Could game-based welfare be an answer to machine induced high unemployment?
This is an interesting concept; though, I’ve got a slightly different slant on it. There are two basic kinds of “artificial intelligence”, one is conventional machine intelligence, and the other is “collective intelligence” along the “Mechanical Turk” model. (And of course, there is also the combination of the two.) It seems that you have identified a prime opportunity to implement this kind of solution, and not to forget the FUN (and learning)!
I will add to this that as things get worse in the world environmentally and socially, I expect people will retreat into virtual worlds, along the lines of games such as Second Life and World Of Warcraft. At the same time, these virtual worlds are predicted to become MUCH more realistic (probably hyper-realistic like HDTV). Therefore, the question may become how to employ people as “Mechanical Turks” in the virtual worlds.