The Blueprint
The Blueprint
In The Vision, I proposed the Age of Arts and Science as an alternative to mass unemployment - a future where AI’s productivity gains fund human creativity, discovery, care, and community rather than concentrating as private wealth.
You may well ask what this has to do with AI Ethics. Behavior is driven by incentive, and if this new Age of Arts and Science is the incentive, then we (users of AI) will behave accordingly, striving for fairness, transparency, accountability, and human decency. If the incentive is to make a few corporations and individuals ridiculously wealthy, then we will also behave accordingly, putting ethics and governance on the back burner to pursue corporate profit.
So, here’s the next part of that discussion - HOW we get there …
The Age of Arts and Science isn’t theoretical. Components exist now, tested and proven.
Between 2015-2019, Iceland ran trials reducing hours from 40 to 35-36 hours weekly with no pay cuts. Results: productivity stayed the same or improved, well-being increased “dramatically”. Now 86% of Iceland’s workforce works shorter hours. The economy? 5% GDP growth in 2023, and 1.5% annual productivity increases, the highest among Nordic countries. Unemployment: 3.6%.
Globally, 92% of companies in four-day week trials kept the policy, citing lower stress, reduced sick leave, and stable or higher revenues.
Finland’s trial gave 2,000 unemployed citizens €560 monthly, and saw better mental health and reduced anxiety. GiveDirectly’s Kenya study delivered cash to 23,000 individuals across 195 villages. They saw recipients shift from wage work to self-employment, household income increased, and better physical and mental health. No “laziness”, just substantial effects on occupational choice.
Minneapolis’s GBI pilot: $500 monthly improved financial stability, food security, and psychological wellness with no negative labor effects. Studies found that UBI recipients in Finland and Kenya maintained or increased labor participation, pursuing education or entrepreneurship.
Minnesota leads the U.S. in per capita arts spending via the constitutional Legacy Amendment. 70% of Americans approve local arts funding, 66% state, 66% federal.
These models work. The question isn’t “can it be done?” but “how do we scale it?”
Getting to the Age of Arts and Science requires three interconnected pillars: capturing AI productivity gains, redistributing those gains as public goods, and restructuring society to value creativity and discovery.
AI increases productivity. Companies deploying AI expect returns through labor cost reduction. Those avoided labor costs represent real economic value that can fund the transition.
Progressive AI Taxation
Tax AI-driven productivity gains at progressive rates. Companies using AI to replace workers pay higher rates than companies using AI to augment workers. Structure rates to capture windfall profits from automation while incentivizing human-AI collaboration.
The revenue mechanism is - companies report AI deployment levels and headcount changes. Tax rate increases correlate with automation-driven workforce reductions. Creates fiscal disincentive for pure replacement strategies while funding transition programs.
Mandatory Profit-Sharing
Companies deploying AI must share productivity gains with displaced workers. Structure: 25-40% of profits attributable to AI automation distributed to affected workers over 3-5 year transition periods.
Prevents immediate income loss while workers retrain, pursue education, or transition to arts/sciences/care work. Provides runway for societal adjustment without catastrophic income collapse.
Sovereign Wealth Funds
Invest AI tax revenues in public funds similar to Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (valued at $1.7 trillion). Returns fund universal basic services, arts programs, scientific research, and care work compensation.
The model already exists and works. Norway’s fund, built on oil revenues, demonstrates long-term wealth generation from taxing resource extraction. AI productivity is the new extractable resource.
Captured productivity gains fund transition through universal basic services, infrastructure, and compensation for unvalued work.
Universal Basic Services
Rather than UBI (which Hinton notes “won’t deal with human dignity”), provide universal access to healthcare, education, housing assistance, childcare, elder care, internet, and public transportation. Removes survival anxiety without cash payments. Ensures foundation for creative, scientific, or care work.
Arts and Sciences Infrastructure
Increase public investment in community makerspaces and studios, performing arts venues, scientific laboratories, museums, music and dance facilities, and digital creation platforms. Currently, the NEA provides $36.8 million nationwide. Scale this 100x using AI tax revenues.
Compensation for Unvalued Work
Stipend programs: parents for child-rearing ($1,500-2,500 monthly per child), adult children for elder care ($2,000-3,000 monthly), community organizers ($1,500-2,000 monthly), citizen researchers ($1,000-1,500 monthly), artists and creators ($1,000-2,000 monthly). Not welfare, but recognition that these activities create value. Modeled on Wales’s £1,600 monthly allowance for former foster youth, and South Korea’s farmer programs.
Money and infrastructure aren’t enough. Cultural transformation requires redefining success, restructuring education, and normalizing creativity/discovery as primary pursuits.
Redefine Economic Success
Move beyond GDP as prosperity measure. Adopt alternative metrics: Genuine Progress Indicator (accounts for environmental costs and social welfare), Human Development Index (combines life expectancy, education, income), National Happiness Index (measures wellbeing, not just wealth), Arts & Sciences Participation Rate (tracks creative and discovery engagement).
Make these metrics visible and celebrated. What gets measured gets valued.
Restructure Education
Current education prepares students for jobs that AI eliminates. Transform K-12 and higher education to develop: creative expression and artistic skills, scientific curiosity and experimental thinking, emotional intelligence and relationship building, critical analysis and ethical reasoning, and physical mastery and athletic pursuit.
Not as electives, but as core curriculum. Finland already does this effectively, ranking highest in educational outcomes while emphasizing arts, music, and physical education alongside academics.
Normalize Creative Pursuits as Work
We need to stop treating arts, sciences, care, and community-building as hobbies. Legitimize these as primary pursuits through professional certifications and credentials, career pathways and advancement structures, union representation and collective bargaining, public recognition and awards programs.
Example: France’s “intermittent” status provides unemployment insurance for performing artists between gigs, treating creative work as legitimate employment.
Technical and economic feasibility isn’t the obstacle. The challenge is political: building coalitions powerful enough to overcome corporate resistance.
Benefits: displaced workers gain security and purpose, artists and scientists receive compensation, parents and caregivers get recognition, communities strengthen social fabric, and society gains cultural and scientific advances.
Loses: shareholders expecting AI returns through labor cost savings, executives compensated via stock options tied to profit maximization, and tech companies monetizing AI without taxation.
This creates clear battle lines. The fight isn’t technical - it’s about power and distribution.
Success requires alliance between: labor unions (especially white-collar), artists’ organizations and cultural workers, scientists and researchers, care workers and educators, parents and community organizers, progressive political movements.
Model: Iceland’s transformation came through trade union negotiations, not top-down legislation. 86% workforce coverage came from collective bargaining backed by successful trials proving the model worked.
Immediate (2026-2027): Pilot programs in progressive cities and states testing AI taxation, guaranteed income, arts funding, and care work compensation. Document outcomes rigorously.
Near-term (2028-2030): Scale successful pilots to the state level. Build federal legislative coalitions. Launch national campaigns around working models.
Medium-term (2031-2035): Federal implementation of AI taxation and sovereign wealth fund. Universal basic services rollout. National arts and sciences infrastructure investment.
Long-term (2036-2050): Cultural transformation as the first generation grows up valuing creativity, discovery, care, community over productive labor.
Hinton predicts 2026 as the tipping point for mass AI displacement, so we’re at the decision point. Once mass unemployment begins, political pressure favors emergency measures - likely inadequate band-aids like insufficient UBI rather than transformative restructuring.
The time to build infrastructure, test models, and create political coalitions is before the crisis, not during it. Iceland tested shorter work weeks when the economy was stable, making implementation smooth. Trying during a crisis creates desperation and resistance.
The Age of Arts and Science requires intention and infrastructure. Both take time to build, and we’re running out of that time.