OpenAI’s vision for the AI economy: public wealth funds, robot taxes, and a four-day work week

As governments grapple with how to manage the economic impact of super-intelligent machines, OpenAI has released a range of these solutions policy proposals which outlines the ways in which wealth and work can be reshaped in an ‘intelligence age’. The ideas combine traditional left-wing mechanisms such as public wealth funds and extensive social safety nets with a fundamentally capitalist, market-driven economic framework.

OpenAI’s proposals are essentially a wish list, a public statement that helps elected officials, investors and the public understand how the $852 billion company sees the world changing in an era when artificial intelligence is transforming labor and the economy.

The proposals were released amid growing concerns around AI, colored by worries about job losses, the concentration of wealth and the expansion of data centers across the country. They have also arrived as the Trump administration moves toward a national AI framework and in the run-up to the midterm elections, signaling an attempt at bipartisan positioning. That effort is accompanied by a more direct political push: OpenAI president Greg Brockman – who has done just that donated millions to President Donald Trump — and other tech billionaires have funneled hundreds of millions into super PACs in support of light AI policies.

OpenAI’s proposed framework focuses on three objectives: distributing AI-powered prosperity more broadly, building safeguards to reduce systemic risks, and ensuring widespread access to AI capabilities so that economic power and opportunity do not become too concentrated.

OpenAI has proposed shifting the tax burden from labor to capital. The company stops short of specifying a corporate tax rate – which Trump cut from 35% to 21% during his first term. But OpenAI warns that AI-powered growth could erode the tax base that funds Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP and housing assistance as corporate profits grow and reliance on labor income decreases.

“As AI reshapes work and production, it may change the composition of economic activity – increasing corporate profits and capital gains while reducing dependence on labor income and payroll taxes,” OpenAI wrote.

The company suggests higher taxes on corporate income, AI-driven returns or capital gains at the top — a policy category that prompted Marc Andreessen to support Trump after Biden proposed taxing unrealized capital gains in 2024. OpenAI is also introducing a potential robot tax, something Microsoft’s founder has done. Bill Gates proposed in 2017where the robot paid the same amount of taxes into the system as the human it replaced.

The document also includes a proposal to create a Public Wealth Fund to automatically give Americans a public stake in AI companies and AI infrastructure even if they don’t invest in the market. Any proceeds would be distributed directly to citizens. This prospect may appeal to Americans who have watched AI blow up the market without seeing any of these gains themselves.

Several of OpenAI’s proposals were also more labor-oriented, including one to subsidize a four-day work week without losing wages – a proposal that echoes the tech industry’s promises that AI will give people a better work-life balance. OpenAI also suggests that companies increase retirement benefits or contributions, cover a greater share of healthcare costs, and subsidize care for children and the elderly. Notably, OpenAI views these responsibilities as corporate rather than government responsibilities, leaving out the people AI is likely to displace. If automation eliminates your job, your employer-subsidized health care and retirement match could come with it.

That said, OpenAI is separately proposing portable benefit accounts that track workers in different jobs, but these are still likely to rely on employer or platform contributions and fall short of the government-backed universal coverage that would effectively fully protect people from AI pushbacks.

OpenAI recognizes that the risks of AI go beyond job losses, including abuse by governments or bad actors and the possibility of systems operating outside human control. To mitigate these threats, it proposes containment plans for dangerous AI, new regulatory bodies and targeted safeguards against high-risk applications such as cyber-attacks and biological threats.

But with the safety nets and guardrails come the growth proposals, including expanding electricity infrastructure to support AI’s power needs and accelerating the buildout of AI infrastructure by offering subsidies, tax credits or equity stakes. OpenAI says AI should be treated as a utility, and therefore proposes that industry and government work together to ensure AI remains affordable and widely available, rather than under the control of just a few companies.

OpenAI’s framework comes six months after its competitor Anthropically released its policy blueprint, which laid out a range of possible responses to AI-driven disruption.

“We are entering a new phase of economic and social organization that will fundamentally reshape work, knowledge and production,” OpenAI wrote. This, the company says, requires a “new industrial policy agenda that ensures superintelligence benefits everyone.”

OpenAI was founded as a non-profit organization focused on AI that benefits all humanity. Last year it became a for-profit company, a shift that has led critics to question whether its mission is compatible with the need to grow and fulfill its fiduciary duty to shareholders.

Citing previous eras of economic turmoil, such as the Industrial Age, the company pointed out how new economic and financial movements like the New Deal created “growth that translated into broader opportunity and greater security” by building “new public institutions, protections, and expectations about what a fair economy should provide, including labor protections, safety standards, social safety nets, and expanded access to education.”

“The transition to superintelligence will require an even more ambitious form of industrial policy, one that reflects the ability of democratic societies to act collectively and at scale to shape their economic future so that superintelligence benefits everyone,” OpenAI wrote.