OpenAI Calls For Robot Taxes, Public Wealth Fund, and 4-Day Workweek To Tackle AI Disruption
- Reference: 0181392052
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/04/06/2154206/openai-calls-for-robot-taxes-public-wealth-fund-and-4-day-workweek-to-tackle-ai-disruption
- Source link:
> Among the core policy suggestions is a public wealth fund, which would see lawmakers and AI companies work together to invest in long-term assets linked to the AI boom, with returns distributed directly to citizens. Another is that the government should encourage and incentivize employers to experiment with four-day workweeks with no loss in pay and offer "benefits bonuses" tied to productivity gains from new AI tools.
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> The policy document also suggests lawmakers modernize the tax system and shift the tax base to corporate income and capital gains, rather than relying on labor income and payroll taxes that could be hit by a wave of AI-powered job losses. It also recommends taxes related to automated labor. OpenAI also called for the accelerated expansion of the US's electricity grid, which is already feeling the strain from a wave of data center construction and energy demand for training ever more powerful AI models.
[1] https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/561e7512-253e-424b-9734-ef4098440601/Industrial%20Policy%20for%20the%20Intelligence%20Age.pdf
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-superintelligence-ai-upheaval-tax-shorter-workweek-public-wealth-fund-2026-4
High Regulations Favor Large Companies (Score:4, Insightful)
Small companies can't comply so large companies love it when there is more regulations. OpenAI explicitly calling for robot labor taxes would prevent a lot of competition.
Re: (Score:2)
That would depend on the regulation. Some are specifically designed only to apply to large or established companies. (Although you're not likely to find this type of regulation in the US, or anywhere else subject to regulatory capture.)
Rather than the typical industry regulations, what OpenAI is advocating for sounds more like a total rewrite of the social contract. They need to have something to point at and say "We're a responsible company." It's also more aggrandizement: "Our tech will single-handedly sa
Workweek History From 1860 to !940 (Score:3)
I've posted this several times before. The workweek can be modeled as two linear equations based on rate of production vs rate of consumption. But you can also see the equations empirically -
[1]https://www.scry.llc/2024/12/2... [scry.llc]
"During the first post-Civil war depression (1873-1878), jobs bifurcated into two categories - "new technology" skilled jobs and existing "unskilled" jobs. The new jobs were lucrative enough that employers tended towards a 48-hour workweek for about twenty years, then the 60-hour jobs fell to 48 hours during the 1890s.
During the Great Depression, 25% unemployment was eventually solved by government legislation - a mandatory 40 hour workweek and child labor laws."
Both depressions were the culmination of long-term technology booms. It's likely that we're near a third.
[2]https://www.scry.llc/2025/09/1... [scry.llc]
"Assume the declining cost of information (COI) has driven economic activity for fifty years. Then the stagnation or increase of COI could be disasterous for the economy. The preceding graph shows an inflection point in Internet user growth, implying that Internet growth is slowing and will soon stagnate."
[1] https://www.scry.llc/2024/12/27/work-week/
[2] https://www.scry.llc/2025/09/16/cost-of-information/
The work week has nothing to do with math (Score:2)
When the work week was established it was a compromise between workers and the ruling class. Even back then there was a push to work fewer hours.
In the old days you worked a farm and you would wake up early in the morning and do your farm work and when the work was done that was it. No more work.
Factories and modern Capital brought a system of endless work. Where you could just work and work and work and work. People who remember the time when you did your work and when you work was done that was it th
Re: (Score:2)
Whenever you see someone posting about novel theories about causes of depressions, alarm bells go off. Usually, they're selling something, maybe just clicks.
The consensus on causes of the Great Depression include: [1]https://www.history.com/articl... [history.com]
- Nations reluctance to trade with each other after WWI.
- Unrestrained speculation.
- Fed blunders
- The Gold Standard
- Tariffs (Smoot Hawley)
The author you cited, thinks he has found some new correlations that economists had missed. That's pretty bold. And as we hea
[1] https://www.history.com/articles/great-depression-causes
Alternative proposal (Score:2)
AI companies should start a public compensation fund to cover loses caused by AI tools gone wrong.
Re: (Score:1)
Bold of you to assume money will still have value after the apocalypse.
Wolf in sheep's clothing (Score:2)
"Hey, look, we're going to throw some spare change your way if you help us promote our tools, and while we make billions."
Weak PR (Score:5, Informative)
This is an attempt to [1]reduce fear [nih.gov], but it seems like a pretty sophomore effort.
They have enough money for really good PR, so I have to imagine there are... personalities interfering. Or maybe just one.
Going to be fun watching the hustling as they try to IPO with a CFO who says it won't work.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5076716/
Re: Weak PR (Score:2)
It's probably worse than that, because it's so populist and infeasible it has to be on purpose. I think it's bait to give politicians something unwinnable to squabble over instead of playing games with electricity prices, and obstructing datacenter construction, things that are bipartisan and more likely to actually happen.
It's like the trans panic (Score:2)
The message will get refined over time.
When the Republican party in the right wing first started trying to get us to have a freak out over a trans girls they focused on how icky they were and how they were going to rape your daughter in the bathroom.
That didn't really work. Voters demanded that the Republicans stopped going on and on about trans girls and do something about the collapsing economy and out of control inflation. A few of the Republicans that ran on trans panic lost their elections.
T
The king calls for cake crumbs to be distributed (Score:2)
For it will most definitely ameliorate all of the livelihood destruction being done to millions of people who spent a lot of time, money, and energy on building a life to just have it rug-pulled from under them with no assistance and no alternative employment.
Robot tax??? (Score:2)
You can have my sexbot when you pry it out of my cold, sticky hands!
It's easy to call for things (Score:2)
When you know damn well they're not going to happen. It makes it look like you are getting out ahead of all the problems you're causing even though if there was the slightest chance of us actually taxing them they would spin up dark money super packs so fast your head would whirl.
Throughout all of human history everything you have has been taken from the Epstein class with that best the underlining threat of violence.
Unfortunately violence doesn't really work anymore because you cannot beat a standi
No way pay stays the same (Score:2)
Companies will do all the can the claw back whatever money they can so hourly pay stays approximately the same. They might have to bite the bullet the 1st couple years, but then wages will just stagnate for several years to get hourly pay back in line.
Oh come on.... (Score:2)
Did the transistor companies get taxed to "compensate" the people/companies who made vacuum tubes that would be put out of work? No.
Did Henry Ford get taxed to compensate the people who made horse drawn carriages and saddles? No.
Did the people who made desktop publishing "a thing" get taxed to compensate Linotype manufacturers/operators? No.
etc....
Technology marches on. March with it or get left behind. Why should an entire industry of innovators be taxed to protect people who can't pivot and deal with
Re: (Score:2)
> Did the transistor companies get taxed to "compensate" the people/companies who made vacuum tubes that would be put out of work? No.
That would be the original trans panic .
Re: (Score:2)
The people that made vacuum tubes could just become people who made transistors.
Your argument only makes sense if the people who are being displaced by AI have the option to become AI (or at least something that will never be displaced by AI).
Re: (Score:2)
> Your argument only makes sense if the people who are being displaced by AI have the option to become AI
[1]South Park did it first. [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbl74ShiMvs
Re: (Score:1)
Its not even remotely the same. The manufacture of cars and transistors and desktop publishing required hiring millions to make those happen. There will be no hiring none.
How do we solve this first we make sure that off shore workers have to have the same work conditions as the US labor laws. This will solve the off shoreing problem. They already have to match pay but they work them 80hours + a week no vacation and not child leave. No taxes and no insurance make them match all that and have them get US Soci
Smoke up the worldâ(TM)s ass. (Score:1)
This sounds great. But I guarantee you that OpenAI is secretly running a network of sham PACs, funneling dark money to campaigns, and lobbying to make sure that this never actually happens.
Bread and Circuses Redux (Score:2)
Just so long as they can accumulate all the actual money and control for resources and dole them out to us as they see fit, because, governments, who needs that hassle, right.
There are great reasons for labor reform that have zero to with AI. Four day work week, mandatory overtime pay, the list is long. But, less billionaires, can't have that.
Re: (Score:2)
What money? They owe it all to NVIDIA.
Alaska & many oil-rich countries already have (Score:2)
Even Iran has it. Well had it. Pretty sure it's gotten zeroed as of the past few weeks. It was not a large amount (you'd have to look up the amount, I think it is about $10 a month). Anyway the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Ariabia, Kuwait etc. have it. It's just a matter of how much they provide. The UAE provides enough to live on without a job (about $2,900 a month for an individual citizen). I think Saudi Arabia does too.
Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age (Score:2)
Most of the document promotes the principle, Capitalism includes the poor people: An idea that is essentially correct, yet many Americans are sure to hate.
Of particular note is the "wealth fund": It seems to suggest a socialist co-operative, delivering profits to the people. How this co-operative refuses to compete against private vendors, is not discussed. It is suggested instead, that the co-operative would be fascist, or at least, out-sourcing its functions to private vendors: Like the US DoD and
Workers also a customers (Score:2)
Whilst a lot of economic activity is business to business, a lot is also business to customer, and all workers are customers. No workers, no customers. So if you layoff all your workers you are also getting rid of your customers. That has to be protected.
Wait, isn't that what problem is to start with? (Score:2)
shift the tax base to corporate income and capital gains
Yeah, we've suggested that a few times already. The billionaires don't seem into it.
4 day workweek (Score:2)
Aren't some countries already moving to a 4 day workweek because the gas and petrol shortage?
OpenAI's Paper Gets the Problem Right and the Solu (Score:2)
The problem is that the serious thinkers who have modelled this trajectory arrive at numbers that make OpenAI's proposals look like gestures. When you work through what happens to employment when machines become better, faster, cheaper, and safer than humans at all tasks, the central estimate is not a marginal contraction. Labour force participation collapsing from 62% today to somewhere between 10 and 20% is where the modelling consistently lands. Not as a worst case. As the most likely outcome. A 75% redu
I think it would be a good idea.. (Score:3)
to keep the masses happy, while a few get filthy rich. Lest, they lose their heads.
Re:I think it would be a good idea.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Loss of heads is part of. Economic collapse is another part of it.
You can't get rich anymore if there's no one with any money to spend.
Ultimately, way down there in the dredges, someone with not a lot of money needs to buy something that leads to money getting to you.
You can only hollow out the bottom so much.
Re: I think it would be a good idea.. (Score:2)
Why ignore finance? Why not borrow money and have the Fed print to cover bad loans if there's a panic?
Re: (Score:2)
> to keep the masses happy ...
A few stories back we had several folks argue that $133k/yr really isn't that good of a living. If they think that's bad, wait until they see what the stipend from a "robot tax" would be when AI takes yer jerb .
I also really doubt the government would just hand you money simply for existing. It's more likely we'd end up with some sort of government jobs program where you pick up trash/dig ditches/etc. - things AI can't do (yet).
Re: (Score:2)
> I also really doubt the government would just hand you money simply for existing.
But the government will! It's already documented in the US television series
[1]Universal Basic Guys [wikipedia.org].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Basic_Guys