Artificial intelligence threatens to cause a jobs shock across offices, warehouses, call centers, clinics, classrooms and more. Faced with backlash among displaced workers, the industry and its lobbyists will likely lean on cash‑transfer schemes — universal basic income and its like — as a release valve.

That path would paper over dislocation while entrenching gatekeepers. It would weaken bargaining power at work and create new and unintended social and fiscal dependencies.

We can do better than that. We have an opportunity instead to bend the trajectory, level the playing field and ensure that the public that pays for the externalities of AI also benefits from its returns.

What does this entail? Open and contestable markets; modern data rights; liability that governs control; guard-railing technological change to serve the shared good; and most importantly, public sharing in AI’s upside.

The U.S. should establish a professionally managed, firewall‑insulated Public AI Wealth Fund that holds diversified stakes across the AI stack and distributes an annual dividend tied to the AI upside (i.e. realized returns).

This would put the focus on public dividends, not basic income; it would give the public a........

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