On Air Force One last week, US President Donald Trump caught many off guard by throwing his weight behind a proposal that would see the US take equity stakes in AI companies. Ensuring society shares in the gains from the technology is an admirable goal, and seizes on a growing anti-AI backlash in America. But rather than democratising the wealth created by new technologies, the still fuzzy plan to seed an AI wealth fund with voluntary contributions from companies only risks strengthening the power of tech giants — and government administrators.
Trump said he would discuss the initiative with AI companies this week, as he tries to boost his popularity on a topic that is gaining political traction on both the left and the right. Indeed, in recent weeks, several proposals have emerged.
Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders met with OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and laid out his argument for creating a sovereign wealth fund with “a one-time 50 per cent tax not on profits of OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and other companies, but paid with something far more valuable than that: the stock”. What he describes sounds less like taxation, and more like nationalisation. Even if his plan were to pass Congress, it is likely to be challenged by the courts — the Fifth Amendment to the US constitution limits the public acquisition of private property without just compensation.