OpenAI’s vision for the AI ​​economy: public wealth funds, robot taxes, and a four-day workweek

As governments grapple with how to manage the economic fallout from super-intelligent machines, OpenAI has released a set of policy proposals outlining the ways in which wealth and work can be reshaped in the “Age of Intelligence.” The ideas combine traditional left-leaning mechanisms such as public wealth funds and expanded social safety nets with a market-driven, capitalist economic framework.

OpenAI’s proposals are essentially a wish list, a public declaration that helps elected officials, investors and the public understand how the $852 billion company sees the world transforming in an era where artificial intelligence is transforming employment and the economy.

The proposals were released amid growing concern about artificial intelligence, which has been influenced by concerns about job displacement, the concentration of wealth, and the construction of data centers across the country. They also arrive as the Trump administration moves toward a national framework for artificial intelligence and in the lead-up to the midterm elections, suggesting an attempt to define a bipartisan position. The effort comes alongside a more direct political push: OpenAI chief Greg Brockman — who has donated millions to President Donald Trump — and other tech billionaires have funneled hundreds of millions into super PACs that support AI-lite policies.

OpenAI’s proposed framework focuses on three stated goals: distributing AI-based prosperity more broadly, building safeguards to reduce systemic risks, and ensuring widespread access to AI capabilities so that economic power and opportunity do not become overly concentrated.

OpenAI proposed shifting the tax burden from labor to capital. The company stopped short of setting the corporate tax rate, which Trump reduced to 21% from 35% during his first term. But OpenAI warns that AI-driven growth could hollow out the tax base that funds Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance as corporate profits expand and reliance on labor income shrinks.

“As AI reshapes work and production, the composition of economic activity may change, expanding corporate profits and capital gains while potentially reducing reliance on labor income and payroll taxes,” OpenAI wrote.

The company is proposing higher taxes on corporate income, AI-driven royalties, or capital gains at the top — a class of policies that prompted Marc Andreessen to back Trump after Biden proposed taxing unrealized capital gains in 2024. OpenAI is also floating a potential tax on robots, something Microsoft founder Bill Gates proposed in 2017, which would involve a robot paying the same amount of taxes into the system as the human it replaced.

The document also includes a proposal to create a Public Wealth Fund to give Americans an automatic public stake in AI companies and AI infrastructure, even if they do not invest in the market. Any revenues will be distributed directly to citizens. This prospect may appeal to Americans who have watched artificial intelligence inflate the market without seeing any of these gains themselves.

Many of OpenAI’s proposals were also more labor-focused, including a proposal to support a four-day workweek without loss of pay — a proposal in line with tech industry promises that AI will give humans a better work-life balance. OpenAI also suggests that companies boost retirement matches or contributions, cover a greater share of health care costs, and subsidize child or elderly care. It is worth noting that OpenAI positions these responsibilities as corporate rather than government, which leaves out the people that AI is likely to replace. If automation eliminates your job, employer-subsidized health care and retirement may come with it.

However, OpenAI separately proposes portable benefits accounts that track workers across jobs, but those accounts would likely rely on employer or platform contributions and fall short of universal government-backed coverage that would fully protect people displaced by AI.

OpenAI acknowledges that the risks of AI go beyond job loss, including misuse by governments or bad actors and the potential for systems to operate outside of human control. To mitigate these threats, he proposes plans to contain dangerous AI, new oversight bodies, and targeted safeguards against high-risk uses such as cyberattacks and biological threats.

But with safety nets and guardrails come growth proposals, including expanding electricity infrastructure to support AI energy demands and accelerating the build-out of AI infrastructure by offering subsidies, tax breaks, or equity stakes. OpenAI says AI should be treated as a utility, and to that end, it suggests that industry and government work together to ensure AI remains affordable and widely available, rather than controlled by a few companies.

The OpenAI framework comes six months after rival Anthropic released its policy blueprint, which laid out a range of potential responses to AI-driven disruption.

“We are entering a new phase of economic and social organization that will fundamentally reshape work, knowledge, and production,” OpenAI wrote. The company says this requires “a new industrial policy agenda that ensures everyone benefits from superintelligence.”

OpenAI was founded as a non-profit organization based on artificial intelligence that benefits all of humanity. It became a for-profit company last year, a shift that has led critics to question whether its stated mission is consistent with its need to grow and fulfill its fiduciary duty to shareholders.

The company cited earlier eras of economic turmoil such as the Industrial Age, noting how new economic and financial movements such as the New Deal ensured “growth translated into broader opportunity and greater security” by “building new public institutions, protections, and expectations about what a fair economy should provide, including worker protections, safety standards, social safety nets, and expanded access to education.”

“The transition to superintelligence will require a more ambitious form of industrial policy, one that reflects the ability of democratic societies to act collectively, at scale, to shape their economic futures so that superintelligence benefits everyone,” OpenAI wrote.