"If you look up "Quantitative Easing" you'll see that making trillions from thin air is exactly what the world's central banks do. But instead of giving it to people, they buy securities from banks, who are, as a result, the primary beneficiaries."

This is not an apples-to-apples comparison since QE (so far) has been "sterilized" so as not to increase the money supply in the same way as you are suggesting BI would:

"Also, the Federal Reserve has mostly "sterilized" its bond purchases by paying interest to banks for reserve deposits. This removes money from circulation previously added by the Fed's bond purchases. The net effect is to raise bond prices, lowering borrowing rates for mortgages and other loans, without an inflationary increase in the money supply"[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing