Towards Human Flourishing - The Case for Regulated AI and Universal Income
The AI disruption is happening. Humanity is at a crossroads. But with the political will, an exciting future lies ahead.
We live in a precarious world
I think we’ve all felt uncertainty recently. Food bills rising faster than wages; extreme climate events across the globe; an increasingly unhinged president leading the free world; and an AI revolution that’s already impacting our place of work. It can make us worried about what the future will hold.
Why does that matter?
When people are less certain about the future, they don’t engage in long-term behaviours that benefit them. Their energy is entirely spent on the here and now instead of planning for the future. A population that is uncertain about their jobs and place in the world is not going to lead to the happy society we’d all like to live in.
If we are serious about building a healthier, happier, and more confident country, stability must remain central to our politics.
Stability is a central theme of Labour’s achievements
Humans have always sought stability – the creation of institutions such as family, religion, and the rule of law were all designed with greater stability in mind. You can also see the theme of stability cut through Labour reforms. Trade unions gave workers protection from exploitation. The NHS gave people the certainty that they’d get the treatment they needed.
Since 2024, this government has continued that tradition. Scrapping the two-child benefit cap reduces the risk of poverty for millions. The Employment Rights Act tackles exploitative contracts and strengthens protections at work. The Renters’ Rights Act removes the threat of eviction through no fault of your own.
These are commendable achievements, and they reflect Labour at its best: putting working in people at the heart of policymaking. But despite these efforts, the world is becoming a more volatile and unstable place. This instability will deepen inequality and worsen living standards unless we act.
A labour market under strain
The labour market is deteriorating in ways that should concern us. This is particularly true for young people.
Graduate positions at Britain’s 100 leading employers have fallen by a quarter in the last three years and are now at their lowest level since 2013. Overall unemployment stands at 5.2%, a five-year high. Among 16–24-year-olds, it is 16.1%. Unemployment among 25–34-year-olds is at its highest rate since 2017.
Our opponents attribute this to recent tax and employment reforms. That explanation is too simplistic. Youth unemployment has been rising since 2021. Sluggish growth, global competition, underinvestment, and intensified competition in recruitment all play a role. The issues go beyond a tweak to employers’ contribution to national insurance or a rise in the minimum wage.
Behind the unemployment figures are thousands of qualified, capable young people who want to contribute but cannot find stable opportunities. It’s no wonder so many people are finding looking for work ‘soul destroying’. The effects of a lost generation who cannot find a stable job and a decent standard of living is a profound problem for the UK.
But we’re only at the beginning. We haven’t yet seen the longer-term impact of AI on unemployment and living standards.
The AI disruption is on the horizon
The release of new models by frontier AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI has marked a seismic shift. These systems can now write complex code, perform technical analysis, and make nuanced judgements at a level that increasingly rivals professional work. AI is moving from being a productivity aid to performing tasks independently - and in some cases, more efficiently than humans.
This is a revolutionary development. As Mustafa Suleyman (CEO of Microsoft AI) has suggested, we may see human-level performance across many professional tasks within the next 12 to 18 months. Whether that prediction proves exact, the trajectory is clear. AI is radically changing the workplace at a pace we’ve not seen since the industrial revolution.
Technological disruption of this scale introduces profound uncertainty into the labour market, and this uncertainty will breed economic and societal volatility unless something is done. We therefore need radical but practical solutions.
Regulation, regulation, regulation
The development of artificial intelligence poses a challenge for society. Developed unchecked, it will concentrate wealth into the hands of even fewer people, who will use it in ways that will damage the institutions we’ve built around us. Look at the recent example of OpenAI, enabling Trump’s ‘Department of War’ to use OpenAI’s models for mass surveillance of American citizens, or in the development of autonomous weapons. If businesses are able to use it freely, we could see levels of mass, long-term unemployment that we’ve never had to deal with before.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
First, we need strong AI regulation that enables stable and sustainable growth in the digital economy. The government needs to strike a balance between ensuring that AI doesn’t deepen inequality or heighten global instability whilst at the same time not blocking economic growth. The UK should work and align its legislation with European partners to ensure that we act in unity with our closest allies. With appropriate regulation, AI could unlock significant productivity gains and even improve people’s enjoyment of work, freeing their time to focus on more creative tasks, or even allowing them more leisure time.
Second, we need to start thinking differently about the welfare state in the age of AI. With so many jobs at risk, our complex and expensive welfare system is no longer fit for purpose.
Towards a Universal Basic Income
The reason so many are worried about the development of AI is because of the risk it poses to people’s cash flow and ultimately, their living standards. But what if we were to mitigate this through a regular, universal payment?
If we can guarantee people’s livelihoods, AI advancement would be profoundly liberating. Instead of spending so much of our productive capacity performing tasks that can now be done as well or better by AI, we could turn our attention to more fulfilling endeavours – ones that require human craft. You might be passionate about a local charity; you might want to care for your elderly parents; you might want to start your own business. AI would give us our humanity back that rampant neoliberalism had previously taken away.
The idea of guaranteeing people’s incomes and livelihoods is not a new phenomenon. In 1969, US President Richard Nixon considered a universal basic payment to poor American families. With the advancement of AI and the risk of increasing instability that may arise as a result of human work becoming increasingly redundant, it’s now time to put it back on the table.
There will be challenges. We need to be confident that we can transition our welfare state from means-tested and contributory payments to universal payments in a gradual way that does not create negative economic shocks. Universal basic income needs to come as part of a package for sustainable economic growth that is complemented by the development of AI in an ethical, regulated way. We need to think about how to create a tax system that counteracts regressivity in universal income and allows us to pay for the increased cost of this new system in the short- to medium-term. And we need to work out how we communicate a new vision for society with regulated AI and universal income at its core.
We need to begin this thinking now.
The time has come
We are living through a period of accelerating change. The world of work is being reshaped before our eyes, and the precarity that already afflicts millions will only deepen if we allow AI to be deployed without effective regulation and protection through the welfare state.
As progressives, the time has come to act. We need to define ourselves in the era of AI and create a new vision for the world of work that gives people hope. We have the technological and financial means to do this – all we need now is the political will.
References
Bregman, R. (2017). Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There. London: Bloomsbury.
Financial Times. (2026). CEO of Microsoft AI Mustafa Suleyman joins FT editor Roula Khalaf to explain why most of the tasks accountants, lawyers and other professionals currently undertake will be fully automated by AI within the next 12 to 18 months. Retrieved from https://t.co/yYKzS7NIOP
Harvard Health Publishing. (2024). Understanding the stress response. (H. E. MD, Ed.) Harvard Medical School. Retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response
Hatton, B. (2026). Unemployment hits a near five-year high. BBC News. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c62756plrp6t
Johnson, M., Pickett, K., Nettle, D., Reed, H., Johnson, E., & Robson, I. (2025). Basic Income: The Policy That Changes Everything. Bristol: Bristol Unversity Press.
Knowles, T., & Slawson, N. (2026). ‘It’s soul-crushing’: young people battle to find any work in bleak jobs market. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/17/its-soul-crushing-young-people-battle-bleak-jobs-market-as-youth-unemployment-rises
Markman, J. (2026). The SaaS Apocalypse Or The SaaS Evolution? Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/02/17/the-saas-apocalypse-or-the-saas-evolution/
OECD. (n.d.). Youth unemployment rate. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/youth-unemployment-rate.html
Office for National Statistics. (2025). Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), UK. Retrieved from https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/bulletins/youngpeoplenotineducationemploymentortrainingneet/november2025
Shumer, M. (2026). Something Big Is Happening. LinkedIn. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/something-big-happening-matt-shumer-so5he/
Ustaran, E. (2024). A Responsible Approach to AI Will Help Not Hinder the Economy. London: The Times. Retrieved from https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/a-responsible-approach-to-ai-will-help-not-hinder-the-economy-vpwg7mtlw?gclsrc=aw.ds&&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=1756158124&adgroupid=68290452706&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=626139580475&utm_term=&gad_source=1&ga