Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng, an expert in the world of artificial intelligence, acknowledges the unemployment concerns, but he sees a way forward that offers society the benefits of autonomous vehicles and blunts the negative impact of job losses.

“I feel a strong moral responsibility or obligation to try to make self-driving cars a reality as quickly as possible,” Ng said in a visit to The Washington Post. At Baidu, a Chinese tech company where Ng is developing self-driving technology, the number 3,000 has become a rallying call, representing the number of humans killed every day on roads. For Ng self-driving cars are a prime example of the benefits of what he calls the golden age of artificial intelligence.

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But for humans who could lose their jobs in this golden age, governments could offer a solution, Ng says. He is an advocate for basic income, in which governments pay citizens a nominal amount to guarantee a basic standard of living. Several Northern European countries are planning basic income experiments.

“We as a society have an ethical responsibility to help those whose jobs are displaced by this value-creating artificial intelligence,” Ng said. “I think everyone in this country has a right to a livelihood. Everyone has a right to the chance at having a great life.”

Ng suggests a tweak to basic income — paying the unemployed to study online and prepare for a new career.

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“We ask you to invest in yourself so as to increase the chance that you can re-enter the workforce if you’re unemployed, and contribute back to the tax base and contribute back more to society in the future,” Ng said.

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Ng, who is also the chairman of the online education platform Coursera, believes such digital learning programs are a natural fit for retraining workers because of their low costs. Coursera, which Ng co-founded before joining Baidu, is independent of the tech company.

Such education options could become especially valuable as early as 2018, when Baidu plans to have commercial self-driving cars on the road. Ng envisions launching them in limited areas, such as bus routes, rather than having the cars drive everywhere at once.

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In the meantime, Ng believes cities and corporations should team up to make infrastructure changes to prepare for the vehicles. Some intersections may need duplicate traffic lights to aid self-driving cars. And Ng wants construction workers to be given devices that would allow them to easily communicate with self-driving vehicles. (Construction sites are difficult for driverless vehicles to navigate because of their fluid nature.)

Ng wants more standardized environments, which will make it easier for the self-driving vehicles to function across the globe.