Macquarie's Viktor Shvets says universal basic income will be needed in AI era
The Macquarie Capital global strategist believes governments are not contemplating the right policies to deal with the huge impact AI will have on labour.
Universal basic income will be the answer to maintaining aggregate demand in an economy once artificial intelligence leaves most people out of work, according to Macquarie Capital global strategist Viktor Shvets, who described the policy as compensating people for their “irrelevance”.
Industrial revolutions have always reshaped the relationship between capital and labour, but the information age has left Shvets confident that “our times are truly different”.
Speaking at Livewire Live 2025, he said he expects a technology “singularity” — a point at which human output is indistinguishable from AI — in at least 15 to 20 years.
“At this stage globally, there is nobody, particularly no government, that is contemplating the right policies. What are the right policies? Universal basic income. It’s being sneered at by everybody, but that is the answer,” Shvets told attendees at the close of the event.
