OpenAI CEO Sam Altman poured $14 million of his own cash into the biggest UBI trial ever. That was then. Now he says fixed monthly checks fall short for the AI upheaval ahead.
“I no longer believe in universal basic income as much as I once did,” Altman told Business Insider, recounting his shift in a podcast with The Atlantic’s Nicholas Thompson. Cash helps. But it misses the mark. Society needs shared stakes in AI’s gains as machines eclipse human labor, tilting power from workers to capital.
Back in 2019, UBI fever gripped Silicon Valley. Altman rallied $60 million total, handing low-income folks in Texas and Illinois $1,000 monthly for three years. Results? Spending rose. Health didn’t budge—no better doctor access, no mental lifts. Business Insider.
Altman pivoted. He’s pitching collective ownership. Hand out AI compute slices—people use them, trade them, sell them. Or equities in AI firms. “I’m much more interested in ways where we think about kind of collective ownership that could be in compute or in equities or something else,” he said in the YouTube interview.
OpenAI’s Blueprint for AI Prosperity
OpenAI laid it out in a stark policy paper this spring: “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age.” Core idea—a Public Wealth Fund. Seed it with AI company contributions. Invest in growth stocks, AI adopters. Pay dividends to every citizen. No stock market savvy required. Everyone grabs a slice of the boom. Axios detailed Altman’s pitch to policymakers: treat this like FDR’s New Deal for superintelligence threats.
The fund dodges UBI pitfalls. Cash flows fixed. Fund payouts scale with AI riches. But critics pounce. It straps welfare to tech volatility—booms fat checks, busts thin them out. Why not proven fixes like unemployment boosts or healthcare? Nearly 48 million Americans already scrape for food; they need basics now, not market bets. Futurism.
And taxes. Robot levies on automated work. Hike capital gains for fat cats. Shift burden from wages to machines and profits. Fund the fund. Bolster safety nets. Trigger auto-hikes in aid if joblessness spikes. Push four-day weeks at full pay—AI efficiency as worker dividend. Mandate cheap AI access, like utilities. Axios.
Altman warns of chaos without action. Cyber blitzes next year. Bio-weapons from rogue models. Mass layoffs. Unruly machines. “AI superintelligence is so close, so mind-bending, so disruptive,” he told Axios. Build compute mountains. Make tools dead simple. Or the rich bid up scarcity, widening gaps.
What people crave? Prosperity. Agency. Fulfilling days. Impact. Not pity payments. Get AI everywhere. Let creativity flourish.
Backlash and Skepticism Build
AI’s glow fades. Molotovs at Altman’s door. Public ire. OpenAI pushes sharing amid accusations of hoarding. Vox calls it socialist flip-flop—tax-the-rich talk while execs back Trump PACs gutting Medicaid. Greg Brockman dropped $25 million on pro-Trump super PACs; Altman maxed GOP donations. Vox.
Worldcoin? Altman’s UBI crypto play via iris scans. WLD token crashed 98% from peaks to $0.25. Foundation dumped millions amid the rout. X buzzes with doubt. Timing suspect.
Yet Altman presses. Synthetic data trains godlike models—no human limits. Agents handle drudgery. Threshold leaps: chatbots to coders to screen pilots. Open-source lags for beasts; safety first. Labs align on cyber shields.
But will Washington bite? Tax AI winners. Hand out compute. Fund the future. Or watch stratification explode. Altman bets ownership trumps handouts. Data from his own trial backs the rethink. Society’s next move? Urgent.
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