UBI

Machine Earning

With U.S. unemployment rising to levels not seen since the Great Depression, now's a good time to discuss universal basic income (UBI) and its connection to the tech world. 

From idea to tests

Finland ran the world’s most extensive basic income experiment from 2017 to 2018, giving cash to 2,000 unemployed adults and comparing their situation to a control group of 173,000 citizens who received unemployment benefits. Last week, the government published its findings: 

• UBI recipients saw meaningful improvements in economic security and mental well-being.
• The UBI group worked an average of 78 days from Nov. 2017 to Oct. 2018, six days more than the control group.  
• But...Finland introduced new standards for unemployment benefits in early 2018, which could complicate the UBI study’s findings.

As for the rest of the EU: 71% of Europeans support the introduction of UBI, according to a recent poll from a think tank based at Oxford University. 

The tech angle

"We are in the third inning of the greatest economic and technological transformation of this country," UBI advocate and then-presidential candidate Andrew Yang told me last March. His UBI proposal involved a new value-added tax (VAT) levied on "undertaxed" tech industry activity. 

Yang and others view UBI as a potentially effective policy hedge against future automation that could displace workers across retail, transportation, and service sectors. 

Why it all matters now

As the economic crisis plays out, demand for human labor could continue to drop while investments in capital (automation) stay steady. It seems inevitable that the rate of automation will increase during and after the pandemic.   

Now, what once was a radical idea is gaining momentum with governments in the U.S. (on a limited, temporary basis), Hong Kong, Spain, Denmark, and Scotland. But remember: 1) UBI has only been tested in limited settings with small populations. 2) When basic income is deployed during the pandemic, it's more of a measure to offset the effects of lockdowns, not automation.

+ And you? Every time I cover UBI, I usually get pretty heated feedback on both sides. Do you think UBI is a good idea? Let me know.

DRONES

A Bird? A Plane? Superman?

Last week, the FAA announced eight companies that will help set standards for its forthcoming Remote ID system: Airbus, AirMap, Amazon, Intel, One Sky, Skyward, T-Mobile, and Alphabet's Wing. Remote ID is a system for drone identification and location data in U.S. airspace. 

• The participation of T-Mobile and Skyward, Verizon's drone subsidiary, indicates that Remote ID will use cellular connections. 
• An obvious snub is DJI, the Chinese dronemaker that dominates the consumer aircraft market. 

The U.S. has nearly 1.5 million drones and 160,000 remote pilots now registered with the FAA (including this writer). To support more drone integration into U.S. airspace—and to clear the way for commercial aircraft—the FAA and industry partners are developing a method to track the who, what, where, and when of drones. 

Zoom out: Remote ID is controversial because it could kneecap hobbyist flyers and reveal drone owners' personal location. DJI is not a fan of the plan.

SPONSORED BY MASTERWORKS

You Don’t Have To Be a Hedge Fund Guru

One of the best ways to protect your portfolio from risk is to diversify with real, tangible assets—like art.

Why? Art has held its value for centuries, through every financial crisis.

Just take a look at the titans of tech... a certain e-commerce CEO spent $52.5 million on a SINGLE PAINTING. And he’s not alone: high-profile art collectors are projected to earn $900B over the next six years.

But collecting art can be a nerve-racking experience. The industry is plagued by exorbitant fees and lack of transparency.

That’s where Masterworks comes in. They’ve created the most complete database ever compiled, giving you the edge over even the most savvy collectors.

The bottom line: Big data can mean big returns. Act fast, because Emerging Tech readers can bypass the 25,000-person waitlist and skip to the front of the line by signing up today.

SUPPLY CHAIN

Remember the Trade War?

The White House, Intel, and a Taiwanese chipmaker are writing up plans to reshore production, the WSJ reports. The issue, as U.S. officials see it: Manufacturing of critical tech supplies is largely concentrated in Asia. 

That’s especially true for chips, since many American companies source semiconductors from factories in Taiwan. American chipmakers Qualcomm, Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD all rely on TSMC, the dominant Taiwanese contract chipmaker, for advanced hardware manufacturing. 

The U.S. government is lobbying TSMC and Intel to bring their chipmaking prowess to a state-of-the-art facility on U.S. soil, capable of producing chips with transistors 10 nanometers or smaller. The Pentagon has reportedly been holding discussions with TSMC to develop a U.S. chip foundry since October. One reason why: Fighter jets require advanced chipsets.

Big picture: A supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link. U.S. officials see the hardware dependency on Asian manufacturing as a weak link.

BITS & BYTES

Stat: E-scooter app downloads grew 3.5x between the third and fourth week of April, according to Appfigures. 

Quote: "It was almost like wildfire how quickly [AirPods] spread...it's done even better than we could ever imagine"—Greg Joswiak, Apple VP of product marketing, to Wired UK. 

Read: According to OpenAI, it takes 44x less computing power to build a neural net with the same power as the breakthrough 2012 AlexNet model. Software advances, including greater efficiency in AI models, are pacing faster than hardware breakthroughs (Moore's Law).  

SPONSORED BY GRAZE

Cutting grass and growing green. U.S. commercial landscaping is a $53 billion dollar industry, and it’s ripe for disrupting. Meet Graze, the fully-autonomous commercial lawn mower that you can add to your portfolio. This bad boy already has $36.9mm in conditional pre-orders from the nation’s biggest players—invest today.*

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Elon Musk indicated he's considering moving Tesla HQ from California to Texas and Nevada. 
• Microsoft is rolling out the most important product in the company's history: a tool to stop reply-all email threads. 
• Spot, Boston Dynamics' robot, is patrolling a Singapore park. 
• Hundreds of Chinese hospitals have deployed robots for the first time in the past few months. 
• Cybersecurity companies formed a coalition to help defend healthcare providers. 
• Vroom, an online car seller, has confidentially filed for an IPO. 

WHAT'S BREWING THIS WEEK

Monday: Bitcoin halving; Shanghai Disneyland reopens

Tuesday: Earnings (Toyota, Honda)

Wednesday: Earnings (Cisco, Tencent, Sony) 

Thursday: Earnings (SMIC)

MARKET RESEARCH

You hear quite a bit about adoption rates in Emerging Tech Brew. What about the tech that’s already emerged? An r/DataIsBeautiful user posted a fascinating video (h/t the Brew’s Josh Kaplan) of technology adoption rates in U.S. households from 1900 to 2019. Come for the running water, stay for the tablets. 

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For anyone keeping tabs at home: MIT Tech Review rounded up all the different contact tracing apps. 

For hiring managers: Airbnb created a public directory of its employees who were recently laid off. 

For artists: "Computers Do Not Make Art, People Do."