Sanders Wants AI Wealth Fund to Pay Americans $1K Annually

Bernie Sanders has a new idea for sharing the spoils of artificial intelligence: Make the biggest AI firms cough up some dough to fund annual checks for every American. The Vermont senator on Thursday unveiled a plan to hit leading AI companies with a one-time 50% tax in shares, seeding a sovereign wealth fund that he estimates could grow to about $7 trillion and spin off $1,000 payments to each US resident every year, per the Washington Post. A seven-member independent panel, confirmed by the Senate, would manage the fund and sit on company boards. New AI firms would be added once they hit certain size thresholds, such as $200 million in yearly sales.

"The benefits cannot simply go to the handful of wealthy corporations," Sanders said Wednesday, per the AP. "They will be shared by the American people." Axios notes that the plan would also apply to data centers, infrastructure for AI computing power, and other AI services, as well as firms involved in AI token sales. The measure is a long shot in a Republican-heavy Congress, but it overlaps with an unlikely ally, per the Post: President Trump has also floated the idea of the government taking stakes in top AI companies.

OpenAI and Anthropic have pitched their own versions of public ownership, while other tech giants have balked. Former Trump tech adviser David Sacks calls Sanders' approach "confiscation" but says he's open to voluntary models. The push comes as a recent poll shows most Americans uneasy about AI's rapid advance and doubtful that either government or industry can be trusted to police it. (Sanders wrote an op-ed about his proposal earlier this month; a Boston Globe columnist, meanwhile, dives into what he sees as a big "contradiction" in Sanders' plan.)