Bernie Sanders has unveiled an aggressive plan to transfer trillions from leading AI firms to the public, and, to the likely horror of AI firms, it goes even further than expected to give Americans more control over the AI industry.
Sanders shared a summary of his legislation with AP News. If passed, the law would create a sovereign wealth fund “financed through a one-time 50 percent tax on the stock of the largest AI companies,” AP News reported. Any AI firm that does $200 million in annual AI sales would be subject to the tax, as would any new firm once it reaches that revenue level.
In total, Sanders estimated the fund could be worth $7 trillion, generating “hundreds of billions of dollars annually in direct payments to Americans and programs such as health care, education and housing,” AP News reported. Each American would likely receive more than $1,000 annually in 5 percent annual dividends, Sanders estimated.
“The benefits cannot simply go to the handful of wealthy corporations,” Sanders said. “They will be shared by the American people.”
Beyond the payouts and support for critical US programs, the legislation would also ensure that Americans have “direct influence over corporate decision-making,” Sanders said. Seven members of a newly created, bipartisan Independent Commission for Democratic AI—nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate—would oversee the fund. Using voting shares, the commission could block any decisions companies may move to make that could harm the public, The Hill reported.
“The public has got to have a significant seat at the table to make sure that terrible things do not happen to ordinary people, and that in fact, AI benefits ordinary people, not hurts them,” Sanders told AP News.
Although some CEOs like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei have shown support for some public benefits from AI, their ideas are not as bold as Sanders’.
In a meeting with Sanders, Altman remained “far apart” from the senator on how much stake in OpenAI the American public should have, sources in the room told AP News. However, Sanders insists that his legislation transfers a fair amount of wealth while critically ensuring that AI benefits humanity. He confirmed that he intends to campaign on creating the fund, and during the meeting, he cast AI firms that expect to transfer significantly less than 50 percent as greedy.
“I think people like Sam Altman and Trump (who) may be sympathetic” to the public’s growing concerns about AI displacing jobs or harming communities and “are saying: ‘OK, look, we’re making zillions of dollars, so we’re going to be nice guys and maybe we’ll buy off the public. We will give 5 percent of our profits back into the government,’” Sanders said in the meeting. “That’s not what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about are two very different things.”
Not only are AI firms likely to balk at the size of the stake Sanders has suggested, but some will also recoil at a requirement under the law to split their non-AI business from their AI business, The Hill reported. That could affect businesses like Elon Musk’s firm, xAI. That leading AI firm has already merged with X and then SpaceX, and the world’s richest man may be plotting a mega-merger between SpaceX and Tesla, The New York Times reported.
While Donald Trump has toyed with the idea of the US government taking a stake in leading AI firms, he seems unlikely to get behind Sanders’ plan. His former AI czar, David Sacks, remains influential in his administration and slammed Sanders’ legislation before details were even released.
Last week, Sacks said on the All In technology podcast that Sanders’ legislation would be a “straight up confiscation of property” and set “a terrible precedent,” the Post reported. Although Sacks said he had “sympathy” for where Sanders is “coming from,” he is more supportive of “voluntary ideas for some public ownership of AI companies,” like Trump’s.
Given the Republican-controlled Congress (which remains largely pro-AI industry), it seems unlikely that Sanders’ legislation will pass without Trump’s buy-in.
Sanders likely doesn’t expect his legislation to resolve the biggest questions the public has about AI or even put a dent in anti-AI sentiment. But he told AP News that he views his legislation as a starting point for discussing how Americans should benefit from AI amid rising anti-AI sentiment nationwide.
“We think this is the best that we could do at the moment, and it’s certainly a major, major, major step forward from giving unilateral and total power to a handful of multi-billionaires,” Sanders said.