As governments grapple with how to manage the economic consequences of super-intelligent machines, OpenAI has released a number of applications. policy proposals describes the ways in which wealth and business may be reshaped in the “age of intelligence.” The ideas combine traditionally left-leaning mechanisms such as public wealth funds and extended social safety nets with a fundamentally capitalist, market-based economic framework.
The proposals were released amid heightened tensions Anxiety around AIcolored by concerns over it change of workplaceconcentration of wealth and building a data center within the country. They also came as the Trump administration moved toward a national AI framework and in the run-up to the midterm elections, it signals an attempt at bipartisan positioning. The effort sits alongside a more direct political push: OpenAI president Greg Brockman—who’s who donated millions It went to President Donald Trump — and other tech billionaires hundreds of millions to super PACs supports light-touch AI policies.
OpenAI’s proposed framework focuses on three stated goals: more widely distributed AI-based prosperity, building safeguards to reduce systemic risks, and ensuring broad access to AI capabilities so that economic power and opportunity are not over-concentrated.
OpenAI proposed shifting the tax burden from labor to capital. The company is struggling to determine the corporate tax rate – Trump lowered it from 35% to 21% in his first term. But OpenAI warns that AI-driven growth could drain the tax base that funds Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP and housing assistance as corporate profits expand and dependence on labor income declines.
“As AI reshapes work and manufacturing, the composition of economic activity could change—expanding corporate profits and capital gains while potentially reducing reliance on labor income and payroll taxes,” OpenAI said.
The company proposes higher taxes on corporate income, AI-based income or capital gains — the policy category that prompted Marc Andreessen to endorse Trump after Biden proposed taxing unrealized capital gains in 2024. OpenAI is also paying for a potential robot tax that Microsoft co-founded. Bill Gates proposed in 2017meant that the robot would pay the same amount of taxes into the system as the person it replaced.
The document also includes a proposal to create a Public Wealth Fund to give Americans an automatic public stake in AI companies and AI infrastructure if they are not invested in the market. Any revenue will be distributed directly to citizens. The prospect may appeal to Americans who have watched AI inflate the market without seeing any of those gains.
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Several of OpenAI’s proposals were more labor-focused, including subsidizing a four-day workweek without loss of pay — a proposal that echoes the tech industry’s promise that AI will give people a better work-life balance. OpenAI also suggests that companies increase pension matches or contributions, cover more health care costs, and provide care for children or the elderly. Note that OpenAI treats these as corporate, not government, responsibilities, leaving out the people whom AI will most likely displace. If automation eliminates your job, your employer-subsidized health care and pension match could go with it.
However, OpenAI also offers portable benefit accounts that track workers in workplaces, but these still depend on employer or platform contributions and fall short of universal government-backed coverage that would completely shield humans from AI.
OpenAI acknowledges that the risks associated with artificial intelligence go beyond job loss, including abuse by governments or bad actors and the possibility of systems operating beyond human control. To mitigate these threats, it offers targeted protection plans against dangerous artificial intelligence, new controls, and high-risk uses such as cyberattacks and biological threats.
But along with safety nets and guardrails come proposals for growth, including expanding electricity infrastructure to support AI’s power demands and accelerating the construction of AI infrastructure by offering subsidies, tax credits or equity stakes. OpenAI says that AI should be treated as a utility, and to that end, it suggests that industry and government work together to ensure that AI is affordable and widely available, rather than controlled by just a few firms.
The OpenAI framework arrives six months after its competitor Anthropic released a policy blueprint outlining a range of possible responses to AI-based disruption.
“We are entering a new phase of economic and social organization that will fundamentally reshape work, knowledge and production,” OpenAI said. The company says this calls for a “new industrial policy agenda that ensures superintelligence benefits everyone”.
OpenAI was founded as a non-profit organization focused on artificial intelligence that benefits all of humanity. Last year, it became a for-profit company, a change that has left critics questioning whether its stated mission is aligned with its need to grow and fulfill its fiduciary duty to shareholders.
Citing earlier periods of economic upheaval, such as the industrial age, the company pointed to how new economic and financial movements such as the New Deal enabled “new societal institutions, protections, and expectations of what a fair economy should provide, leading to greater opportunities and greater security.”
“The transition to superintelligence will require an even more ambitious form of industrial policy that reflects the ability of democratic societies to act collectively, at scale, to shape their economic futures so that superintelligence benefits everyone,” writes OpenAI.
