Americans could receive an annual $1,000 payment from artificial intelligence companies under legislation Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced Thursday that would give the public a direct stake in the largest AI firms — an idea that has been echoed by President Donald Trump.
Although unlikely to become law, Sanders’s proposal adds to recent interest from across the political spectrum in the idea that economic disruption from AI could be offset by the U.S. government holding stakes in firms developing the technology.
Trump said earlier this month that’s he considering taking a government stake in leading AI companies, though his administration has not offered more detail.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its rival Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, have both floated their own ideas for companies to give the American public a stake in their growth. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)
Under Sanders’s proposal, leading AI companies would pay a one-time 50 percent tax of stock that would feed into a sovereign wealth fund expected to be worth around $7 trillion, according to a summary of the legislation provided by Sanders’s office.
AI’s “massive explosion of wealth and power is directly built on our collective human output,” according to the summary. “And yet, under the status quo, only a handful of billionaires will control this technology.”
A 5 percent dividend from the fund could be used to send a $1,000 check to everyone in the U.S. annually, Sanders’s office estimated.
Under the senator’s proposal, the sovereign wealth fund would be managed by a seven-person independent commission that would be represented on the boards of companies in the fund. Congress would create a list of potential nominees to the commission, who would be chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
New AI companies would be swept into the sovereign wealth fund if they reach a certain size, such as $200 million in annual sales.
It would be a steep climb for Sanders’s bill to become law in the Republican-controlled Congress. But the alignment between Trump and Sanders, who agree on very little politically, suggests there may be bipartisan concern about AI worsening inequality and a related political urgency to try to spread potential future AI riches.
Americans remain skeptical of the technology. A Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday found that a significant majority of the public is concerned that AI is advancing too quickly, doesn’t believe the government can effectively regulate AI and doesn’t trust the businesses developing AI.
It remains unclear whether distributing stock of AI companies or cash derived from them would ease public discontent about the technology.
Besides OpenAI and Anthropic, other major AI developers have largely been silent or not publicly receptive to the possibility of government-backed public ownership of AI companies. “We’re not really interested in selling ourselves to any government,“ Microsoft President Brad Smith said in an interview released this week.
TechNet, a trade association whose members include Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, said more Americans would trust AI if they could benefit from job opportunities created by the technology. CEO Linda Moore said TechNet is pushing Congress for guidelines for AI development and workforce development policies — a suggestion that other government efforts may not be needed.
In a sign of how the idea of the U.S. government taking stakes in AI firms can win over skeptics of AI regulation, former Trump administration AI and crypto czar David Sacks recently said he opposed Sanders’s blueprint but could get behind the general concept.
Sanders’s proposal is a “straight up confiscation of property and I just think that’d be a terrible precedent,” Sacks said last week on “All In,” an influential technology podcast.
“However, I do have sympathy for where it’s coming from,” the former Trump official added, saying that he could support voluntary ideas for some public ownership of AI companies.
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