Let no one accuse Bernie Sanders of ducking the big questions. Writing in the New York Times last week, the senator asked: “Will the future of humanity be determined by a handful of billionaires who have promoted and developed AI, with virtually no democratic input, who stand to become even richer and more powerful than they are today?”
We agree entirely that this is one of the most potent questions facing global democracy today. Our book, Rewiring Democracy, surveys the emerging uses for and impacts of AI in democracy around the world and reaches the same conclusion: that the most urgent risk posed by AI is the concentration of power, wealth and control among tech oligarchs.
And yet we reached a vastly different conclusion than Sanders on what to do about it.
The senator points to a once radical but increasingly popular solution: creating a US sovereign wealth fund by taking 50% stock in AI companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI. The argument in favor of this is twofold. One: it would establish democratic control over the AI companies, giving the government “the power, through its voting shares and an equal representation on each company’s board, to block decisions that hurt our citizens and to push for policies that help them”. Two: it would return a big chunk of the economic rewards of skyrocketing AI valuations to the public, ensuring “trillions of dollars potentially generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us”.
We laud both these goals unreservedly.
We wholeheartedly agree that there must be public influence over the development and use of AI, just as we demand the government intervene to ensure that automakers, drugmakers, airlines and other industries balance profitability with public safety and the public interest. And we credit the senator with recognizing that there are more levers for the government to pull beyond the promulgation of regulation to achieve this.
And we also agree that the obscene, dangerous accumulation of wealth among AI companies needs to be disrupted. As OpenAI and Anthropic race to be minted as the world’s latest trillion dollar AI companies, we should recognize that – whether or not it constitutes a bubble – these staggering market capitalizations represent a transfer of wealth. The flow of money goes from the smaller businesses and actual people using AI, and being subjected to it, to the owners of these tech companies.
That includes the world’s 86 AI billionaires “seeking to maximize their power and profit” aiming to decide the “fate of humanity … behind closed doors in Silicon Valley”, as Sanders said.
And yet, while we do not outright oppose the taking of AI company stock, or of a US a sovereign wealth fund, there are better ways to achieve Sanders’ stated goals.
Public ownership of these companies entangles corporate profit and valuation with the public interest. It would incentivize the government to clear regulations, permit the exploitation of workers and…
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