Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced legislation to create a $7 trillion AI sovereign wealth fund, to be managed by a seven-member commission that would have sweeping influence over the emerging sector and the broader U.S. economy.
The Sanders proposal is an enormously ambitious one, particularly as artificial intelligence has been the fastest-growing technology in recent years, with some arguing it has the potential to completely reshape the economic landscape. Sanders argues the AI boom will lead to further wealth inequality, and his legislation would help even the playing field.
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The bill, if signed into law, would impose a one-time 50% tax on the stock of the biggest AI companies. That stock would then be put into a sovereign wealth fund that would pay direct dividends to the public.
Overseeing the fund would be a bipartisan seven-member group that Sanders dubs the Independent Commission for Democratic AI. That group would also use voting shares in companies to block decisions they deemed bad for the public.
In other words, the commission would have sway over critical decisions made by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, whose AI products are used across industries, including in finance, medicine, and defense.
Sanders framed the commission as a way of taking back control of the AI giants from “Big Tech oligarchs.”
While proponents of the Sanders plan see it as a way to democratize AI, some experts warned against putting so much power in the hands of a small group of people.
Taylor Barkley is the director of public policy for the Abundance Institute. He told the Washington Examiner that no matter how well-intentioned plans for a commission might be, whoever ends up on the board will “be people with connections in industry, in government, with their own self-interests.”
“Kind of just applying public choice economics, they’re going to act out of their self-interests,” Barkley said. “And if history is any indicator, something like this with people with this kind of power — especially on a huge driver of U.S. economic growth — it just seems like a kind of danger, flashing red light.”
The Sanders bill is structured in a way meant to mitigate conflicts of interest.
The commission would consist of seven individuals appointed by the sitting president with the advice and consent of the Senate.
One of the seven would be designated as the chair of the committee, chosen from a list submitted by the Senate majority leader. A second would be vice chair, selected from a list submitted by the speaker of the House.
Additionally, one member would be appointed as a representative of labor issues, selected from a list submitted by the Senate majority leader in consultation with the chair and the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
In addition, one member of the committee would be chosen from those who have management experience of a public pension fund, endowment, sovereign wealth fund, or similar. One member would have to have experience in the development, deployment, or governance of AI systems. Another would be required to have privacy and data protection experience. Lastly, one member would be appointed as a representative of public safety or national security interests.
No more than four of the commission members would be allowed to be affiliated with the same political party.
In order to prevent self-dealing, the commissioners and close family would be banned from holding equity or financial interests in any applicable AI companies. Also, the commissioners can’t have been employed by an AI company two years prior to joining the panel.
The commissioners would serve five-year terms, and they may be removed by the president “only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” according to the bill text.
Sanders argued that AI models were trained on the work products of people in all sectors, so it should be required to serve workers.
“AI was not created out of thin air,” Sanders said. “It was not a brilliant idea that just popped into Mark Zuckerberg’s head or Elon Musk’s imagination. The foundation of AI is based on the collective knowledge of humanity and the creative work of tens of millions of people.”
Still, others point out that such a commission would be handing the government even more power over the private sector. Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, also emphasized the sheer scale of what is being proposed.
“None of us on the libertarian, small-L libertarian, or conservative side think that any commission is capable of managing an entire sector of the economy,” Crews told the Washington Examiner.
“To have a business-government coalition or commission get together that’s actually going to exercise force over potentially the most critical emergent sector of the economy, I think on its face is outrageous,” he added.
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Will Rinehart, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he doesn’t think an AI commission would be too different in design from existing commissions like the Federal Communications Commission or the Federal Trade Commission.
Still, he was skeptical of the idea.
“When you just think about this in a practical sense, you know, this idea is that you need to implement this commission in order to then allow the companies to be more connected to the public interest. … I don’t think there’s any really good evidence that … a public interest can be served by these sorts of commissions,” he told the Washington Examiner.