Silicon Valley's Answer to AI Job Loss Is a Check. The New York Times Spent a Year Watching One Land, and It Bought Diapers, Laundry and a Day at Six Flags

Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts · Oct 13, 2026 · 5m · transcript

The New York Times reported on October 12 that it followed Bay Area guaranteed-income recipients for more than a year, as Musk, Altman and Amodei promote basic income as the fix for AI-driven job losses. Mikole Weeks, a part-time house cleaner in Santa Cruz, got $1,330 a month for a year; the headline tallies softer diapers, clean laundry and a trip to Six Flags, and the Times says it 'did not turn out to be quite that simple'. Google has quietly funded six such pilots since 2022 with a $50 million gift, each capped by tax law in length and amount.

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