Automation promises efficiency but shrinks the wage base that underpins consumer demand. This episode explores how AI hollows out the labor market, compresses wages, and erodes the social contract. Universal basic income emerges as a stopgap, but it cannot restore meaning to lives defined by work. Without redistributing gains through ownership or co-design, society risks a paradox: abundant output with too few consumers able to afford it, and a populace adrift in purposelessness.

Selenius Media & The Artificial Laboratory