As governments grapple with how to manage the economic impact of super-intelligent machines, OpenAI has published a set of policy proposals outlining how to reshape wealth and work in the “age of intelligence.” This idea combines traditional left-wing mechanisms such as public wealth funds and expanded social safety nets with a fundamentally capitalist, market-driven economic framework.
OpenAI’s proposal is essentially a wish list, a public declaration to help elected officials, investors, and the public understand how the $852 billion company sees the world changing in an era when artificial intelligence is transforming work and the economy.
The proposal comes amid growing anxiety around AI, colored by concerns about job losses, concentration of wealth, and the construction of data centers across the country. They also appear as the Trump administration moves toward a national AI framework and moves toward midterm elections, marking an attempt to establish a bipartisan position. This effort is taking place alongside a more direct political push. OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who has donated millions to President Donald Trump, and other tech billionaires are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs supporting light-touch AI policies.
OpenAI’s proposed framework is centered around three stated goals: distributing AI prosperity more broadly, building safeguards to reduce systemic risk, and ensuring broad access to AI capabilities to avoid undue concentration of economic power and opportunity.
OpenAI proposes shifting the tax burden from labor to capital. The company has not yet specified its corporate tax rate, but President Trump lowered it from 35% to 21% during his first term. But OpenAI warns that AI-driven growth could hollow out the tax base that funds Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, and housing subsidies as corporate profits expand and dependence on labor income decreases.
“As AI reshapes jobs and production, the composition of economic activity could change, potentially increasing corporate profits and capital gains while potentially reducing reliance on labor income and payroll taxes,” OpenAI writes.
The company proposes increasing taxes on corporate income, AI profits, or capital gains, a policy category that Marc Andreessen pushed to support President Trump after Biden proposed taxing unrealized capital gains in 2024. OpenAI also raises the possibility of a robot tax, proposed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates in 2017, which would involve robots paying the same amount in taxes as if they replaced humans.
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The document also includes a proposal to create a public wealth fund that would give Americans automatic public equity in AI companies and infrastructure, even if they do not invest in the market. All profits are distributed directly to the people. This prospect may appeal to Americans who have seen AI inflate the market but see no such benefits for themselves.
Some of OpenAI’s proposals were also more labor-focused, such as subsidizing a four-day work week without reducing pay. The proposal is in line with the tech industry’s promise that AI will bring humans a better work-life balance. OpenAI also proposes that companies increase retirement and retirement benefits, cover a larger portion of health care costs, and provide subsidies for child and elderly care. Notably, OpenAI positions these as corporate rather than government responsibilities, excluding the people AI is most likely to replace. If automation eliminates jobs, employer-subsidized medical and retirement benefits may also disappear.
That said, OpenAI has separately proposed portable benefits accounts that follow workers across occupations, but these are likely to still rely on employer or platform contributions and fall short of government-backed universal health coverage that would fully protect those actually replaced by AI.
OpenAI acknowledges that the risks of AI extend beyond job losses, including the potential for misuse by governments and bad actors, and for systems to operate beyond human control. To mitigate these threats, we propose containment plans for dangerous AI, new oversight bodies, and targeted safeguards against high-risk uses such as cyber-attacks and biological threats.
But along with safety nets and guardrails, there are also proposals for growth, including expanding power infrastructure to support AI’s power needs and accelerating the buildout of AI infrastructure through subsidies, tax credits, and equity offerings. OpenAI suggests that AI should be treated like a public utility, so industry and governments work together to make it affordable and widely available, rather than being controlled by a few companies.
OpenAI’s framework comes six months after rival Anthropic released a policy blueprint laying out various possible responses to AI disruption.
“We are entering a new phase of economic and social organization that fundamentally restructures work, knowledge, and production,” OpenAI writes. According to the company, this requires “a new industrial policy agenda that ensures superintelligence benefits everyone.”
OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit organization on the premise that AI will benefit all humanity. The company became a for-profit company last year, a change that has led critics to question whether the company’s stated mission is compatible with its need to grow and fulfill its fiduciary duties to shareholders.
Citing past economic upheavals like the Industrial Era, the firm pointed out how new economic and financial movements like the New Deal ensured “growth that leads to broader opportunity and greater security” by “building new public institutions, protections, and expectations about what a just economy should offer, including labor protections, safety standards, social safety nets, and expanded access to education.”
“The transition to superintelligence will require even more ambitious forms of industrial policy that reflect the ability of democratic societies to act collectively and at scale to shape the future of their economies so that superintelligence benefits everyone,” OpenAI writes.
