As US tech companies pour billions of dollars into artificial intelligence, workers are increasingly worried about what the AI boom could mean for their jobs. Tech layoffs have added to fears over job security, even as companies ramp up capital spending on AI and corporate profits remain strong. Now, a majority of Americans appear to want the public to get a direct share of the wealth created by the technology.
A recent national survey found that 69% of Americans support “forcing” AI companies to transfer 50% of their stock to a public sovereign wealth fund. The survey of 1,690 adults was conducted by research firm Verasight in June and published earlier this month.
“In the eyes of the public, AI Sovereign funds are seen as a tool to distribute the gains from the AI industry back to broader society,” said Benjamin Leff, chief executive officer of Verasight told CNBC.
AI could put millions of jobs at risk
The growing support for an AI wealth fund comes as economists warn that the technology could disrupt millions of jobs during the coming decade.
Goldman Sachs Senior Global Economist Joseph Briggs estimates that more than 9% of the US labour force, or around 15 million workers, could lose their jobs during a 10-year AI transition period, the bank said in a report published last month. This “would be the type of automation and reallocation shock that we saw in the late ’90s and early 2000s and in other periods of significant technological change,” Briggs told CNBC. The long-term picture, however, may be less bleak.
“But [Briggs] believes these losses will prove temporary owing to his expectation that AI will create many new jobs over the long term even as it destroys existing ones,” the Goldman Sachs report says. For workers watching companies cut jobs while investing heavily in AI, however, the immediate disruption has helped create a larger debate, Who should benefit financially if AI transforms the US economy?
Bernie Sanders wants the public to own half of major AI firms
That question has already reached Washington. In June, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which, if passed, would give the public a 50% stake in the largest AI companies in the US
“It would guarantee that the economic benefits generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer,” Sanders said in a statement last month.
“The future of AI and the fate of humanity must not be decided behind closed doors in Silicon Valley by billionaires seeking to maximize their power and profit,” Sanders noted.
The Verasight poll suggests Sanders’ proposal may have significant public support at a time when Americans are increasingly questioning how the financial gains from AI will be distributed.
Could an AI wealth fund make Americans richer?
Sovereign wealth funds can play several roles in the AI economy. Governments could use them to fund expensive AI infrastructure, buy stakes in AI companies and direct part of the economic gains created by AI back to the public treasury, according to research firm Windfall Trust. But such funds could also face a difficult balancing act.
“There is also a tension between the financial mandate (maximize returns for citizens) and the strategic mandate (build national AI capacity, maintain influence over frontier systems), since these objectives can conflict when the best financial investment is a foreign AI company rather than a domestic one,” Windfall Trust added.
That tension could become more important as countries compete to build advanced AI systems while also trying to protect workers and deliver economic gains to their citizens. With millions of jobs potentially facing disruption, growing public support for an AI wealth fund shows that Americans are not only asking what AI can do but who ultimately gets to profit from it.