Frontier AI labs should be required to contribute a share of their equity to a national fund that pays a dividend to every citizen

If the wealth generated by artificial intelligence will accrue only to the owners of AI companies, then the way to avoid catastrophic levels of inequality is to give everyone an ownership stake in those companies.

We need to ensure every American owns a stake in the future being built by AI through a national public equity fund that takes a major stake in the new economy.

At its core, the AI Dividend is simple: if AI dramatically increases productivity and concentrates wealth, the American people have a stake in those gains.

Create a Public Wealth Fund that provides every citizen—including those not invested in financial markets—with a stake in AI-driven economic growth. Policymakers and AI companies should work together to determine how to best seed the Fund, which could invest in diversified, long-…

Equity funding: policymakers should expand the mechanisms by which these accounts can be funded, including with equity in AI companies, so that beneficiaries share directly in nearer-term gains from AI-driven growth.

Artificial intelligence has been built by robbing the collective work of humanity. The public built AI — we should own it, not a handful of billionaires.

This is about giving the public a seat at the table.

The public has got to have a significant seat at the table to make sure that terrible things do not happen to ordinary people, and that in fact, AI benefits ordinary people, not hurts them.

I do, and I actually take that a step further. I actually think we need democratic control of 50% of the boards of AI companies.

Notably, the structure envisioned by OpenAI is based on this model — equity donations from AI labs pooled into a single unit paying dividends to the American public.

OpenAI wants to give Washington 5% of the company. Critics cry socialism, but an Alaska-style fund built on contributed equity is a deal Congress would be foolish to refuse.

[...] and that is why, just last week, I introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. This legislation would give the public a direct ownership stake in the largest AI companies in America. It would allow the American people, through their government, to own 50 percent o…

It would create a sovereign wealth fund through a one-time 50 percent tax — not on the profits of OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and other companies, but paid with something far more valuable than that: the stock. [...] the billions, if not trillions, of dollars generated by this fund wo…

The government should not take 'tip money' from AI companies but force them to cough up 50% of the equity — to be dispersed to American citizens.

It puts the government in the space where it’s no longer focused on ensuring the U.S. has the capacity it needs to protect the public interest and is more focused on ensuring that its investment pays off.

Nationalization of AI will accelerate the corporate-government fusion we’re already sliding toward.

Even if taking partial ownership of frontier AI companies can make sense on paper, in practice it's a recipe for political favoritism and corruption.

Direct government involvement – from inside the boardroom – in the rapidly developing AI market would undermine competition by creating a perverse set of incentives that slow innovation and rob consumers and businesses of new products.

While the proposals for AI profit sharing vary in their precise details, a quick review of their likely outcomes should quickly deflate the popular excitement that has formed in response to calls for new taxes, public wealth funds, and the like.

I’m not exactly sure what they’re trying to achieve. [...] Just remember that these are American companies. Their success benefits the stock price, of which many Americans are investors in. It generates taxes, which helps many Americans. It creates a lot of jobs.

Stock is private property, and seizing 50% of the stock value of major firms is a pretty obvious case of confiscation. [...] It does not matter that Sanders proposes to take "only" 50% of the stock, rather than 100%. If the government seizes half your house or half of your busine…

The fruits of the AI industry are not the government's "free safe." This is an anti-market idea that goes against market principles and is no different from socialist-style distribution.

An AI welfare state would complete the transformation from capitalism to political management via a permanent, non-reformable administrative state.

This is extremely dangerous. [...] Because, by promoting in the American public the idea that we all have a direct stake in the economic success of these companies, a sovereign wealth fund encourages everyone to think not as citizens, but as investors.

An AI sovereign wealth fund is likely to end up being a mechanism to shovel yet more money to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and the rest of the right-wing billionaire gang. [...] The sovereign wealth fund idea is a massive leap in the wrong direction.

Artificial intelligence has become the latest excuse for reviving one of the oldest bad ideas in economic policy: a universal basic income. [...] AI will change work. It will not repeal economics. The best response is not fear-driven universal dependency.

It took a lot of effort to achieve some basic rights, and now neoliberalism is destroying everything: the education system, health care... By giving money to each citizen you are transferring responsibility from the State to the people, so that they can manage as best they can. I…

UBI does not alleviate poverty and turns social necessities into products for profit. To truly address inequality we need adequate social provisioning. If we want to reduce means testing and dependency on capitalist employment, we can do so with capacity planning. Our political d…

The problem is not the idea that the public should share in AI’s upside. The problem is trying to seize half of today’s model labs while missing the rest of the value chain.

Create a Public Wealth Fund that provides every citizen—including those not invested in financial markets—with a stake in AI-driven economic growth. Policymakers and AI companies should work together to determine how to best seed the Fund, which could invest in diversified, long-…

Equity funding: policymakers should expand the mechanisms by which these accounts can be funded, including with equity in AI companies, so that beneficiaries share directly in nearer-term gains from AI-driven growth.