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The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

sanders.senate.gov

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Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#121

Post by p2detar »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #5

Why half of AI and not half of Walmart & Exxon & Apple? Government spending is already ~40% of GDP. And what do we get with this half? A sovereign wealth fund? That seems like a great tool for a certain corrupt politician to use as a carrot to make CEO's bend to his/her whims. What benefit does that have for anyone else? You can't build a sovereign wealth fund if you're transferring all the money out. That's just mor…

And given that the training data is very much international, why would this be just a USA-sovereign fund and not a world-fund?

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#122

Post by AnthonyMouse »

triceratops wrote: post #105
fhdkweig wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can tax something without owning it. It is the owning part that bothers me. It implies that the government is going to shovel ridiculous amounts of money into these things and when the bubble finally pops We The People get nothing out of it.

I think you've misunderstood the proposal. The government levies a tax in the form of shares, not cash. It doesn't pay for the shares. FTA: "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."

That seems like it would be pushing pretty hard against the Takings clause. Federal wealth taxes in general are rather precarious in the US because the 16th amendment allows taxing income, not assets.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#123

Post by triceratops »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #122
triceratops wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've misunderstood the proposal. The government levies a tax in the form of shares, not cash. It doesn't pay for the shares. FTA: "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."

That seems like it would be pushing pretty hard against the Takings clause. Federal wealth taxes in general are rather precarious in the US because the 16th amendment allows taxing income, not assets.

How are property taxes legal?

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#124

Post by pesus »

nradov wrote: post #109
pesus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the jobs AI is creating, specifically? > And let's please not have any lazy, low-effort replies claiming that AI will somehow magically eliminate all jobs for humans. I don't think AI actually capable of doing so, but AI companies need to stop bragging about wanting to do this and making it their goal if you don't want people to keep bringing it up.

There are lots of new jobs in building data centers, plus all the components that go into those. For example, worldwide employee count at Amphenol is way up over the past couple years. They make a lot of electrical connectors and similar items.

Temporary construction and manufacturing jobs are not actual replacements for the jobs lost. They'll be done after the data centers are built, and then we're just back to AI having destroyed tons of jobs with no replacements.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#125

Post by AnthonyMouse »

triceratops wrote: post #123
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it would be pushing pretty hard against the Takings clause. Federal wealth taxes in general are rather precarious in the US because the 16th amendment allows taxing income, not assets.

How are property taxes legal?

There is no federal property tax, and even state property taxes are collected in dollars rather than shares of ownership and as a small recurring percentage rather than a one-time taking of what amounts to a controlling interest.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#126

Post by scottyah »

thewebguyd wrote: post #29
scottyah wrote: post #8

As long as they're non-voting shares, I don't see the harm. I assume not enough politicians in this senator's camp were given their early cut so this is retribution/a lesson to the abstract "Big Tech" to show that DC is still the city that rules the world.

Why non-voting shares? That kind of defeats the point of partial ownership. If the models were built using the output of all of human effort over time, then society at large should absolutely have a voice in the direction of the companies. This tech should be made for public benefit, not for purely profit and private interests. Quite frankly, most companies should be worker co-ops instead, and its long passed time we…

Anyone can start a worker co-op, and anyone can decide to shop at them. We're well past the point where anyone can argue what should be the right way to manage a company because you can just do it. I think even the franchise model is like a large scale co-op.

The models just take the same information available to anyone and make it more useful, it's not like oil or mining where it's a consumable that people share, nor is it taking from the youth- in fact it's one of the best ways of utilizing the knowledge of the past.

Honestly, the a lot of the people I hear complaining about having a "voice" about "output of all of human effort over time" are usually not the ones who put the information out on the web/books, as they are usually doing it for the benefit of future humans and not for profit. Seems to be the same as PMs or VCs trying to "capture the value" of other people.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#127

Post by mikewarot »

somenameforme wrote: post #110
brianwawok wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In turn, everyone knows labor displacement is coming What % of Americans would agree to that. 10%? I agree for those of us in the field, we are a lot more confident. But I dont think my retired parents have any idea what AI is or have ever touched anything more complicated than Alexia.

That's, in large part, because tech is the field most likely to face labor disruption. Most jobs in the US are service, labor, and other such fields where LLMs will have relatively little impact. Tech will also probably come under attack from two directions. It's not only from labor replacement, but also from a decrease in the value of tech. Right now competition in tech is limited by the relatively large barrier to…

If employment as a whole is impacted 10%, those people end up seeking work elsewhere, and driving down wages there. It's impossible for this not to effect everyone.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#128

Post by mrdependable »

csallen wrote: post #39

I strongly dislike the belief that people should be compensated when others find ingenious ways to profit off of publicly-available data. We live in a world where "creating value" (doing things that others find helpful) and "capturing value" (getting those people to pay you money) are two different things. If I give my mom a hug, I'm creating value, but that's not necessarily something I'm going to charge her for it.…

It's entitled for others to believe they have any say in what happens with the work of others. The world without these protections would be worse off by far. What I gather from what you are saying is that if I write a song, or a book, anyone else should be able to take what I've done and make their own money off it. By that logic, a publisher wouldn't need to compensate writers. Record executives wouldn't need to compensate musicians. Whoever holds the means for extracting value are at a huge permanent advantage.

We haven't gotten to where we are in the world today by giving the wealthy huge permanent advantages. Look at the explosion in innovation that has happened since public education has become widespread. It used to be only the wealthy that could afford to be educated. Part of what makes capitalism work at all is by not allowing the means to capture value to be monopolized.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#129

Post by triceratops »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #125
triceratops wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are property taxes legal?

There is no federal property tax, and even state property taxes are collected in dollars rather than shares of ownership and as a small recurring percentage rather than a one-time taking of what amounts to a controlling interest.

Thanks for the clarification.

Re: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

#130

Post by Arubis »

triceratops wrote: post #97
Arubis wrote: post #4

Strictly speaking, the big A.I. companies _want_ the public to own half of them. Passively. In index ETFs in their 401(k)s and other retirement portfolios. That way the get all the money without any of the actual influence.

Sure but they want the public to pay for the privilege of owning half.

Oh yes. Very much so. And ideally without thinking or actively having to choose—hence the get-on-the-index-funds angle.
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