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OpenAI is pivoting to…socialism?

The AI company just released a set of oddly left-wing — and wildly hypocritical — policy ideas.

OpenAI wants to raise taxes on the rich, expand the welfare state, let workers decide how their employers use artificial intelligence, and give everyone a cut of the tech industry’s profits.

Or so the company claims in a new vision statement.

In that document, the AI titan argues that the government needs to enact sweeping economic reforms, so as to “share prosperity broadly” in “the age of intelligence.”

The plan received far more attention than your typical policy white paper, due largely to its improbable author. Tech companies do not typically issue sweeping proposals for restructuring the American economy.

This said, OpenAI’s vision statement is not entirely unprecedented. AI moguls have long warned that their technology could cause mass unemployment, while gesturing toward the need for income redistribution.

AI’s threat to white-collar jobs just got more real

Artificial intelligence isn’t a good argument for basic income

Still, even by those standards of Silicon Valley thought leadership, the agenda OpenAI outlines is remarkably progressive. In fact, it overlaps heavily with Sen. Bernie Sanders’s own AI proposals (minus his moratorium on data center construction). Since advanced AI could shift income away from workers and toward business owners, OpenAI proposes the creation of a “public wealth fund.” Essentially, the government would purchase a stake in the nation’s most profitable companies and then give shares to every US citizen. In other words, it would give Americans a little socialism, as........

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