There is a hot debate surrounding the profitability of AI. For now, the wild investment in data centers It is not contributing at all to the growth of the US economybut there are those who believe that AI is already generating wealth, The problem is that we still don’t know how to calculate it.. Meanwhile, a crucial question is emerging in all of this: If AI ends up being the goose that lays the golden eggs, is it fair for companies to keep it all?
Give back to the people. A few days ago, Donald Trump made a comment that went somewhat unnoticed, but is very relevant. During a conversation with reporters in the Oval Office, he said he hopes AI companies will “give something back to the public,” that is, to share the wealth they are generating. His exact words, according to Reuterswere:
“I’m going to meet very soon with the 12 or 15 most important executives, and we are talking about giving something back to the public, and if we do that, the public will be very rich (…) I think they will do it, and I think that will make it very popular.”
Why is it important. That the president of the United States mentions the possibility of sharing the wealth that AI is going to generate is a way of admitting what we have been observing for a long time: AI is reconfiguring the labor market and that for many people that means being fired. Of course, Reuters contacted OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic and Google to evaluate the president’s statements and none of them did so.
Yes, but. These statements They arise in a context in which the popularity of AI among citizens is at a minimum, so it may be a way to appease the growing rejection in American society. According to a Reuters and Ipsos poll53% of citizens fear that AI will leave them or someone in their household without a job. Additionally, 73% were concerned about the increase in the use of AI.
A public fund. It is one of the options that are circulating and that OpenAI itself recently proposed. The logic is that, since AI is going to generate a lot of wealth, the state buys shares and then distributes the profits among the population. That is, the state becomes a partner in AI and shares the return on that investment, like Norway’s sovereign fund with oil, but with AI as a resource. The other option would be to impose a tax on company profits, but for whatever reason they do not defend this idea as much.
Qmaybe it’s not enough. The most apocalyptic scenarios They point to a future in which AI does all the office work. In one opinion column in Financial TimesVinod Koshla, founder of a venture capital firm, anticipates that AI will do around 80% of the economically valuable work that humans do today, causing massive unemployment.
In this scenario, a sovereign wealth fund may not be enough, so it proposes several changes, such as equalizing capital gains taxes with wages, and creating a 20% “token” tax from 2030 on income derived from AI computing and replacing human payrolls with automated systems. This collection would first go to cover unemployment for those who lose their jobs and, if the bet on AI goes well, it could then be used to lower the cost of basic services that can be automated (healthcare, personalized tutors or legal assistance) so that they stop being a luxury linked to income.
Image | Igor Omilaev in Unsplashedited
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