Automation, through the development of robotics and AI, is slowly removing jobs left, right and centre. It started with low-skilled jobs in manufacturing, offices and retail, but as the technology gets more sophisticated, highly skilled – and thus often highly paid – roles are now also facing the prospect of vanishing.

Your own job is probably at risk – mine certainly is, but as I am responsible for a wide range of tasks, from news-writing to magazine-planning and from feature commissioning to coding, I’m probably safe for at least a decade.

That timescale is pretty reasonable for a lot of office-based roles, but when you’re faced with the notion that the lifelong career you’ve been building might be over before it’s fully begun, it’s not unreasonable to start thinking about how to make life manageable when robots are doing your job instead.

Which is perhaps why there has been a rise in interest and support for universal basic income.

For those that don’t know, universal basic income (UBI) is a basic wage, paid to every citizen, whether they are working or not. Those who are able and willing can top up their income by working, in order to afford luxuries, but for those unable to work or who’d rather spend time on other things such as improving their skills, raising children or simply living life, they have enough money to live.

In theory it’s an excellent idea, as it removes the stress, health issues and lack of social mobility that comes with living in poverty. But as a solution to the automation of jobs, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Robots won’t stop us wanting to work

UBI is a good theory in part because it gives people the time to build skills and experience so that they can get their dream job.

This would stop certain hard-to-access careers, such as development and the arts, being dominated by those whose parents can afford to fund them until they make it, levelling the playing field and enabling the most skilled and driven to rise to the top.

But that doesn’t work if we just sit by and watch as entire career paths slowly vanish in the wake of the robot revolution, because at the end of it there simply won’t be enough jobs for those wanting to work.

UBI is a good theory in part because it gives people the time to build skills and experience so that they can get their dream job

Of course, many could embrace their entrepreneurial spirit, forging whole new business fields and creating new jobs for fellow humans in the process.

But ultimately, all businesses come down to the idea of selling something to someone else, and if the majority of people have no disposable income – their UBI would be just designed to fund their basic living costs – there won’t be many people who are able to buy this new business’ product, making entrepreneurialism challenging to pull off.

Add to this the fact that UBI needs to be funded by taxation, and it’s clear that you require a significant number of people working. Fine, the majority of people will still want to work in this new system, but if robots have taken their jobs, will they be able to?

The need for new job fields

Of course, robots will need maintenance, controllers and designers. But realistically, are these people going to earn enough to pay for the upkeep of everyone else?

And what about their employers – the companies making and supplying the robots. Businesses might choose to buy or rent their robots because it is cheaper than hiring a human, but if all the humans who use their product switch to just UBI, will they still have a customer base?

At best companies would switch to the areas those relying on their UBI would use, such as food, homes and basics, but if all – or even the majority – of companies did this, we’d see a price war, followed by a fair number of failing businesses. Instead, we need to forge whole new fields that provide jobs robots cannot do, and while many people have started this, whole career areas remain unprotected from robotic replacement.

What automation-free new area could you switch to, bringing your knowledge and skills from your previous field?

So consider this – when your job is automated, what will you do? What automation-free new area could you switch to, bringing your knowledge and skills from your previous field? We all have a responsibility to forge new career spaces for ourselves. If we don’t, it will be left to the mega-rich few and the results won’t be good for us regular Joes.

And we need to begin working on this now, think carefully about new fields that will progress humanity, and figure out how to make them happen. Because waiting to be replaced by a robot isn’t a practice that can end well.

Universal basic income: not all bad

This is not to say that UBI is a bad idea; it’s not, and it could do a lot of good.

However, saying it’s the solution to automation, and putting all our effort into implementing it so that when our jobs get automated we won’t be homeless is only going to result in the system failing.

We’re already facing tremendous inequality and a severe lack of social mobility that has only got worse in recent years.

That’s a problem we should seek to solve, and UBI could be the answer.

But if we expect UBI to solve more problems we’re throwing on top of that, we’re going to have a bad time.