Donald Trump (Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
This is reported by RBC-Ukraine with reference to Axios.
According to the US leader, such a model would actually make Americans partners in the technological revolution and would allow them to receive part of the income from companies whose market value in the future may reach trillions of dollars.
“There’s something very interesting about that, because it actually becomes a partnership with the American people. It’s like you’re making them participants in this revolution. That would be wonderful … It would make them rich,” he said.
As the publication notes, the idea of such a mechanism has been promoted over the past year by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Meanwhile, independent Senator Bernie Sanders this week again raised the issue of citizen participation in the revenue from AI development, proposing to give the public a “direct ownership stake” in the industry’s leading companies through a one-time 50% tax that would be paid in stock.
What the AI community itself thinks
At the same time, industry representatives who support such a concept are in favor of much smaller stakes for a dedicated government AI fund. Shareholdings at the level of 1% to 5% have been mentioned in discussions.
According to Axios, artificial intelligence technology remains ambivalent to a significant portion of Americans. Some industry executives and Trump himself seem to believe that attitudes toward AI will improve if citizens are empowered to participate in the creation of new wealth.
On the eve of possible stock exchange offerings of Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI, the US president noted that the scale of future revenues is so significant that some of those funds could be directed to American society.
“We are considering this issue. We are discussing how the American people can benefit from the successes of artificial intelligence. By doing so, they will enjoy it even more. We are ahead of China. We are ahead of the world in artificial intelligence and we want to maintain that advantage,” Trump added.
The publication notes that Altman has repeatedly brought up the topic during private meetings with administration officials, and has included it in proposals for a new course of AI development. He also discussed the issue this week at the Capitol with Bernie Sanders and leaders of both U.S. parties.
The idea of a “public welfare fund” was also part of OpenAI’s “Industrial Policy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” document, released in April.
Recall, earlier Trump signed an updated executive order on the oversight of artificial intelligence. The document allows the administration to postpone final decisions on regulating the industry while new rules for advanced AI models and mechanisms for responding to their cybersecurity capabilities are being developed.
The president’s team abandoned the tougher approaches of the previous version of the executive order, arguing that it risks slowing innovation.
