U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders announced a plan for the public to take a 50% ownership stake in AI companies, [remembers the Associated Press](https://apnews.com/article/sam-altman-ai-bernie-sanders-trump-public-ownership-772224f9cd138eb79d3ef3336858a5d5). And then OpenAI's Sam Altman "told Sanders that he, too, wants the public to have equity in AI companies." _Though the CEO said he couldn't support Sanders' threshold of 50%, he nonetheless wanted to work with him to advocate for the general idea, according to people with knowledge of the conversation. The nearly hourlong meeting in Sanders' Senate office this week, held at Altman's request, highlighted the inherent tension between AI powerhouses and policymakers as Americans are increasingly asked to accept the costs of the AI boom even as they remain unconvinced of its direct benefits._ _Yet it's also creating odd political bedfellows fueled by populism as politicians from Sanders to President Donald Trump embrace giving the public a stake in AI's growth. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Trump described a potential partnership "where the American people can benefit from the success of AI" and said executives from leading AI companies will visit the White House, "probably next week," to discuss the idea._ The article points out that Altman also met with congressional leaders from both of America's political parties.

183967974 story [](//yro.slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=government)[ ](//yro.slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=ai)[](//yro.slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=usa) Posted by [BeauHD](https://www.linkedin.com/in/beauhd/) on Thursday June 18, 2026 @04:00PM from the power-to-the-people dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: _As artificial intelligence companies reshape the economy and race toward trillion-dollar valuations, Sen. Bernie Sanders is [proposing](https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-introduces-legislation-to-create-7-trillion-ai-sovereign-wealth-fund/) a sweeping transfer of wealth and power from the industry to the American public. The legislation, shown first to The Associated Press, would create a sovereign wealth fund overseen by an independent commission and financed through a one-time 50% tax on the stock of the largest AI companies. Sanders estimates that the tax would create a nearly $7 trillion fund that [would generate hundreds of billions of dollars annually in direct payments to Americans](https://apnews.com/article/bernie-sanders-ai-public-ownership-57b9f20d96490083e2749adba0f13977) and programs such as health care, education and housing. \[...\] The 50% tax would apply to AI companies that reach $200 million in annual AI sales. Any new AI company that reaches that benchmark would also be subject to the tax. It would create a sovereign wealth fund -- similar to those used by countries around the world and some U.S. states -- that Sanders estimates would be worth around $7 trillion. Unlike a traditional tax, the proposal would require companies to transfer stock rather than cash, effectively making the American public a major shareholder in the country's largest AI firms. A seven-person independent commission -- nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate -- would manage the fund and use its voting shares "to block decisions that hurt the American people and to push for policies that help them," the bill summary says. Sanders proposes that a 5% annual dividend from the fund would provide direct payments of more than $1,000 to every American. If companies grow, the gains would be used for public goods such as education, housing and health care. Sanders argues taxpayers would not bear the losses if AI company valuations decline. "We're not going to lose any money, even if there is a bust in the bubble," Sanders said. The commission would be directed to "to block decisions that hurt the American people and to push for policies that help them," according to the summary. _"The benefits cannot simply go to the handful of wealthy corporations. They will be shared by the American people," the independent Vermont senator said in an interview Wednesday. "The public has got to have a significant seat at the table to make sure that terrible things do not happen to ordinary people, and that in fact, AI benefits ordinary people, not hurts them," Sanders said.

Senator [Bernie Sanders](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/bernie-sanders) has called on Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic executives to halt their development of artificial intelligence, warning that the US Senate will implement regulation if the companies continue deploying AI at their current pace. In a new [letter](https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/AI-Pause-Letter-FINAL.pdf) addressed to the CEOs of three of the country’s leading AI companies, Sanders said the capabilities of these AI models have reached a critical risk threshold and that the companies are losing control over the technology. “Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei and Mr. Zuckerberg: In the interest of humanity, stand by your words. Pause AI development,” Sanders’s letter, first reported by [Axios](https://www.axios.com/2026/08/10/sanders-ai-development-pause), read. “It is not too late to avoid disaster. Stop building machines that humans cannot control.” The Vermont senator cited recent [reports that AI was used to develop new viruses](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3j3ngevmo), warning that if this technology fell into the “wrong hands” it might “lead to new bioweapons that result in the deaths of tens of millions of people”. All three companies have also disclosed their models hacked other companies’ servers, a sign that the firms have lost control over their models, Sanders wrote. “Yoshua Bengio, the most cited living scientist in the world, said these incidents ‘should serve as a wake-up call,’ I agree,” Sanders wrote in the letter. Experts, however, have [cautioned](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/24/openai-rogue-hacker) that OpenAI’s claims that its AI model went rogue may be overblown as part of a media campaign to make their technology seem highly dangerous, and thus extremely powerful. “And yet, at a moment when we have seen human loss of control and the creation of potentially dangerous viruses, your companies are still racing ahead – investing tens of billions of dollars into a technology that nobody can fully understand, predict or control,” he continued. Sanders’ letter comes after more than 1,300 scientists and developers from across the tech industry published another letter warning that AI development is moving at a pace that makes it difficult to address and identify the risks of the technology. Companies and countries are facing intense competitive pressure to move quickly. In the open letter, the engineers and other staffers called on the US government to help coordinate an international effort to slow down the development of frontier models so that regulators could create safety guardrails around the tech. The companies have previously committed to pausing their AI development if certain risk thresholds were met – but the companies did not detail exactly what those limits would entail. Anthropic said it would “commit to pause the scaling and/or delay the deployment of new models whenever our scaling ability outstrips our ability to comply with … safety procedures”. [skip past newsletter promotion](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/10/bernie-sanders-ai-development-pause-letter#EmailSignup-skip-link-11) Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives  after newsletter promotion OpenAI, which said it would slow down the development of its latest cybersecurity model, [Astra](https://www.axios.com/2026/08/07/openai-astra-model-delay-cybersecurity-risks), after the autonomous hack of another organization, said it would “halt further development” if AI capabilities met a “critical” threshold until guardrails were implemented. Sanders said recent hacking incidents were signs that the threshold has been surpassed. “That moment is here,” his letter reads. “AI capabilities HAVE reached a critical threshold. There is a reason why the head of the CIA says that AI models are ‘akin to digital nuclear weapons’ and ‘almost like a doomsday device.’” The progressive senator previously called for a moratorium on datacenter construction across the US. He and congresswoman [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez) introduced a bill to pause the building of new datacenters in the US in March. Their rationale was similar to Sanders’ case for pausing the development of AI models: a temporary ban, the lawmakers said, would give the US government time to create strong federal safeguards for AI.