 2026 -1
Most naive thing I've ever read.
-1
ahfoo May 12, 2026 +1
How about legal residents? It's not just citizens that make the technology happen.
1
Intrepid_Lecture May 12, 2026 +1
Imagine if America had the same concept... budget surpluses resulting in citizen's dividends. And deficits resulting in high gas taxes and food taxes. Any government fearing a peasants' revolt would make changes.
1
← Back to Board