Silicon Valley Wants to Save You From AI Layoffs - The Atlantic

In late March, I started receiving daily texts from the federal government about AI. “🇺🇸AI is changing how we work and live,” one message read. “You might feel curious, skeptical, or unsure—that’s normal.” I had enrolled in an AI-literacy course from the Labor Department created to help workers succeed in the ChatGPT economy. The weeklong program, created in partnership with an AI start-up and delivered by text message, was supposed to equip Americans with “foundational AI skills,” according to an agency press release. But the government’s texts were not reassuring. One message encouraged me to ask a bot for “side hustle ideas.” Another suggested that I brush up on my AI skills by doodling: “Grab a friend and see whose drawing of a hippo AI can recognize … and whose it mistakes for a lumpy potato. 🥔.”

When it comes to AI’s threat to jobs, America has acted like a deer in headlights. For all the catastrophic messaging about looming layoffs, efforts to prepare for a major transition have lagged. After speaking with a roster of the nation’s top business and political leaders, my colleague Josh Tyrangiel concluded earlier this year that no one seemed to have a plan for how to proceed. Government efforts to shore up the labor market have been largely underwhelming. AI-literacy courses like the one I took are hardly a sufficient response if you believe that mass job loss is forthcoming; the Trump administration announced a goal last year to expand apprenticeship programs, but progress on that front has been middling. Meanwhile, the tech industry has barreled ahead in its efforts to develop more capable models. Earlier this year, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei warned that “AI isn’t a substitute for specific human jobs but rather a general labor substitute for humans.”

But over the past several weeks, politicians and tech executives have started to make a show of more seriously preparing the country for a future of AI layoffs. As promising as these new efforts are, many of them also end up serving the interests of Silicon Valley.

Consider a flashy proposal for state ownership of AI companies. Last month, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed the AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would give the federal government a 50 percent stake in major AI companies including Anthropic and OpenAI. The act would also give an appointed commission voting shares to help “stop bad decisions that will reap massive job loss,” Sanders said on a press call. The legislation, which calls for the tech industry to hand over trillions of dollars worth of stock, is unsurprising coming from Sanders, who regularly takes aim at “Big Tech oligarchs.” What’s surprising is the fact that at least one of the alleged Big Tech oligarchs is on board with a watered-down version of Sanders’s proposal.

After Sanders first announced his plan, Sam Altman requested to meet with the senator. The OpenAI CEO reportedly told Sanders that although he does not endorse the exact plan, he supports the idea of public ownership of AI companies. Altman has been flirting with such ideas since even before ChatGPT was launched, and in April, OpenAI endorsed the creation of a “public wealth fund” that would give every citizen “a stake in AI-driven economic growth.” More recently, according to the Financial Times, Altman has had recent conversations with the Trump administration about public ownership of OpenAI and its competitors; the company is reportedly floating giving up a 5 percent stake.<br>Read: Why everyone is suddenly talking about ‘universal basic capital’<br>Still, it’s difficult to imagine a future in which our dysfunctional Congress passes a law to take a stake in AI companies, and then the government seamlessly redistributes the earnings to the rest of us. And regardless, such arrangements are unlikely to save a flailing labor market. Sanders’s aggressive wealth fund, for example, aims to start by paying roughly $1,000 to each American annually—which is not trivial, but is also far from a solution to mass unemployment. And private companies don’t give away equity out of altruism. If the government were to seize control of AI companies, the country could end up responsible for bailouts (although Sanders’s bill prohibits use of the fund for such purposes), and public ownership could dilute the demand for more onerous regulation. Perhaps that’s why Gwynne Shotwell, the president of SpaceX, home to Elon Musk’s AI efforts, announced this week that she and her husband would give stock to Trump Accounts, the savings accounts for children that just launched. Anthropic has also said that it would like to invest in researching “AI sovereign wealth funds” as a possible response to extreme unemployment.

AI companies are eager to be seen as supporting other initiatives too. In May, OpenAI’s nonprofit foundation, which owns roughly a quarter of the AI company, announced that it would spend $250 million on grants and...