Nathaniel Whittemore

Now, OpenAI appears to be actively pushing the concept in Washington.

CNBC reports that Sam Altman met with Bernie Sanders on Wednesday to discuss the idea, with sources saying that OpenAI is pitching the idea of donating equity to the US government to seed a public wealth fund.

OpenAI views this as a way for the public to benefit in the upside of AI growth, possibly through dividend distribution from the fund.

They've also suggested that the fund could be allocated to individuals, such as through the new Trump Accounts for Children.

Now, for anyone who's been watching this president closely, his interest in this probably isn't all that surprising.

First of all, there's been talk of a sovereign wealth fund since early in the term, and the government has taken stakes in multiple companies, including Intel, over the past year.

He also understands the PR power of cutting a check to the American people, with his Friday comments suggesting that part of the plan is AI dividends directly attributable to OpenAI and others participating in the fund.

Now, as you might imagine, there are a lot of cynical responses to this.

Former Microsoft employee and tech commentator Daryl Bostenjoe writes, the groundwork is already being laid for a government bailout of OpenAI.

Now, I don't want to dismiss a cynical take out of hand, and maybe some of you will find this even more cynical, but at this point, if you don't think the government already views our leading AI labs as too big to fail, you're not paying attention.

In other areas, though, there is a bit more of a nuanced debate forming around the concept.

Grappling with the issues, former AI czar David Sachs wrote, while I'm no fan of socialism or arbitrary confiscations of wealth, I can see why Bernie Sanders' proposal for the government to take a 50% stake in AI companies resonates, including with many on the right.

Sachs argued that as public benefit companies, OpenAI and Anthropic could maximize their benefit by using a portion of their profits to pay down the national debt.

Alternatively, he said he could almost support the Sanders proposal as a stupidity tax for the AI job apocalypse narrative stoked by AI leaders over recent years.

There's just one problem, Sachs continued.

Nationalization of AI will accelerate the corporate-government fusion we're already sliding towards.

Conservatives rightly fear a central bank digital currency.

They ought to be even more concerned about central government AI, a system with even more totalistic power over information, decision-making, and human behavior.

America won't win the AI race if we beat China but end up with a CCP-style social credit system in the U.S.

And that is the danger as the government becomes more deeply involved in AI development and assumes direct ownership and control.