In the age of AI, how much is Silicon Valley prepared to give back?

For the last couple of years, the tech community has tested no-strings-attached payments of $500 or $1,000 a month to those in dire need. Some of these experiments have happened in the heart of Silicon Valley, where a one-bedroom apartment rents for $3,000 a month and a modest house is often an unaffordable luxury.

Silicon Valley’s backing of these efforts has propelled the idea of a guaranteed income — also known as cash transfers, unconditional cash and, in its most utopian form, universal basic income — into the mainstream. But a bipartisan political consensus around the movement is fracturing even though the data seems to show that the programs are effective.