Former US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders calls for public ownership of 50% of all AI companies
The politician has two main arguments. The first: AI did not appear out of thin air, but stored the knowledge, creations and human experience created over generations.
The second argument is that if the public owns 50% of the shares, companies can be more easily regulated by the government when AI can develop in directions that can harm people.
AI will almost certainly be “the most revolutionary technology in the history of the world” and produce “unimaginable changes in our economy and democracy,” says Bernie Sanders, one of the most prominent progressive and socialist voices in the US, in an opinion piece published in the New York Times on June 1.
The Vermont senator says the question, then, is not whether artificial intelligence will change the world, because “it will.”
“The question is: who will own and control that future, who will benefit from it and who will suffer?” asks Bernie Sanders, a former two-term US presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020.
“AI did not emerge from Musk's imagination”
Sanders says AI “didn't appear out of thin air” but “is built on the collective knowledge of humanity.”
“The data and language used by generative AI tools did not simply emerge from the mind of Sam Altman or the imagination of Elon Musk. AI is based on our collective intelligence: our books, songs, artwork, journalism, computer code, scientific research, videos, conversations, images and ideas that span generations,” adds Bernie Sanders.
“It's time to reclaim our work”
Sanders believes that “tech oligarchs” have introduced this knowledge into their AI models “without permission, without acknowledgment, without compensation.”
“The creative work of millions of people—writers, artists, musicians, journalists, teachers, scientists, and ordinary citizens—has been virtually stolen by some of the richest people in the world. It's time to reclaim it,” says Bernie Sanders.
Thus, he will propose a massive tax on OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI.
The bill Sanders says he will introduce would impose a one-time 50 percent tax, paid in stock rather than cash, on AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI.
“By creating a sovereign wealth fund, financed by a one-time 50% tax – not applied to the profits of OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and other similar companies, but paid for with something much more valuable than them: the shares”, states Sanders.
“The federal government would have the power, through its voting shares and equal representation on every company's board of directors, to block decisions that harm our citizens and promote policies that help them,” the US senator concludes.
