OpenAI has unveiled a comprehensive set of policy recommendations designed to navigate the economic upheaval expected from superintelligent AI. The proposals, released as a public declaration, outline how the $852 billion company envisions reshaping wealth and work in what it terms the “intelligence age.” This framework blends mechanisms often associated with left-leaning politics, such as public wealth funds and expanded social safety nets, within a fundamentally capitalist, market-driven economic structure.
The timing of this release is strategic, coinciding with heightened public anxiety over AI’s potential to displace jobs, concentrate wealth, and drive massive data center expansions across the nation. It also aligns with the Trump administration’s push toward a national AI framework and the approaching midterm elections, suggesting an attempt at bipartisan positioning. Alongside this, OpenAI president Greg Brockman—who has donated millions to President Donald Trump—and other tech billionaires have funneled hundreds of millions into super PACs advocating for light-touch AI regulations.
At its core, OpenAI’s framework targets three primary objectives: distributing AI-driven prosperity more broadly, implementing safeguards to mitigate systemic risks, and ensuring widespread access to AI capabilities to prevent excessive concentration of economic power and opportunity.
A central proposal involves shifting the tax burden from labor to capital. While OpenAI refrains from specifying a corporate tax rate—noting that Trump reduced it from 35% to 21% during his first term—the company warns that AI-driven growth could erode the tax base funding Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance. This erosion would occur as corporate profits swell and reliance on labor income diminishes. “As AI reshapes work and production, the composition of economic activity may shift—expanding corporate profits and capital gains while potentially reducing reliance on labor income and payroll taxes,” OpenAI stated.
To address this, OpenAI suggests higher taxes on corporate income, AI-driven returns, or capital gains at the top. This category of policy previously influenced Marc Andreessen to support Trump after Biden proposed taxing unrealized capital gains in 2024. Additionally, the company floats the idea of a robot tax, echoing a concept Microsoft founder Bill Gates proposed in 2017, which would require robots to pay taxes equivalent to the human workers they replace.
Another key recommendation is the creation of a Public Wealth Fund. This fund would automatically grant Americans a public stake in AI companies and infrastructure, regardless of their personal market investments. Returns generated would be distributed directly to citizens, potentially appealing to those who have watched AI inflate markets without sharing in the gains.
OpenAI also advances several labor-focused proposals. One notable suggestion is subsidizing a four-day workweek without loss of pay, aligning with the tech industry’s promise that AI will enhance work-life balance. The company further recommends that businesses increase retirement matches or contributions, cover a larger share of healthcare costs, and subsidize child or eldercare. However, OpenAI frames these as corporate responsibilities rather than government mandates, leaving out individuals most vulnerable to job displacement by automation. If automation eliminates a position, employer-subsidized healthcare and retirement benefits could vanish with it.
To partially address this gap, OpenAI separately proposes portable benefit accounts that follow workers across jobs. Yet, these likely depend on employer or platform contributions and fall short of government-backed universal coverage that would fully protect those displaced by AI.
Beyond economic concerns, OpenAI acknowledges broader risks, including misuse by governments or malicious actors and the potential for AI systems to operate beyond human control. To mitigate these threats, the company proposes containment plans for dangerous AI, new oversight bodies, and targeted safeguards against high-risk applications like cyberattacks and biological threats.
Alongside safety measures, OpenAI includes growth-oriented proposals. These involve expanding electricity infrastructure to meet AI’s power demands and accelerating AI infrastructure buildouts through subsidies, tax credits, or equity stakes. The company argues that AI should be treated as a utility, with industry and government collaborating to ensure it remains affordable and widely accessible, rather than controlled by a few firms.
This framework emerges six months after rival Anthropic released its own policy blueprint, which outlined various 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. The company asserts that this transition necessitates a “new industrial policy agenda that ensures superintelligence benefits everyone.”
Founded as a nonprofit with a mission to benefit all of humanity through AI, OpenAI transitioned to a for-profit company last year. This shift has prompted critics to question whether its stated mission aligns with its fiduciary duties to shareholders and growth imperatives. In its document, OpenAI draws parallels to past economic upheavals like the Industrial Age, highlighting how initiatives such as the New Deal ensured “growth 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, at scale, to shape their economic future so that superintelligence benefits everyone,” OpenAI concluded.
