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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

#151

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

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…

The linked post explains in detail why. Sanders thinks that AI will be "the most transformational technology in the history of the world", radically changing everything about our lives, and thus control of AI will shape the future of humanity in a way that control of Walmart or Exxon or Apple does not.

Perhaps you don't agree with him, although I would note that it's pretty rare for Bernie Sanders to agree with billionaires about how important something they've invented is! But if you don't take people seriously when they say they think AI is the most important thing that's happened in our lifetime, you're going to be endlessly confused when they act according to that belief.

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

#152

Post by pesus »

nradov wrote: post #142
pesus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Construction is never "done". New stuff is always being built. And eventually the old data centers will be demolished or remodeled, which also takes a huge amount of labor. I think a lot of HN users still somehow don't understand the "lump of labor" fallacy. https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/page-one-economics/2...

Construction is in fact done at some point. You cannot build an unlimited amount of anything, let alone data centers.

Do you honestly believe there will be enough constant construction on data centers to replace millions of jobs lost to AI? Even if that was somehow true, there are tons of people that are not capable for one reason or another (age, physical fitness, etc) of doing construction work. Construction work also pays significantly less than many of the jobs being lost as is, so it's not a good replacement in that regard. And what happens when construction gets further streamlined and/or automated and requires fewer people? Or none at all, in the future?

Even your most optimistic hypothetical scenario results in millions of people doing hard manual labor for poverty wages. If anything, this just strengthens the case against AI and AI companies.

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

#153

Post by metalspot »

pesus wrote: post #72
nradov wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor displacement is always coming. Every new technology eliminates some old occupations and creates new ones. LLMs aren't unique in that regard. We should have a safety net to support and retrain displaced workers regardless of the technology. And let's please not have any lazy, low-effort replies claiming that AI will somehow magically eliminate all jobs for humans.

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.

AI accelerates the entire white collar economy and makes it more efficient. It has and will continue to result in large job gains for blue collar and service workers. The people getting rich off AI have to spend their money somewhere.

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

#154

Post by jst1fthsdys »

csallen wrote: post #113
bitwize wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that AI companies expropriated our labor to train their sloppotrons first. But given that this is Bernie, it's probably a stalking horse for future expropriations from other industries later.

What labor did any of us have to get up and go do for the AI companies?

Produced the corpus of knowledge they trained on.

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

#155

Post by BrenBarn »

triceratops wrote: post #137
solatic wrote: post #115

The public should own more than half. Via the stock market. Where public shareholders can vote in elections to control the Board of Directors, and elect Directors that act in the fiduciary interests of shareholders, and return excess capital to shareholders by issuing dividends. Where any member of the public can decide to buy or sell shares, being the most important development in the democratization of wealth devel…

The public doesn't have that much money.

The government could distribute its ownership stake to individuals.

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

#156

Post by csallen »

jst1fthsdys wrote: post #154
csallen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What labor did any of us have to get up and go do for the AI companies?

Produced the corpus of knowledge they trained on.

The fact that somebody benefited from the output of your work is not the same thing as extracting your labor. Extracting your labor means that before you even create the work, they're conscripting you to do it.

For example, I created a useful organization at my school before I graduated. That was twenty years ago. It still exists, and people are still benefiting from it. But they don't somehow owe me compensation, nor would I go around saying that they're somehow exploiting me or expropriating my labor just because they're benefiting from what I've done in the past.

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

#157

Post by pesus »

metalspot wrote: post #153
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.

AI accelerates the entire white collar economy and makes it more efficient. It has and will continue to result in large job gains for blue collar and service workers. The people getting rich off AI have to spend their money somewhere.

> It has and will continue to result in large job gains for blue collar and service workers.

Source? Specifics? This doesn't even sound plausible at face value. Even if it is somehow true, higher paying white collar jobs being replaced with service jobs that pay far less and have way worse conditions is not a positive or even a neutral outcome.

> The people getting rich off AI have to spend their money somewhere.

The amount of wealth hoarding already going on says otherwise. Buying yachts and islands does not magically offset millions of jobs being lost.

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

#158

Post by jcranmer »

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.

Strictly speaking, that's not accurate.

Article 1, Section 8 has the general taxation clause:

> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

but Section 9 has the apportionment clause:

> No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

The term "direct tax" isn't fully explained, but it's generally been held that taxes on property (including wealth) would classify as a direct tax. Congress imposed an income tax, but SCOTUS said in Pollock v Farmer's Loan & Trust Co that a tax on rental income is effectively a property tax, and so must be apportioned.

The 16th Amendment was enacted specifically to overrule the Pollock decision, and allowed for income taxes to not have to be apportioned. In many respects, it's probably unnecessary because even without it, it's probably fairly likely that Pollock would have been overruled as just being bonkers reasoning anyways.

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

#159

Post by LetsGetTechnicl »

pokstad wrote: post #149

If the public wants to own half of the AI company, then they should invest enough to buy half of it. Taking private property away without compensation is stealing. What the government did with Intel where they got 10% in stock was a bit better because Intel got money.

I mean gen AI is based on theft, I don't really see that as a deterrent. I don't want the companies to exist, and having government ownership sounds like a convenient way to get bailed out when the bubble pops

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

#160

Post by unethical_ban »

nradov wrote: post #49
fny wrote: post #22

> A.I. is built on our collective intelligence: our books, songs, artwork, journalism, computer code, scientific research, videos, conversations, images and ideas spanning generations I know many here would scoff at nationalizing a private company, but AI is a usurpation of human knowledge and quite literally at times. (Every AI company was embroiled in copyright lawsuits and lord knows what Qwen et al are up to.) In…

Labor displacement is always coming. Every new technology eliminates some old occupations and creates new ones. LLMs aren't unique in that regard. We should have a safety net to support and retrain displaced workers regardless of the technology. And let's please not have any lazy, low-effort replies claiming that AI will somehow magically eliminate all jobs for humans.

It seems obvious to me that AI will drastically reshape creative industries, and greatly lower the headcount required for analytical and programming industries, in the long term. The scope of its impact on the economy is likely greater than the Internet, social media, and the telephone.

Furthermore, AI companies and consulting companies themselves are selling this idea that it will completely reshape employment.

I find it more hand-wavey to say "it's just another technology change" than it is to say "this time it's different".

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