OpenAI co-founder and President Sam Altman expects artificial intelligence to generate so much wealth to pay each American adult $13,500 a year. Altman expects the development to occur as soon as 10 years from now.
- Altman compares the “AI revolution” to the agricultural, industrial, and computational technological revolutions.
- Altman has called the government to respond, claiming that “If public policy doesn’t adapt accordingly, most people will end up worse off than they are today.”
- Altman proposes an American Equity Fund that taxes sufficiently large companies at 2.5% of their market value in the form of company shares and 2.5% of the value of all land in the form of dollars.
- To get to $13,500 pay per year, Altman estimates that the $50 trillion worth of value in U.S companies and the $30 trillion worth of privately held land in the U.S would “roughly double” over the coming decade.
- Altman expects AI to drag the price of labor towards zero.
- It remains uncertain whether lawmakers will adopt such a plan as envisioned by Altman.
Tesla’s Elon Musk has, in the past, hinted at a similar future of a universal basic income due to automation.
