Universal Basic Income

[bardsmanship]

When AI takes off, and technology kills more and more jobs (self driving cars and drones kill driver/deliveryman jobs, Amazon Go kills cashier jobs, robots kill warehouse and factory jobs etc.), then government will face the reality of choosing between a large population of unemployed citizens, or UBI.

This doesn't make any sense to me tbh.
Isn't wealth a completely relative concept to begin with?
Isn't affordability relative too?
So if there's this UBI, then UBI becomes the new low. Anyone who ONLY has UBI, becomes the equivalent of an unemployed destitute now, so how does that serve to make ppl feel less poor?
And if there's a UBI, then it simply adds to inflation, and the cost of everything goes up.
Since the new "normal" is an UBI.

Isn't this the equivalent of doling out unemployment benefits that some European countries already have, with negative consequences?

The difference is that the UBI isn't taken away when someone starts working, so it still makes sense for the unemployed to find work. This contrasts with unemployment benefits, where it is possible to decrease your income by working, or only increase it by such a small amount that you would rather live on the unemployment benefits than actually find a job.