Senator Bernie Sanders has announced a new legislation aimed at taking half of the control of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom away from Silicon Valley billionaires and handing it directly to the American public. Arguing that AI companies built their empires on ‘stolen’ data, Sanders plans to introduce the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, a bill that would levy a one-time 50% tax on the stock of the nation’s largest AI firms to establish a public fund.“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,” Sanders stated, declaring that it is time for humanity to reclaim its collective knowledge.
Sanders: ‘AI built on humanity’s collective wisdom’
Sanders emphasised that generative AI tools from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI did not appear out of thin air, nor did they simply pop into the imaginations of tech leaders like Sam Altman or Elon Musk, as per his opinion in The New York Times. Instead, he said, these models have been trained on generations of books, artwork, journalism, computer code and conversations.Sanders even pointed out that OpenAI’s Sam Altman has acknowledged that AI models are trained on the “collective experience” and “learnings of humanity.” Sanders argued that ‘tech oligarchs’ took this public resource without permission, acknowledgment, or financial compensation. He maintains that the staggering wealth it generates must benefit everyone, not just venture capitalists and a handful of billionaires.
How the 50% corporate stock will work
The centre of the proposed legislation is a unique tax structure designed to give Americans a direct ownership stake in the AI future.The proposed bill suggests that rather than taxing corporate profits, there should be a one-time 50% tax paid entirely in company stock. This targets dominant private and public entities like OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI.The bill also suggests that the resulting sovereign wealth fund would grant the federal government voting shares and equal representation on the boards of these massive AI companies. This would give the public the power to block harmful corporate decisions and push for ethical policies.Thirdly, as these AI companies grow, the fund’s value would expand, and the dollars potentially generated would initially fund direct dividend payments to the American people.