Bernie Sanders proposes 50% public ownership of AI firms with $1,000 annual dividends to Americans

Bernie Sanders files bill proposing 50% public ownership of US AI firms and giving out $1,000 dividends -- VP Vance says Trump supports giving the American people a stake in AI companies, prefers 'pre-distribution' over giving away cash

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act to the U.S. Senate, which aims to gain 50% ownership of U.S. AI firms through a sovereign wealth fund. According to the Senator's webpage, the first thing this would do is establish the Independent Commission for Democratic AI, which has seven bipartisan members nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. This body would control 50% of the voting shares of American AI tech companies, meaning it would have the capacity to "block decisions that hurt the American people and to push for policies that help them." The Vermont Senator has always been skeptical about AI. Late last year, he called for a complete halt on all data center construction in the U.S. to ensure that the technology benefits everyone and "not just the 1%." It seems that this idea went nowhere, and his next pitch to the American people is for the establishment of the AI sovereign wealth fund. Sanders' office estimates that the fund would be valued at $7 trillion at the current value of these companies, and that a 5% annual dividend would grant $1,000 for everyone in the United States. Aside from that, it would also be used for funding to improve the lifestyle of every American through "decent and dignified standard of living, including the right to health care, education, housing, and a healthy and habitable environment. The bill has just been filed, though, and we still expect it to go through multiple rounds of debates and revisions if it passes at all. President Donald Trump likes Sanders' idea In a surprising twist, VP JD Vance said that President Donald Trump likes the idea that the U.S. would gain a controlling stake in every American AI company. The VP likened the AI revolution to the industrial revolution, wherein it's not the lack of jobs that became the problem that drove several parts of Europe towards communism and fascism. Instead, he claims that it's the concentration of wealth among a small group of people that became the catalyst for civil strife in the Western world. "You go back to the industrial revolution. Was mass joblessness the main consequence of the shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy?" the VP asked Steven Bartlett, the host and creator of The Diary of a CEO podcast. "No. But what did happen? Rich people got way richer. And that led to, in Europe, fascism and communism. In fact, your country and my country [are] pretty much the only two countries that successfully avoided either a fascist or communist revolution in response to the industrial revolution." He also added that capitalists shouldn't take advantage of workers, which is similar to Sanders' idea of installing a voting member from the American people (through the government) in every American AI company. "The average American, the average Brit, the average Western society member has stagnated and people really hate relative poverty," Vance added. "You can give people iPhones, and you can give people the creature comforts of a 21st-century economy, but you make rich people way richer, you are going to have significant problems." But even though it seems that Sanders and the administration are in agreement, Vance says that he does not favor Sanders' cash redistribution model, wherein the people would receive an annual dividend from the fund. He said that with redistribution, "you turn the poor people into effectively subservients (sic) of the rich people" and that it "never provided a stable society." Instead, the current administration's idea, which it calls "pre-distribution" is to give normal people "a seat at the bargaining table." He says that it's impossible for a single person to bargain with a company for better wages, but with workers working together, this is where the idea of collective bargaining came from. But the Vice President says that this idea should go beyond economics, as it can also help shape the culture being formed in the age of AI. You can watch the complete interview below: Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Sanders' AI bill would hand the public half of OpenAI

The senator has introduced the first federal legislation to give the public a stake in AI: a one-time 50% tax on the biggest labs' stock, a roughly $7tn sovereign wealth fund, and a yearly cheque of more than $1,000 to every American. It goes far further than anything the White House or the labs have floated. Bernie Sanders has turned a talking point into a bill, and it goes further than anything Silicon Valley or the White House has put on the table. On Thursday, the Vermont senator introduced legislation that would hit the largest AI companies with a one-time 50 per cent tax on their stock, paid in shares rather than cash. That would hand the American public a half-stake in firms like OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI, and seed a sovereign wealth fund that Sanders estimates at roughly $7tn. It is the formal, far more aggressive version of an idea that has been circulating in Washington for weeks. $1,000 a year, and a seat at the table The fund would be required to pay out a 5 per cent annual dividend, which Sanders says would put more than $1,000 a year in every American's pocket, with any surplus going to healthcare, education and housing. The tax would apply to any AI firm with more than $200mn in annual AI sales. A seven-person Independent Commission for Democratic AI, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, would manage the fund and use its voting shares to block company decisions it judges harmful to the public. The argument: AI is stolen public property The bill's pitch is as much moral as fiscal. AI "derives its economic value from humanity's collective intelligence", it reads, listing the books, songs, art, journalism, code and research the models trained on. "A small number of oligarchs have essentially stolen the creative work of hundreds of millions of people." The logic follows the oil-and-minerals model: if value is extracted from a public resource, the public should share the returns. Further than the labs wanted to go The idea has unlikely fans. Donald Trump has mused about a government stake, OpenAI floated a voluntary "public wealth fund", and Anthropic's Dario Amodei has mooted a basic income funded by taxes on AI firms. But Sanders' version is a seizure, not a gift, and he has said so to Sam Altman's face. In a meeting, he dismissed a voluntary "5 per cent of our profits" offer as buying off the public. The two remained, by accounts from the room, far apart. It probably won't pass. That may not be the point. The odds are long. Congress is Republican-controlled and broadly pro-industry, former AI czar David Sacks has called the plan "straight up confiscation of property", and a clause forcing companies to split their AI and non-AI businesses would scramble Elon Musk's merger of xAI into SpaceX. From the other direction, Palantir's Alex Karp argues 50 per cent is too timid and that full nationalisation is coming anyway. Sanders does not expect it to pass. He is planting a flag for the midterms, where anxiety about AI and jobs is becoming a campaign issue; roughly 70 per cent of US college students already see the technology as a threat to their prospects. Whether or not the bill moves, it has reframed the debate. Washington is no longer arguing about whether the public should share in AI's windfall. It is arguing about how much.