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Andriy Onufriyenko Time | Getty Images
The majority of US workers now want to make organizations more accountable for the AI economy fund, amid dissatisfaction with the growing number of technology layoffs despite high business profits, according to a recent survey.
A national survey of 1,690 adults by research firm Verasight, conducted in June and republished earlier this month, suggests that 69% of Americans now support “forcing” AI firms to transfer 50% of their stock to public funds.
“In the eyes of the public, AI Sovereign funds are seen as a tool to distribute benefits from the AI industry back to the wider community,” said Benjamin Leff, CEO of Verasight.
In June, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which if passed, would give the public a 50% stake in the largest AI companies in the US.
“It will ensure that the economic benefits generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us — not just to make the world’s richest people even richer,” Sanders said in a statement last month.
“The future of AI and the fate of humanity should not be decided behind closed doors in Silicon Valley by billionaires looking to maximize their power and profits,” Sanders said.
A surge in tech layoffs in the US has left many workers frustrated and worried about job security, as companies continue to pile on the cash to expand AI.
Goldman Sachs Global Economist Joseph Briggs estimates that more than 9% of the workforce, or about 15 million workers, could lose their jobs during the decade-long AI revolution, the bank said in a report published last month.
This “could be the kind of automatic and redistributive shock that we saw in the late 1990s and early 2000s and other periods of significant technological change,” Briggs said.
“But [Briggs] he believes that this loss will be temporary due to his expectation that AI will create as many new jobs in the long term as it destroys existing ones,” said a Goldman Sachs report.
Private equity funds can serve many roles when it comes to AI. They can lead the development of AI at the national level by financing capital-intensive AI infrastructure, taking equity stakes in AI companies and capturing a portion of AI-driven economic benefits from the public treasury, according to research firm Windfall Trust.
However, private equity funds may also face challenges in public good governance and the global race to build AI capabilities.
“There is also a tension between the financial mandate (to increase the return of citizens) and the strategic mission (to build national AI capabilities, maintain influence over border systems), as these goals can conflict when the best investment is a foreign AI company rather than a domestic company,” added the Windfall Trust.
