out its initial cash handout trial for studying about Universal Basic Income.

Several tech billionaires including Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are supporting the universal

basic income to tackle poverty as they believe automation by Artificial Intelligence will

create mass unemployment problem in near future.

YCombinator and their partners tentatively plan to randomly select 3,000 individuals

across two US states to participate in the study: 1,000 people will receive $1,000 per

month for up to 5 years, and 2,000 people will receive $50 per month and serve as a

control group for comparison.

They are working with government agencies to access administrative data for consenting

individuals.

They will also conduct extensive surveys with participants at the start and end of the project.

They just wrapped up a one-year feasibility study in Oakland.

They conducted the feasibility study to learn what challenges they would face when seeking

to conduct a large, high quality study.