Today, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Bernie Sanders, who remains one of the most forward-looking politicians in office, despite being one of the oldest.
The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies
The senator from Vermont writes:
Since A.I. is built on the collective knowledge of humanity, the wealth it generates must benefit humanity. Not just Mr. Musk, Mr. Altman, Dario Amodei and other moguls whose companies are positioned to dominate the industry. Not just venture capitalists in Silicon Valley or money managers on Wall Street who undoubtedly see A.I. as the next great wealth-extracting machine.
That is why I will soon be introducing the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. This legislation would give the public a direct ownership stake in the largest A.I. companies in our country. How? 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.
If passed, this legislation would do two crucial things. First, it would give the public a direct role in determining the future of this technology. No longer would the future of A.I. and the transformation of human life that it will bring be dictated by a handful of Big Tech oligarchs. The federal government would have the power, through its voting shares and an equal representation on each company's board, to block decisions that hurt our citizens and to push for policies that help them.
Second, this legislation would guarantee that the trillions of dollars potentially generated by A.I. are used to improve the lives of all of us -- not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer. If the big A.I. companies continue to grow as rapidly as many analysts expect, then the value of the sovereign wealth fund will grow as well -- and the benefits to the American people will grow along with it.
This is a great idea.
The collective IP of the world, or at least the America people & its greatest thinkers, writers, artists, media, etc. are our culture and heritage. They can't be absorbed & molded without compensation. It's also against the Constitution, which allows for copyright and patents (robots in the real world could violate patent rights, but A.I. alone can violate copyrights).
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