A Dual-Layer Social Safety-Net System in the Intelligent Era

The rapid diffusion of generative artificial intelligence and the accelerating development of embodied intelligence are turning technological unemployment from localized job adjustment into a structural risk. This paper conceptualizes urban workers who lack institutional, asset, and skill buffers while being highly exposed to AI substitution as a "structurally sandwiched group." It proposes a dual-layer social safety-net system featuring a basic in-kind security layer, an upper market-competition layer, and two-way mobility between them. The design combines in-kind provision with supplementary cash support, central fiscal coordination, community-service incentives, and community night schools for capability and meaning reconstruction. Static scenario estimates place annual direct in-kind expenditure at roughly RMB 1.6–2.8 trillion. The proposed system is not only a transitional response to AI-driven employment shocks; it also offers an institutional reference for how socialism at higher levels of productive capacity might convert technological dividends into free time and human development.