Bernie Sanders might be 84 years old, but he sure acts more in touch with the general public’s views on AI than most other lawmakers, including those in the party he caucuses with. In an op-ed published by the New York Times on Monday, the Independent Senator from Vermont called for the government to take a 50% ownership stake in the frontier AI labs, including OpenAI and Anthropic.
Sanders’ plan will manifest in the form of the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, a piece of legislation the Senator said he will soon introduce. That bill will call for a one-time, 50% tax on frontier AI companies (he names OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, though there is no mention of existing Big Tech players like Google and Meta) that would be paid in stock.
Under Sanders’ plan, the federal government would have a controlling share in these labs, both through voting shares and mandatory representation on each company’s board, to block any decision that would be deemed harmful to the public. It would also seed a sovereign wealth fund and allow the government to take a share of the massive projected profits that the AI industry is expected to generate (you know, assuming the whole thing isn’t a big bubble).
On one hand, it’d be better if Bernie didn’t pull his punches on this and just called for straight-up nationalization of the frontier labs. It’s already clear the technology is a potential danger for all sorts of reasons, and the idea that it should be held by a handful of guys who are heavily invested in making themselves rich means public interest will never be their first consideration. It’s also a good time to try to pull that card: Trump’s decision to take a significant government stake in Intel, along with his attempts to wield the power of the federal government to make AI companies bend to his will makes it hard to mount a meaningful political defense against the idea.
On the other hand, Sanders’ proposal does a nice job of calling the bluff of the AI industry. As the Senator pointed out in his op-ed, OpenAI has called for the creation of a “public wealth fund that provides every citizen — including those not invested in financial markets — with a stake in AI-driven economic growth,” and Anthropic has backed the idea of “national sovereign wealth funds with stakes in AI.” Elon Musk has claimed to support “Universal high income via checks issued by the federal government,” calling it “the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.”
Surely the response to this bill will be total support, right? (Gizmodo has reached out to OpenAI and Anthropic and will update this story if we hear back.)
It’s unlikely the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act goes anywhere, because basically no legislation goes anywhere these days, but it’s another indicator that Sanders is actually taking this moment seriously. He’s one of the few Democratic-aligned politicians actively trying to regulate AI at a federal level and considering the possible consequences of this technology being operated by ungovernable billionaires. Sanders also proposed a pause on data center buildouts, which common wisdom suggested was unlikely to gain much traction, but the public clearly is aligned with Bernie on that issue.
He might not have the best grasp on the technology itself, but Bernie continues to be pretty good at reading the tea leaves for how the public feels about AI.
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