The AI era needs new policies! OpenAI lays out 4 major proposals: a three-day workweek, and a robot tax

OpenAI put forward policies such as a “robot tax” and a three-day weekend. But the CEO is embroiled in an internal scandal, and with a valuation as high as 852 billion dollars and high costs, secondary-market investors are shifting their favor to its rival, Anthropic.

OpenAI releases an AI policy proposal to reshape wealth and work

As governments around the world work to address the economic impact brought by AI, OpenAI has released a policy proposal outlining how to reshape the way wealth and work are handled when the “AI intelligence era” arrives.

OpenAI’s proposal is basically a wish list and also a public statement, intended to help elected officials, investors, and the public understand how this company, with a valuation of 852 billion dollars, views the era shift in which artificial intelligence changes the workforce and the economy.

OpenAI’s four major policy initiatives

For the economic transition in the intelligence era, OpenAI’s main initiatives are as follows:

Tax reform and a robot tax

OpenAI recommends shifting the tax burden from the workforce to capital. The company warns that as AI-driven growth may expand corporate profits and reduce reliance on labor income, this will erode the tax base that funds social security, medical assistance, and housing aid.

To that end, OpenAI proposes higher taxes on corporate revenue and top-level capital gains, while also suggesting the possibility of imposing a robot tax, so that robots replacing human workers would pay the same amount of tax.

Establish a public wealth fund

To ensure that all citizens can share in the economic growth brought by artificial intelligence, OpenAI proposes establishing a public wealth fund.

This would allow even people who do not invest in the market to automatically receive public equity in AI companies and infrastructure, and any investment returns from the fund would be distributed directly to citizens, ensuring wealth does not concentrate in the hands of a few.

Subsidize a four-day workweek without cutting pay

In terms of worker benefits, OpenAI proposes a system that subsidizes a four-day workweek without reducing pay, and also recommends that companies increase the proportion of pension contributions, shoulder a larger share of healthcare costs, and subsidize the costs of childcare or elder care.

In addition, OpenAI also recommends setting up portable benefit accounts, so benefits such as healthcare and retirement savings can move with workers when they switch industries, without being restricted by a single employer.

Accelerate the expansion of the power grid and infrastructure

To support the development of the massive electricity demand of AI, OpenAI proposes establishing a new public-private partnership model to raise funds and accelerate the expansion of energy infrastructure. OpenAI also suggests speeding up construction by providing subsidies, tax credits, or equity investments, and argues that AI should be treated as a public utility—cooperating between industry and government to ensure its pricing is reasonable and that it is widely used.

As the proposal was released, anxiety about AI from the outside world has been intensifying, mainly driven by concerns about jobs being replaced, wealth concentrating, and the construction of data centers across the country. It also coincided with the Trump administration pushing forward the national AI policy and the run-up to the midterm elections, showing that OpenAI is trying to position itself to strike a balance between the two parties.

Source: OpenAI OpenAI releases an AI policy proposal to reshape wealth and work

Before releasing the policy proposal, The New Yorker breaks down Altman’s bad news

Before OpenAI released its policy proposal, CEO Sam Altman was facing a flurry of media scrutiny.

A deep-dive investigative report from The New Yorker magazine said that in 2023, OpenAI co-founder and at the time chief scientist Ilya Sutskever had written an internal memo accusing Sam Altman of deceptive behavior regarding the company’s safety agreements and other key operational matters.

The New Yorker said these trust issues led OpenAI’s board to fire Altman, concluding that he had not consistently been candid with the board. The firing sparked an uproar inside the company: employees threatened to resign en masse in protest, while heavyweight investors such as Josh Kushner threatened that if Altman was not reinstated, they would withhold operating funds.

There were divisions within OpenAI over governance and safety issues. Former OpenAI members, including Ilya Sutskever and Dario Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic, all believed that Altman put the company’s growth and product expansion ahead of the original mission focused on safety.

Source: The New Yorker report headline cover Before OpenAI released its policy proposal, CEO Sam Altman was facing a barrage from The New Yorker media.

OpenAI stock is also losing favor in the secondary market

On the other hand, according to a report by Bloomberg, OpenAI’s stock has already started losing favor in the secondary market, and investors are quickly shifting to its biggest competitor, Anthropic.

Ken Smythe, founder of Next Round Capital, said that in recent weeks, several institutional investors—such as hedge funds and venture capital firms holding large amounts of shares—have been hoping to sell OpenAI stock worth about 600 million dollars, but can’t find buyers to take it, and the buyers have indicated they have 2 billion dollars in cash ready to put into Anthropic.

Some investors are also becoming more cautious about OpenAI’s continuously rising operating costs. OpenAI has pledged to spend more money than Anthropic on infrastructure over the next few years to support development.

However, even though OpenAI has a large consumer base, it has made relatively slow progress in winning more profitable enterprise customers. By contrast, Anthropic has an advantage in the enterprise market with higher profit margins, and its growth trajectory is viewed by the market as more clearly defined and stronger than OpenAI’s.

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