Bernie Sanders is making the case in Washington that since modern AI systems were built using the intellectual and creative outputs of all of humanity, the revenues they generate should go directly to the people—not just to a small cohort of tech moguls. On Thursday, Senator Sanders—an Independent from Vermont—introduced a bill which, if passed, would create a sovereign wealth fund for the United States’ AI industry. The fund would be valued at roughly $7 trillion, a number derived from the current valuation of the country’s top AI labs, and would give the American public a 50% public stake in those companies. As a result, taxpayers would receive an annual payment of $1,000 through the fund. That amount “will probably go up as AI becomes more prosperous,” Senator Sanders told reporters in a press briefing on Thursday. The fund could also eventually funnel “significant amounts of money … into social programs, making sure that all Americans have healthcare, education, decent housing, and other basic necessities of life.”
AI as a public resource Proposed as an amendment to the 1986 Internal Revenue Code, Sanders’ bill argues that AI is ultimately a public resource, like precious minerals or oil extracted from publicly owned land, but a tiny number of companies are profiting from this resource as if it were a proprietary, privately owned product.
