06/02/2026
Sisters and Brothers -
The richest people on Earth are pouring hundreds of billions into Artificial Intelligence (AI) - technology which will profoundly alter our world. Their goal: more wealth and power for themselves.
But these tools were built on the collective knowledge of humanity and the wealth they generate must also benefit humanity. Equally important, in a democracy ordinary people and their elected representatives must have a major say as to how this revolutionary technology advances. We cannot sit back and allow a handful of oligarchs to determine the future of humanity.
In today's New York Times, I outlined my plans to create an American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund - legislation which accomplishes both those goals.
I hope you enjoy the op-ed below:
The New York Times - Opinion - Guest Essay - Bernie Sanders: Bernie Sanders: A.I. Is a Public Resource. You Should Own Half of It.
Artificial intelligence will almost certainly be the most transformational technology in the history of the world. It will profoundly affect the life of every man, woman and child in our country. It will bring — and is already bringing — unimaginable changes to our economy, our democracy, our emotional well-being, our environment and how we educate and raise our children. Further, there is a very real fear that as A.I. becomes smarter than humans it could eventually function independently, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
The question, then, is not whether A.I. will change the world. It will. The question is: Who will own and control that future? Who will benefit from it, and who will be hurt by it? Will A.I. be used to make life better for working families? Will it enrich our quality of life? Will it help us eliminate poverty, extend life expectancies and solve the climate crisis? Or will the future of humanity be determined by a handful of billionaires who have promoted and developed A.I., with virtually no democratic input, who stand to become even richer and more powerful than they are today?
That is the choice before us.
Let us be clear. Artificial intelligence was not created out of thin air. The data and language used by generative A.I. tools didn’t just pop into Sam Altman’s head or Elon Musk’s imagination. A.I. is built on our collective intelligence: our books, songs, artwork, journalism, computer code, scientific research, videos, conversations, images and ideas spanning generations. That is not just the opinion of Bernie Sanders. According to Mr. Altman, the head of OpenAI, A.I. models were trained on our “collective experience, knowledge” and “learnings of humanity.”
For the most part, tech oligarchs have fed this knowledge into their A.I. models without permission, without acknowledgment, without compensation. In other words, the creative work of millions of people — writers, artists, musicians, journalists, teachers, scientists and ordinary citizens — has essentially been stolen by some of the wealthiest people in the world. It’s time for us to reclaim it.
Since A.I. is built on the collective knowledge of humanity, the wealth it generates must benefit humanity. Not just Mr. Musk, Mr. Altman, Dario Amodei and other moguls whose companies are positioned to dominate the industry. Not just venture capitalists in Silicon Valley or money managers on Wall Street who undoubtedly see A.I. as the next great wealth-extracting machine.
That is why I will soon be introducing the American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. This legislation would give the public a direct ownership stake in the largest A.I. companies in our country. How? It would create a sovereign wealth fund through a one-time 50 percent tax — not on the profits of OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and other companies, but paid with something far more valuable than that: the stock.
If passed, this legislation would do two crucial things. First, it would give the public a direct role in determining the future of this technology. No longer would the future of A.I. and the transformation of human life that it will bring be dictated by a handful of Big Tech oligarchs. The federal government would have the power, through its voting shares and an equal representation on each company’s board, to block decisions that hurt our citizens and to push for policies that help them.
Second, this legislation would guarantee that the trillions of dollars potentially generated by A.I. are used to improve the lives of all of us — not simply to make the richest people in the world even richer. If the big A.I. companies continue to grow as rapidly as many analysts expect, then the value of the sovereign wealth fund will grow as well — and the benefits to the American people will grow along with it.
This is not an original idea. It has been proposed by scholars. It has been endorsed by some of the leading A.I. companies in America. OpenAI, for example, recently proposed creating a “public wealth fund that provides every citizen — including those not invested in financial markets — with a stake in A.I.-driven economic growth.” Anthropic, led by Mr. Amodei, similarly proposed the creation of “national sovereign wealth funds with stakes in A.I.” Mr. Musk, who runs xAI, wrote, “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.”
Dozens of sovereign wealth funds exist all over the world to ensure that ordinary people benefit from national wealth. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, one of the largest in the world, was funded from the country’s oil wealth and is now worth more than $2 trillion. Instead of a few oil executives pocketing all the benefits of this national resource, Norway made the decision that this wealth should be used to improve life for all of its people.
This concept has already been put into practice right here at home. Fifty years ago, Alaska created a sovereign wealth fund from the state’s oil revenues. For decades, it has paid annual dividends directly to Alaskans. Moreover, public pension funds in states across the country already hold hundreds of billions of dollars in the stock of companies throughout America. Even President Trump, in an executive order, has proposed establishing an American sovereign wealth fund.
To start, the billions, if not trillions, of dollars generated by this fund would provide direct payments to the American people. And as the fund generates more and more wealth, the proceeds would be used to ensure that every man, woman and child in our country has a decent and dignified standard of living, including health care, education and housing.
Needless to say, I recognize that for the government to have a major stake in a company, particularly one for which A.I. is only part of its business, is complicated. More details — including the specific spending priorities and the mechanics of implementation — will be included in the legislation I unveil in the coming weeks.
But the principle is simple: When a public resource generates wealth, the public should share in that wealth. A.I. is being built on a public resource far more valuable than oil: the accumulated knowledge, creativity and labor of mankind.
The future of A.I. and the fate of humanity must not be decided behind closed doors in Silicon Valley. It must not be dictated by billionaires seeking to maximize their power and profit. It must be decided by workers, parents, teachers, artists, scientists, communities and the American people. It’s our future. We must decide it.
Gary Reber Comments:
”This is very different because the people who lose their jobs won't have other jobs to go to if AI gets as smart as people or smarter," Geoffrey Hinton, widely considered to be the godfather of the technology, said.
In the Name of Economic Justice: Why AI-Displacement Demands a Kelso Remedy
The recent warnings by Hinton, echoed by Senator Sanders, reveal a deep structural flaw in our economy — one that I foresaw decades ago in the framework of what I called “binary economics.” Hinton points out that AI — as a technology — is not inherently malevolent, but that under the prevailing capitalist system, it becomes a tool for replacing labor, maximizing profits, and concentrating wealth in ever fewer hands.
I agree: this is capitalism behaving as capitalism — but it is capitalism in need of reform, not abandonment. Because once machines (capital) can do more and more of the work formerly done by human labor, the traditional wage-based system fails the majority of people. If most individuals no longer earn wages — or wages are reduced — but capital continues generating outsized profits, who buys the goods? Who consumes? Who sustains demand? Hinton neatly anticipates this contradiction: “if the workers don’t get paid, there will be nobody to buy their products.”
Under those conditions, society risks a collapse of purchasing power, a decline in living standards for the many, and a widening chasm between rich and poor. This should not surprise us. In binary economics I argued that production depends on two fundamental factors: labor (human work) and capital (tools, machines, infrastructure, intellectual property).
As technology advances, the relative importance of capital in production grows ever greater, while labor’s share shrinks. But in our system, only a small minority own capital; the vast majority depend solely on labor for income. That structural mismatch — capital dominance with capital concentrated — turns technological progress into social regression.
The debate between Sanders and Hinton rightly highlights the urgent risk. But talk of “job retraining,” “new kinds of jobs,” or “safety nets” misses the core issue: in a capital-dominated economy, labor-centered remedies are inadequate. If the future of work is capital-driven, then the future of income must similarly rest on capital — not wages alone. As I wrote in my lifetime, societies should expand property rights in capital broadly through peaceful, voluntary, market-based mechanisms.
Therefore, the real answer to AI-driven displacement is not just regulation, not just retraining, but democratization of capital ownership itself. Instruments such as the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) — which I first designed in 1956 — offer a principled, voluntary method to allow workers to become capital-owners, to receive income from capital rather than only from labor, and to participate in the prosperity that machines create.
Such democratization restores balance: it gives people genuine ownership over the instruments of production, spreads the returns from capital broadly, and preserves both economic dignity and purchasing power. In doing so, it also protects the market system from collapse under its own success.
Why Retraining Is Not Enough — Especially in a Capital-Dominated Future
Proponents of retraining — including many friendly to Sanders’s agenda — often argue: “If an AI removes one job, others will appear; people can transition.” But that view assumes the future will remain labor-intensive in the same way. Hinton warns that AI may displace entire classes of work — not just repetitive manual tasks but creative, intellectual, even managerial labor.
In such a scenario, the supply of jobs may shrink permanently relative to the supply of labor. Even if some jobs remain, they may offer lower wages or be fewer in number. And history shows that periods of mass technological displacement — unless accompanied by new institutions of capital ownership — cause long-term stagnation of wages, inequality, and social dislocation.
Retraining alone does nothing to address the central injustices of income distribution in a capital-heavy economy. The worker becomes once again dependent on wages — but wages will be squeezed by the competitive pressure of machines. Without access to capital, the many become spectators while the few accumulate ever greater wealth.
Capital Ownership: The Only Sustainable Bridge Between Productivity and Prosperity
There is a moral as also an economic logic behind capital democratization:
Moral justice: If machines (capital) increasingly generate wealth, then those whose labor is displaced should not be left out of the gains. Access to the means of production — the traditional right of a capitalist — should not be reserved for a privileged few. That is both fair and socially stabilizing.
Economic sustainability: Broad-based capital ownership ensures that productivity gains from automation translate into widespread purchasing power, sustaining demand and preventing economic collapse from over-production and under-consumption.
Democratic capitalism: By dispersing capital ownership, we guard against oligarchic concentration. The economy remains competitive, pluralistic, and socially accountable — not dominated by a handful of owners.
The ESOP model, and related methods, show that this is not utopian — it is practical, tested, and scalable. Through self-liquidating financing, workers can become capital-owners over time, without sacrificing their wages or having to pool personal savings.
A Call to Action: Reform the Ownership Structure, Not Just the Regulation
Hinton and Sanders are right to sound the alarm about AI and mass unemployment. But their call must lead not only to regulation of AI, but to a more fundamental transformation: the democratization of capital through broad ownership.
We must not simply mitigate the harms — we must restructure the economy so that technological progress enriches all, not just a few. We must extend to every citizen the opportunity to own productive capital, to claim a share of the profits that machines and systems create.
If we fail to do this, we will face not just unemployment, but systemic impoverishment of the many — even as a tiny elite enjoy unimaginable wealth.
In short: The problem we face today is not AI per se, but an ownership structure that channels the benefits of AI into concentrated hands. The solution is a renewed capitalism — a capitalism of owners, not of wage dependents.
That is the Kelso remedy for the capitalist system — one that makes economic justice possible even in a world where machines do the work, and capital does the heavy lifting.
Op-Ed: AI Isn’t the Real Threat — Capital Concentration Is
By Louis O. Kelso (as he might write today)
The recent exchange between Senator Bernie Sanders and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton underscores a growing crisis that neither regulation nor retraining alone can solve. Hinton warns that artificial intelligence could eliminate vast categories of jobs, while Sanders fears the resulting suffering for working people. Their concerns are valid — but both are symptoms of a deeper economic flaw.
The true danger is not AI. It is who owns the AI.
For decades I argued that modern production relies increasingly on capital — machines, technologies, and systems — and less on human labor. AI merely accelerates this shift. When capital becomes the dominant factor, but capital ownership remains narrowly concentrated, then the wealth generated by machines flows to a tiny elite while everyone else sees stagnating wages or job loss.
That is not a technological failure. It is a structural failure of our economic system.
Hinton puts it plainly: if workers don’t have income, “there will be nobody to buy the products.” He is describing what in binary economics I called the collapse of purchasing power. A society cannot sustain mass production when only a few have ownership and therefore income independent of wages.
The remedy is not to slow innovation, but to democratize its ownership.
This is precisely why I designed the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP): to give workers access to capital credit so they can acquire ownership in the very technologies replacing their labor — paid for not out of their wages, but out of the future earnings of that capital. This principle can be extended nationwide, empowering every citizen to become a capital owner.
Capital ownership is the missing pillar of the Sanders–Hinton conversation. Without broad-based ownership, AI will produce unemployment, inequality, and social instability. With it, AI becomes a liberating force — generating income for all, sustaining demand, and strengthening democratic capitalism.
The choice is not between protecting workers and embracing innovation. The real choice is between a future where only a few own the non-human inputs of production, or a future where all of us do, as individual citizens.
The serious question is who will OWN and CONTROL advancing technologies, such as robotics and AI, which will result in far, far less need for masses of labor input. Then, how will people earn an income if they are not the owners of the non-human factor of production.
I address this in my award-winning book OWN: Turning Every Citizen Into A Productive Capital Owner.
