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The Trump administration\u2019s former AI czar sounded the alarm on giving the federal government equity stakes in top AI companies, while his former boss hinted favorably at the idea.<\/p>\n
In an X post on Friday, David Sacks said he\u2019s not a fan of Sen. Bernie Sanders\u2019 bill that would establish 50% government ownership in AI companies.<\/p>\n
But he acknowledged that the proposal resonates with people, even conservatives, and blamed AI CEOs who have hyped up the technology\u2019s enormous risks without explaining its potential benefits.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have both withdrawn their earlier AI jobs apocalypse prophecies as they eye blockbuster IPOs later this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cDario and Sam have begun to walk back their claims of massive job loss, but the damage to public trust is done, and now the chickens are coming home to roost,\u201d Sacks wrote. \u201cI could almost support the Sanders proposal as a stupidity tax.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he stopped short of backing it and warned that nationalization of AI will accelerate the \u201ccorporate-government fusion\u201d that\u2019s already in progress. <\/p>\n
Sacks added that conservatives are right to fear a central bank digital currency but should be even more concerned about a central government AI, calling it \u201ca system with even more totalistic power over information, decision-making, and human behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n
He predicted AI could be weaponized against conservatives, saying the consequences would be \u201cOrwellian\u201d and much worse than limits placed on social media during COVID.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI won\u2019t just moderate posts; it will curate reality \u2014 with the ability to rewrite history, enforce ideological conformity, influence policy at scale, mass surveil Americans, and condition the benefits of the many systems it controls on approved behavior,\u201d Sacks said. \u201cAmerica won\u2019t win the AI race if we beat China but end up with a CCP-style social credit system in the U.S. \u2014 and that is the danger as the government becomes more deeply involved in AI development and assumes direct ownership and control.\u201d<\/p>\n
But later on Friday, President Donald Trump said he expects to meet with AI companies in the coming week to discuss a federal \u201cpartnership\u201d that would benefit the American people.<\/p>\n
Such a partnership could entail distributing company dividends to Americans\u2014similar to the way stockholders receive payouts\u2014to help overcome public fears about AI-related economic disruption.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a concept out there, there\u2019s so much money and it\u2019s so big that there are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public, where the American public essentially becomes a partner with the companies,\u201d Trump told reporters. \u201cI have spoken to all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cWe\u2019re talking about it where the American people can benefit from the success of AI. And by doing that, they\u2019re going to like it better.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, senior U.S. officials have already had preliminary discussions with AI executives, including Altman, about the federal government potentially acquiring some shares, sources told NOTUS<\/em> on Thursday.<\/p>\n Altman first pitched the idea to Trump in early 2025 and discussed it with senior administration officials in recent weeks, the report said.<\/p>\n Discussions have centered on AI firms voluntarily handing over shares to the government, with returns funneled to public purposes, such as dividends to all American households, according to NOTUS<\/em>.<\/p>\n For his part, Sanders wrote in a New York Times<\/em> op-ed on Monday that his bill would not only share financial gains with the public, it would allow the federal government to block decisions that could harm Americans and empower it to push for policies that help them.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the big AI companies continue to grow as rapidly as many analysts expect, then the value of the sovereign wealth fund will grow as well \u2014 and the benefits to the American people will grow along with it,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n #czar #calls #billl #government #equity #stupidity #tax #warns #nationalization<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Trump administration\u2019s former AI czar sounded the alarm on giving the federal government equity stakes in top AI companies, while his former boss hinted favorably at the idea. In… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[536,8504,1015,8503,2818,665,359,1329,8506,735,1797,8505,227,583],"class_list":["post-6047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-anthropic","tag-billl","tag-calls","tag-czar","tag-david-sacks","tag-donald-trump","tag-equity","tag-government","tag-nationalization","tag-openai","tag-regulation","tag-stupidity","tag-tax","tag-warns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}