I would certainly be wary of what billionares would propose on this front - specifically structuring it to eliminate current benefits and provide less to citizens in the process. But that does not mean that it is not an idea with potential for alleviating poverty, desperation, stress, and provide for more independent employment opportunities.
I tend to agree with this bit from the opednews piece for instance:
"But this does not mean that the world will be a good world when robots do all the work and humans do none of it. In a good world, robots will do as much of the unpleasant or boring or dangerous work as possible, and humans will do things (many of which were never done before at all!) FOR EACH OTHER to make the world even better than it is today."
True indeed, and I think with UBI some of the jobs that were automated might make a return, but perhaps not in a large way economically. It would not be surprising to see people start gardening more and producing local food if things were structured right. We can use a fraction of the land currently used for industrial farming by using more intensive methods at a local scale as waste and productivity could be improved without the need for automation or chemicals. And guess what, working outside with plants in the sun has a multitude of health benefits.
The following bit I do not tend to agree with as it seems to make rather large assumptions (which have not been borne out in field experiments).
"For example, in the past most people had to work on farms to produce our food, and NOBODY created computer games. Now very few people are required to plow farm fields and instead people are freed from that task to do things such as create computer games (and perform in theatrical productions and be medical-research scientists, etc.). What makes for a better world is when people contribute reasonably according to ability toward making it a better world for each other. In a good world like this, the principle is "From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to reasonable need or desire, with scarce things equitably rationed according to need."
It would be a terrible world, however, if people no longer did things to help make it a better world for each other. This is true no matter how much robots do. A world in which people used the ubiquity of robots as an excuse for not doing anything to make life better for others is a nightmarish world, and its principle is the freeloader's principle: "Take from others but don't give anything in return even if you are able to."
This is why people (such as Robert Reich who calls robots "i-everything" devices) who defend UBI by arguing that "Soon robots will do all the work and people will all need to be paid to do nothing" are wrong. No! Robots will NEVER do all the work, unless it's a nightmarish world based on the freeloader principle where sick people have nothing but robots caring for them and the only entertainment is provided by robots and so forth."
That does indeed sound like a nightmarish world, but seriously if I asked someone what they would do with 20 million dollars (in most people's mind, infinite resources, far exceeding anything resembling UBI) would they say: I would be content to stare at my navel and be entertained by robots. I think there might be a revolt out of pure existential angst and boredom before 5 years was up in this scenario. You wouldn't be able to make people do nothing if you tried. I mean, look at David Graeber's work on bullshit jobs, even in that case people are doing things (typically online) even though in order to be paid they pretend otherwise.
