A coalition led by the Fund for Guaranteed Income and What We Will has started a pilot program—AI Dividend—that provides monthly payments up to $1,000 to nearly 50 people struggling to find work after AI-driven changes in the tech job market. The effort began
Late March changed the rhythm for Dean Grey. When his previous contract ended. he spent months applying—only to hit a wall where his skills. built for a particular slice of the industry. didn’t match what the current market wanted. This time. the break came with something he calls “a real sense of community” and structure: the monthly checks from a new pilot program meant for people displaced by artificial intelligence.
The program is called AI Dividend. It is being piloted by a coalition of tech and labor organizations. led by the Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI) and What We Will. It targets entry-level workers having difficulty finding a job in an automated world. as well as tech workers who have lost their jobs because of artificial intelligence. The pilot provides a monthly stipend of up to $1,000 to a cohort of nearly 50 participants.
Payouts began in late March. The initiative has $300,000 in initial funding and plans to distribute $3 million over the course of one year.
“It’s very difficult to invest in retraining” without help, F4GI’s executive director Nicholas Salazar said, pointing to the pressure workers face when resources run out—or when homelessness enters the picture. “We’re hearing from workers of all levels that they need support,” Salazar added.
Salazar framed the stakes in direct terms: the goal is to help participants “transition and find another job,” because without that support, workers could slide into “permanent unemployment.”
Kaitlin Cort, founder of What We Will, described the pilot as a test of what a safety net for widespread AI disruption could look like. Cort said the problem isn’t just that jobs are vanishing. Pathways into tech that once offered upward mobility are narrowing—especially for entry-level workers.
“In the past year, we’re definitely seeing a lot of changes in the industry and a tightening job market, especially for entry-level workers,” Cort said.
Her concern is echoed by SignalFire’s 2025 “State of Tech Talent Report,” which wrote that entry-level is “collapsing” and that new grad hiring in Big Tech is down over 50% in 2024 from pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
Cort described what she sees in the market as a “K-shaped labor market.” Demand is rising for senior workers with AI expertise while junior-level software roles disappear. “The result,” she said, is that computer science graduates are left scrambling for jobs.
For Cort, a key missing piece is how retraining is delivered. “What people need is not just video courses,” she said. “They need to have a project — ideally with real users — and AI-related job experience to be added to their résumé.” In her view. that kind of support depends on in-person mentorship and training.
That cash-plus structure is now playing out for Grey in a hands-on way. Grey told Business Insider that the monthly checks through AI Dividend have been “amazing” and “such a boon.” Grey. who previously worked as a trucker before entering the tech industry. said he went through multiple bootcamps and a short-term contract. only to find that his skills didn’t translate into a position after hundreds of applications.
“Honestly, this program is still so new, and the curriculum is still developing, but right away I got a real sense of community,” Grey said. “And to be honest, just to have a structure again, some guidance, and community allowed me to move forward with some confidence.”
As part of the program, Grey is also creating an AI chatbot with the AI Commons that helps newly unemployed individuals navigate their next steps and answer questions about healthcare, unemployment benefits, and networking opportunities.
The pilot is already working with hundreds of laid-off workers, including about 270 laid-off Oracle employees.
That experience—where someone’s past work doesn’t match what employers now ask for—comes through in Cort’s description of the gap. She said some workers have spent years working on a specific part of a code base that is Java-based and “actually quite old. ” with limited exposure to newer advancements.
But the program’s promise runs into a hard budget question in Washington and elsewhere. Philip Luck, director of the CSIS Economics Program, said it is increasingly hard for governments to balance their budgets. In his view. it is difficult to see a scenario in which any government could make a monthly payout to a large swath of the population.
Luck said he is “1000% for scaling up unemployment insurance and anti-poverty policies. ” and that these assistances make sense for people who need to learn new skills or who are nearing retirement and need help getting through broad transitions. He also said it’s difficult to imagine an economy where a majority of labor is not needed. arguing. “We only have so much money. and we should channel it toward those who need it the most. through really effective. smart. and well-designed means testing.”.
Even within the UBI debate, the coalition is trying to draw a bright line. Salazar said AI Dividend is often seen as a universal basic income program. but he argues it does more than hand out cash. “UBI is universal, unconditional, and it’s supposed to be permanent,” he said. “But this program is actually targeted right now for AI-displaced workers. which means it’s conditional and it’s time-limited to between six and 12 months.”.
Grey, for his part, said he understands why people question any program that includes cash. “There are always people who would take advantage of any program, including UBI,” he said. Still, he is optimistic about what comes next.
“It might just mean that we transition to a new way of finding purpose, whether that’s not in what we do for occupation, but how we express ourselves or what we do creatively,” Grey said. “I don’t think that we’ll run out of ways to find purpose in life.”
AI job losses basic income pilot guaranteed income tech layoffs retraining stipend Fund for Guaranteed Income What We Will Nicholas Salazar Kaitlin Cort Dean Grey AI chatbot Oracle layoffs unemployment insurance