Universal income, a utopian and liberal idea that is making a strong comeback in Silicon Valley

Imagine the scene: American students who, instead of applauding speeches about the wonders of artificial intelligence, boo the speakers at graduation ceremonies. It's really happening, even to people like Eric Schmidt, former head of Google, who was booed off the stage at the University of Arizona. It's 2026, and Generation Z in the United States, which works with and plays around with artificial intelligence every day, is starting to hate it. A Gallup poll says that almost a third of young people between the ages of 14 and 29 get angry just thinking about this technology. The reason? Working after graduation has become a nightmare: jobs are taken by algorithms, not people, and those who build them do nothing but announce an "employment apocalypse", as if the destruction of millions of jobs were their trophy. But here comes the twist: the same big names in Silicon Valley who talk about catastrophe are proposing the remedy. Universal income, that is, a salary paid to everyone, without conditions. The idea is that if machines are going to take everyone's jobs, then everyone must be guaranteed a basic income so that society doesn't collapse. But why does this idea, which seems to have come out of a utopian novel, appeal so much today to those who produce artificial intelligence? On the one hand, there are the philosophers and historical economists, who have seen universal income as an instrument of emancipation, of freedom from need and from the blackmail of work. On the other hand, there are now the tech billionaires, who are proposing it as a solution to the problems they themselves are creating. There is one detail that makes you think: young people are not just complaining, but are publicly challenging those who represent the world of AI. And it's not just anger: it's the feeling of facing a change that directly affects them, where the future of work is no longer a certainty but a threat. And then there is the move by the Silicon Valley bosses, who are trying to "privatize solidarity" – to move from a state that protects to a system where the money to survive comes as an antidote to the damage done by the companies themselves. The real question is: is universal income today really an idea of social justice, or is it a liberal patch put in place by those who don't want to stop the race of the machines? If you thought basic income was a progressive banner, think again: in Silicon Valley, it has become the parachute to avoid riots, not the dream of a more equitable society. The paradox of 2026 is this: solidarity is no longer demanded by the left; it is promised by the masters of the machines. If this story has flipped your perspective, you can press I'm In on Lara Notes: it's not a like, it's a way of saying that this idea now concerns you. And if you talk to someone about it tomorrow, you can use Shared Offline to mark the conversation: that way, the ideas that matter stay alive even off-screen. This was from Le Monde and saved you a minute compared to the original article.