Fortune reports that Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation aimed at giving the American public an ownership stake in the artificial intelligence boom, rather than leaving taxpayers with the cleanup bill after the robots finish reorganizing the workforce. His proposal would require AI companies to transfer a substantial share of their stock into a government-run sovereign wealth fund intended to benefit all Americans.
The idea arrives as roughly 200 economists and computer scientists, including 16 Nobel laureates, warn that increasingly powerful AI could produce enormous gains while also causing large-scale job displacement. Meanwhile, the federal government has already made about $27 billion in equity investments across strategic industries, and the White House has indicated that AI companies could be next. The catch is that Washington currently has no defined mechanism requiring proceeds from those investments to compensate workers or communities harmed by automation. Apparently, remembering the public after the checks clear is still considered an advanced feature.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Sanders wants AI companies to place half their stock into a sovereign wealth fund so ordinary Americans can share in the value created by the technology. Polling cited by Fortune found about seven in ten Americans supported the concept. Nothing builds bipartisan enthusiasm quite like discovering Silicon Valley may automate your job before lunch.
- The federal government has already completed roughly 30 equity deals worth $27 billion in defense, energy, semiconductors, critical minerals and other strategic sectors. Those investments can generate dividends and gains for Washington, but the money currently arrives without a specific promise that displaced workers will ever see a dime.
- The Trump administration has expressed interest in extending government equity ownership to AI companies. That raises the obvious question: If taxpayers help finance the technology, infrastructure, energy system and economic disruption, why should the public receive only the invoice while corporate investors keep the jackpot?
- Sovereign wealth funds are not imaginary socialist woodland creatures. Alaska has used oil revenues to build a permanent fund that supports the state budget and pays residents an annual dividend. The concept can work. The problem is placing it in the hands of Washington, where “long-term public investment” can quickly become consultant chow and bureaucratic nesting material.
- Even Fortune’s expert analysis concedes that creating an AI fund would require clear answers about who chooses the investments, where the money comes from, how risks are managed and where the profits go. In other words, it would require consensus, discipline and competent governance, three commodities currently trading at historic lows in Washington. (fortune.com)
My Bottom Line
Bernie Sanders is not automatically right just because he has identified a real problem. But he has identified a real problem, and conservatives should not be too busy yelling “socialism” to notice the corporate welfare truck backing into the loading dock.
The looming AI bargain is painfully simple. Corporate giants get the productivity gains, investors get the equity growth, executives get the bonuses and workers get a cheerful webinar about resilience. Then government officials call the layoffs “innovation,” announce another retraining program and act surprised when Americans become skeptical of progress that always seems to progress directly away from their paychecks.
Colorado workers should pay close attention. Office employees, logistics crews, energy workers, technicians and software professionals should not be ordered to reinvent themselves for the fifth time while somebody in a glass conference room cashes the robot dividend. If public money, public infrastructure and the American workforce help create the AI jackpot, then public ownership terms should be discussed before the money goes out the door, not after thousands of jobs disappear.
That does not mean handing Bernie a trillion-dollar political cookie jar and trusting Washington’s consultant-and-bureaucrat class to guard the Oreos. Any public investment must have hard statutory limits, transparent accounting, independent audits and benefits that flow directly to citizens, not advocacy groups, favored contractors or whatever blue-ribbon committee is formed to study the committee. Subsidizing private upside, socializing the job losses and then calling every skeptic anti-progress is not capitalism. It is grift with a software update.
Source: Fortune
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