Sam Altman Has Been Quietly Giving Out Money for Basic Income

Aha!

Big Picture

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has for years been quietly giving folks a universal basic income (UBI) as part of a study to see how well such a scheme would work — and now, the results are in.

The Altman nonprofit that conducted the study, fittingly named OpenResearch, announced in its report on its "unconditional cash study" some intriguing — though mixed — results.

"We do see significant reductions in stress, mental distress, and food insecurity during the first year, but those effects fade out by the second and third years of the program," the report explained. "Cash alone cannot address challenges such as chronic health conditions, lack of childcare, or the high cost of housing."

The research organization enrolled 3,000 people in Texas and Illinois who had incomes below $28,000 annually. A third of those got $1,000 a month, while the other two-thirds who acted as a control group got a mere $50, and all groups were paid out over the course of three years.

Thrifty Spenders

Of the 1,000 people who received the larger payments, spending increased by about $310 per month, OpenResearch explained. Most of that cash went to rent, food, and transportation, but that cohort also helped others who were in need more than the control group, too.

Beyond helping out others, which is a documented hallmark in lower-income communities to begin with, the researchers also found that those in the $1,000 UBI cohort also saw a 20 percent decrease in "problematic drinking" and a whopping 53 percent decline in taking prescription painkillers not prescribed to them, too.

The results aren't surprising; many UBI studies have shown similarly promising results, but the political will to enact it on a large scale is currently difficult to imagine.

Notably, the OpenResearch study doesn't seem to be related to WorldCoin, Altman's other pseudo-UBI project that pays out crypto to people who allow their eyeballs to be scanned so that they can be verified as human.

More on Altman: Sam Altman Admits Its Letters-and-Numbers Salad Product Names Like "GPT-4o Mini" Are Horrible