OpenAI: Taxes on Robots and Public Funds for the AI Economy

OpenAI's Vision for the AI Economy

OpenAI recently released a set of policy proposals aimed at redefining wealth and work in the age of artificial intelligence. These proposals combine mechanisms traditionally associated with the left, such as public wealth funds and the expansion of social safety nets, with a fundamentally capitalist and market-driven economic framework.

OpenAI's proposals essentially present themselves as a wishlist, a public statement that helps elected officials, investors, and the general public understand how this $852 billion-valued company envisions the world in an era where AI is transforming work and the economy.

These proposals were published against a backdrop of growing anxiety surrounding AI, marked by concerns about job displacement, wealth concentration, and the expansion of data centers across the country. They also come as the Trump administration moves toward a national framework for AI and with the midterm elections approaching, signaling an attempt at bipartisan positioning. This effort is accompanied by a more direct political push: OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, who has donated millions to President Donald Trump, and other tech billionaires have invested hundreds of millions in super PACs supporting lenient AI policies.

Objectives of OpenAI's Proposals

The framework proposed by OpenAI is based on three stated objectives:

• Distributing the prosperity generated by AI more widely
• Establishing protections to reduce systemic risks
• Ensuring widespread access to AI capabilities so that economic power and opportunities do not become overly concentrated

OpenAI proposes shifting the tax burden from labor to capital. The company does not specify corporate tax rates— which Trump had reduced to 21% from 35% during his first term. However, OpenAI warns that AI-driven growth could erode the tax base that funds Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance, as corporate profits rise and reliance on labor income diminishes.

OpenAI suggests higher taxes on corporate income, returns generated by AI, or capital gains, particularly for the wealthiest. This category of policies has led Marc Andreessen to support Trump after Biden proposed taxing unrealized capital gains in 2024. OpenAI also mentions a potential robot tax, an idea that Microsoft founder Bill Gates proposed in 2017, implying that the robot should pay the same amount of taxes as the human it replaces.

Additional Proposals

The document also includes a proposal to create a Public Wealth Fund to give Americans automatic stakes in AI companies and AI-related infrastructure, even if they are not invested in the market. Returns would be directly distributed to citizens, which could appeal to those who have seen AI drive up the market without benefiting from it.

Several of OpenAI's proposals also focus on work, including one to subsidize a four-day workweek without loss of pay, in line with tech industry promises that AI will improve work-life balance. OpenAI also suggests that companies increase retirement contributions, cover a larger share of healthcare costs, and subsidize childcare or eldercare. It is noteworthy that OpenAI presents these measures as corporate responsibilities rather than government ones, thereby omitting those most likely to be displaced by AI. If automation eliminates your job, your employer-sponsored health coverage and retirement contributions could also disappear.

That said, OpenAI also proposes portable benefits accounts that follow workers from job to job, but these likely still depend on contributions from employers or platforms and do not extend to a government-supported universal coverage that would genuinely protect those displaced by AI.

Risks and Safety Measures

OpenAI acknowledges that the risks of AI extend beyond job loss, including misuse by governments or malicious actors and the possibility of systems operating beyond human control. To mitigate these threats, it proposes containment plans for dangerous AI, new oversight bodies, and targeted protections against high-risk uses, such as cyberattacks and biological threats.

However, with safety nets and safeguards come proposals for growth, including the expansion of electrical infrastructure to support AI's energy needs and accelerating AI infrastructure construction by offering grants, tax credits, or equity stakes. OpenAI asserts that AI should be considered a public utility and, to that end, suggests that industry and government collaborate to ensure that AI remains affordable and widely accessible, rather than controlled by just a few companies.

OpenAI's framework comes six months after its competitor Anthropic released its policy plan, which laid out a range of possible responses to the disruption caused by AI.

OpenAI concludes by stating: "We are entering a new phase of economic and social organization that will fundamentally redefine work, knowledge, and production." This, according to the company, requires a "new industrial policy agenda that ensures superintelligence benefits everyone."

OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit organization, with the idea that AI would benefit all of humanity. It became a for-profit company last year, a change that has led critics to question the compatibility of its stated mission with its need to grow and fulfill its fiduciary duty to its shareholders.

The company cites previous periods of economic upheaval, such as the industrial era, highlighting how new economic and financial movements, like the New Deal, ensured that "growth translates into broader opportunities and greater security" by "building new public institutions, protections, and expectations of what a just economy should provide, including labor protections, safety standards, social safety nets, and expanded access to education."

OpenAI concludes: "The transition to superintelligence will require an even more ambitious form of industrial policy that reflects the capacity of democratic societies to act collectively, at scale, to shape their economic future so that superintelligence benefits everyone."