The Silicon Valley technology startup-incubator YCombinator has announced its plan to roll
out its initial cash handout trial for studying about Universal Basic Income.
Several tech billionaires including Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are supporting the universal
basic income to tackle poverty as they believe automation by Artificial Intelligence will
create mass unemployment problem in near future.
YCombinator and their partners tentatively plan to randomly select 3,000 individuals
across two US states to participate in the study: 1,000 people will receive $1,000 per
month for up to 5 years, and 2,000 people will receive $50 per month and serve as a
control group for comparison.
They are working with government agencies to access administrative data for consenting
individuals.
They will also conduct extensive surveys with participants at the start and end of the project.
They just wrapped up a one-year feasibility study in Oakland.
They conducted the feasibility study to learn what challenges they would face when seeking
to conduct a large, high quality study.