Americans Deserve a Dividend From AI Companies’ Riches
This is the first in a series from The Information Opinion on how to give the public a stake in the AI boom.
Suddenly everyone wants to hand the government a piece of AI. Sam Altman has discussed giving up a stake in OpenAI. Washington already owns 10% of Intel and has said it will take a cut of Nvidia’s China chip revenue. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants every major AI lab to put half of its stock into a new sovereign wealth fund.
In soccer terms, these are shots on goal, but nobody is scoring.
Every one of these proposals ends in the same place: equity parked with the government. The Treasury gets richer, or a fund gets set up. Not one of them says what happens to an actual citizen—how a person earns a stake, holds it or ever sees a dollar from it. This is a big problem that the tech giants haven’t solved.
Luckily, big ideas can come from small towns, so let me take you to one.