BIM - Basic Income Machine

PROJECT SUMMARY

Basic Income Machine (BIM) is an open-source project that builds the first-ever vending machine for jobs, social and health care services.

BIMs are IoT-connected kiosks that provide users with jobs in their nearby neighborhoods and tools that track how users progress fulfilling the tasks. Similarly, BIMs provide access and information about health care and social services.

For the first time, everybody who wants to work can pick-up a job in less than 30 seconds. Similar are public social and health care services available this way 24/7 and on-demand to users.

We are targeting demographics who are currently excluded from the regular labor market (e.g. homeless, elderly people, refugees).

Today these people often make an additional income by collecting recyclables from trash bins or selling homeless newspapers in the streets.

By enabling them to immediately pick-up a job, without begging or fishing garbage, we improve their reputation and independence from the welfare system.

We suggest implementing the BIM concept as co-creation projects between e.g. governments bodies, welfare organizations, technology providers, and public transport companies.

Ideal locations for BIMs are e.g. homeless hotspots such as the Bahnhof Zoo station in Berlin. The neighboring homeless mission is for 20+ years a daily meeting point for 100-200 homeless people.

BIM bundles the competences of all stakeholders in this situation: 1. Caritas, the operators of the mission, can use digital technologies to improve the delivery of support services. 2. The Berlin State can use detailed analytics about the living situation and skillsets of people in need of help. 3. Deutsche Bahn can give homeless people currently occupying the public spaces of the train station a useful task. 4. IoT technology providers can showcase sensor innovations.

The core innovation of BIMs is a probabilistic tracking of labor using AI. The value of jobs conducted by users is calculated using only data collected from tools used e.g. brooms, buckets, and garbage bins.

EUROPEAN DIMENSION

Automating social care and employment using AI can not go without any criticism. At the same time, it is improving access to income and equal opportunities a priority of European and UN policies.

We believe BIM can make an experimental contribution to this discourse about the future of automated work and public sector service delivery. Our goal is to provide a blueprint for open source technology platforms that are being copied by industry and research alike.

BIMs can not be any kind of venture-backed startup. It simply would not work if one stakeholder has an over-proportional benefit or business case. But they very much could be a European-led experiment, because employment and social care are challenges in all European countries alike.

Visit us at http://basicincomemachine.com