OpenAI wants to raise taxes on the rich, expand welfare, allow workers to 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 a new vision statement.
In the document, the AI titan says that the government needs to enact major economic reforms, to “broadly share prosperity” in the “age of intelligence.”
This plan got more attention than your average policy white paper, thanks to its unlikely author. Tech companies typically don’t make big proposals to fix the U.S. economy.
That said, OpenAI’s vision statement isn’t exactly unusual. AI giants have long warned that their technology could causing mass unemploymentwhile pointing out the need for distribution of income.
Still, even by those levels of Silicon Valley thought leadership, the outline of OpenAI’s agenda is progressive. In fact, it overlaps a lot with Senator Bernie Sanders AI recommendations (minus suspending data center construction). Since advanced AI can shift income away from workers and toward business owners, OpenAI proposes the creation of a “public wealth fund.” Basically, the government would buy shares in the nation’s most profitable companies and then issue shares to every American citizen. In other words, it would give Americans a little socialization, like a treat.
OpenAI also wants, among other things: a capital gains tax; more public funding for jobs in health, education, and social services; giving employees more influence over corporate governance; and hold AI companies accountable to new security regulations.
All these policies are poorly drawn. The document is 13 pages long and provides only brief paragraphs for many of its recommendations. It reads a lot like something ChatGPT would spit out, if you asked it to find AI-induced inequality-fighting ideas for 10 minutes.
For OpenAI progressive criticshowever, its agenda is less boring in its laziness than in its hypocrisy: The political behavior of its top leaders belies the company’s purported commitment to equitable reform.
In fact, OpenAI is engaging in one of Silicon Valley’s most annoying traditions: announcing its support for new social policies that have no real chance of becoming law in the near future, while ignoring — if not helping — attacks on real welfare programs in the here and now.
OpenAI supports social democracy in theory – and republicanism in practice
For years now, tech billionaires have been vocally worried about how artificial intelligence could fuel inequality and unemployment. And many have argued that the government must create a universal basic income (UBI) – a guaranteed minimum wage for every American – to account for this risk. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg they were all doing versions of that argument as far back as 2017.
In fact, there was no real prospect of Congress creating a UBI that year. On the contrary, Republican lawmakers he did try it gut Affordable Care Act in 2017.
The people behind OpenAI have made their political priorities clear – and sharing “broader efficiency” is not among them.
It is hard to see how anyone could believe that 1) everyone should collect income, regardless of their employment status and 2) people should not receive health insurance if they do not have a job.
If technology-fueled inequality justifies universal cash benefits, you might as well demand universal health care. Yet Musk, Zuckerberg, and many other Valley UBI supporters did little to block the GOP’s attempt to repeal Obamacare. Neither did they plan to prevent the expiration of Joe Biden’s term Enhanced Child Tax Credita policy that guaranteed a minimum income for all parents with young children.
In 2026, the disconnect between OpenAI’s advocacy of legally irrelevant reforms — and its approach to political debate — is even greater. While the company floats joint ownership of the AI industry in PDFs, its leaders are enlisting opponents of the welfare state.
OpenAI itself is to stay out of the political race. In September, though, OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife released 25 million dollars to a pro-Trump PAC. Along with OpenAI investor Marc Andreessen, Brockman also has poured money in Guiding Our Future, a PAC dedicated to electing opponents of state-level AI regulations. As part of that effort, the group is supporting a diverse array of Republican candidates.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, meanwhile, increased donations to several Republican congressmen in 2024, while giving $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.
If this money bought Altman and Brockman any influence with the White House, there is no indication they used it to oppose Trump’s push for new job requirements on food stamps and Medicaid last year.
And yet, those policies are diametrically opposed to the economic philosophy that OpenAI is now promoting. Indeed, if the threat of mass, AI-induced unemployment demands the creation of a public wealth fund, it must also prohibit shutting down basic health care for millions of people who cannot find work.
However, OpenAI leaders did not feel compelled to publicly oppose Trump’s rule. And Brockman’s super PAC seems to put zero weight on its candidates’ social welfare policies. Whether it’s meddling in the Republican primaries or democraticthe group’s only concern seems to be limiting government-level AI safety regulations — including several of those OpenAI certainly agrees in his vision statement.
Bleeding heart billionaires should go back to basics
Of course, there are worse things than hypocrisy. I’d rather see AI companies signal on asset allocation than, say, construction chatters talking about “white genocide.”
Furthermore, I suspect that the actual authors of OpenAI’s “industrial policy” document are honest. The management of the company and the workers do not have the same politics (the latter contributed overwhelmingly for Democrats in 2024)
However, the people in charge of OpenAI have made their political priorities clear – and sharing “broadly effective” is not among them.
rich techies who it is serious engagement with that goal, however, would be worth spending less energy on preparing half-baked UBI proposals — and more on intervening in actual legal battles over social welfare policy.
