Though things came to a head this week for the NYT’s Tech Guild, a storm has been brewing across industries since ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) emerged.

While these AI tools may help the average person draft emails and generate ideas, most users don’t realize that the outputs created by their favorite AI tool were actually trained by publicly available content—much of which was written and produced by professional publications like The New York Times.

Now, as AI becomes ever-more prominent and the companies like OpenAI that create these tools report record valuations, those in the publishing industry are left to wonder what happens next.

Historically, journalists have been significantly underpaid, forcing them to live paycheck to paycheck, with little (if any) income left over to invest. This has landed today’s workers between a rock and a hard place—making them overly reliant on labor income while their employment opportunities continuously dwindle.

When it comes to making money, there are two ways to do it: labor income, money made via wages, and capital income, money made through investments. Far too many workers are stuck in a cycle of low-labor income and zero capital endowment.

Like most Americans, today’s NYT employees are stuck in a vicious cycle—unable to earn enough income to put toward investment capital, which limits them from participating in the massive wealth creation of the stock market, ironically being led by AI innovators like NVIDIA. Even worse, these workers are left vulnerable to the technological advancements these companies are pioneering.

We all know AI isn’t going away—it will only continue to grow in prominence. That’s why the workers at The New York Times (and elsewhere!) deserve a solution that goes beyond short-term negotiations and fixes.

Where do we go from here?

To build a stronger economy and ensure people are taken care of, workers need to be given the opportunity to participate in the promise of technological advancement, instead of being threatened by it.

The solution is to get them out of the vicious cycle of low income and inadequate savings by providing them with an endowment of assets that allows them to earn capital income, so they can benefit from the stock market’s growth, including companies like NVIDIA—making them partial owners and beneficiaries to technology’s gains, instead of its victims.

Universal Basic Income has long been a cause championed by tech leaders like Sam Altman and Andrew Yang because they know AI is eventually coming for everyone’s income. But making workers dependent on the generosity of others isn’t a sustainable form of policy. Universal Basic Capital, on the other hand, offers the promise of independence that Universal Basic Income lacks.

It's time for a change...

At the end of the day, employment income and benefits will only get you so far—and rarely do they last beyond our ability to work, so we need a new standard that will stand up to the technological changes that are rapidly outpacing our abilities and reshaping the modern workplace.

That’s why we’re calling on the workers at The New York Times—and employees everywhere who want a more sustainable option for their future—to talk to your employers about Universal Basic Capital. Sign up for our waitlist today to aggregate critical mass and attract management’s attention.