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There have been countless discussions about how AI is changing the world, yet much of that fails to consider the financial benefit people should receive on an individual level as a result of that rapid growth, as Bernie Sanders outlines an attractive proposal that would see people get paid regularly by ChatGPT.
US Senator Bernie Sanders is one of the most prominent left wing figures in American politics, consistently advocating for socialist policies that benefit the collective population instead of a select few wealthy individuals.
With many fearful about how the future of AI will impact their economic health, Sanders has outlined a potentially revolutionary proposal in a new New York Times essay, aiming to balance the scales back to where they should be in his eyes.
There are no concessions from Sanders about the immense impact that AI already has had and will no doubt continue to have globally, calling it "the most transformational technology in the history of the world," and arguing that "it will profoundly affect the life of every man, woman and child in our country."
He illustrates, however, that that transformational technology has been built from the 'collective intelligence' of humanity, yet we've received no share of that unfathomable wealth since the technology was released — despite claims from figures like Elon Musk that 'universal high income' schemes are coming in the future.
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"For the most part, tech oligarchs have fed this knowledge into their AI models without permission, without acknowledgement, without compensation," Sanders argues.
"In other words, the creative work of millions of people – writers, artists, musicians, journalists, teachers, scientists and ordinary citizens – has essentially been stolen by some of the wealthiest people in the world," he continues. "It's time for us to reclaim it."
It's something that has been at the heart of countless lawsuits in the past few years, with a recent legal challenge from CNN seeking millions in damages from startup Perplexity and a group of YouTubers also banding together to sue Apple for similar reasons.
The result of this call for compensation, so to speak, is the proposition of what Sanders calls the 'American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act', which involves a 'one-time 50 percent tax' to be paid with stock in companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI.
Outlining exactly what this legislation would achieve, Sanders explains that it would "give the public a direct role in determining the future of this technology," alongside guaranteeing that "the trillions of dollars potentially generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer."
It's something that a few of the industry's influential figures have even proposed themselves, although it doesn't address one key issue proposed by Anthropic's Chris Olah, who recently highlighted the potential for other countries to be significantly left behind economically, even with schemes like this proposed by Sanders.
When it comes to Americans, however, this new sovereign wealth fund would allow for direct money payments for every citizen, "and as the fund generates more and more wealth, the proceeds would be used to ensure that every man, woman, and child in our country has a decent and dignified standard of living, including health care, education, and housing."
Don't expect this to be something that the Trump administration takes on board itself, but it could be the single defining policy that swings things in favor of the Democrats if the party decides to pick it up ahead of the next election in 2028.
