As governments struggle to manage the economic consequences of superintelligent machines, OpenAI has published a set of policy proposals outlining the ways in which wealth and work could be reshaped in an “age of intelligence.” The ideas combine traditionally left-wing mechanisms, such as public wealth funds and expanded social safety nets, with a fundamentally capitalist, market-driven economic framework.
OpenAI’s proposals are essentially a wish list, a public statement that helps elected officials, investors and the public understand how the $852 billion company sees the world changing in an era where artificial intelligence transforms work and the economy.
The proposals were published amid an intensification anxiety around AIwhich has been influenced by concern for job displacementconcentration of wealth and data center constructions cross country. They have also arrived as the Trump administration moves toward a national AI framework and in the period leading up to the midterm elections, indicating an attempt at bipartisan positioning. That effort is accompanied by a more direct political push: OpenAI president Greg Brockman, who has donated millions President Donald Trump, and other tech billionaires have channeled hundreds of millions in super PAC supporting AI-light policies.
OpenAI’s proposed framework focuses on three stated goals: more widely distributing AI-driven prosperity, creating safeguards to reduce systemic risks, and ensuring widespread access to AI capabilities so that economic power and opportunities do not become overly concentrated.
OpenAI has proposed shifting the tax burden from labor to capital. The company stops short of specifying a corporate tax rate, which Trump reduced from 35% to 21% 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 earned 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 suggests higher taxes on corporate income, AI-driven returns, or capital gains at the top, a policy category that pushed Marc Andreessen to back Trump after Biden proposed taxing unrealized capital gains in 2024. OpenAI also raises a possible tax on robots, something the Microsoft founder Bill Gates proposed in 2017which meant that the robot paid the same amount of taxes to the system as the human it replaced.
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The document also includes a proposal to create a Public Wealth Fund to give Americans an automatic public stake in AI companies and infrastructure, even if they have not invested in the market. Any refunds would be distributed directly to citizens. The prospect may appeal to Americans who have watched AI inflate the market without seeing any of those gains.
Several of OpenAI’s proposals were also more work-focused, including one to subsidize a four-day work week with no loss of pay, a proposal that aligns with the tech industry’s promises that AI will give humans a better work-life balance. OpenAI also suggests that companies increase retirement contributions, cover a greater proportion of healthcare costs, and subsidize child or elderly care. Notably, OpenAI frames these as corporate responsibilities rather than government responsibilities, leaving out the people AI is most likely to displace. If automation eliminates your job, your employer-subsidized health care and retirement may disappear with it.
That said, OpenAI separately proposes wearable benefit accounts that follow workers across jobs, but they likely still rely on employer or platform contributions and fall short of the government-backed universal coverage that would actually protect the people AI displaces entirely.
OpenAI recognizes that the risks of AI go beyond job loss, including misuse by governments or bad actors and the possibility of systems functioning beyond human control. To mitigate those threats, it proposes containment plans for dangerous AI, new oversight bodies, and specific safeguards against high-risk uses such as cyberattacks and biological threats.
But with safety nets and guardrails come growth proposals, including expanding electrical infrastructure to meet AI energy demands and accelerating the buildout of AI infrastructure by offering subsidies, tax credits or equity stakes. OpenAI says AI should be treated as a utility and, to that end, suggests that industry and government work together to ensure AI remains affordable and widely available, rather than controlled by a few companies.
OpenAI framework arrives six months after its rival Anthropic liberation its policy plan, which laid out a range of possible 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. This, the company says, requires a “new industrial policy agenda that ensures superintelligence benefits everyone.”
OpenAI was founded as a non-profit organization based on AI benefiting all humanity. Last year it became a for-profit company, a change that has led critics to question whether its stated mission is compatible with its need to grow and fulfill its fiduciary duty to shareholders.
The company cited previous eras of economic upheaval, such as the Industrial Age, and noted how new economic and financial movements like the New Deal ensured “growth translated into greater opportunity and greater security” by “building new public institutions, protections, and expectations about what a just economy should provide, including labor protections, safety standards, social safety nets, and greater access to education.”
“The transition to superintelligence will require an even more ambitious form of industrial policy, reflecting the ability of democratic societies to act collectively, at scale, to shape their economic future so that superintelligence benefits everyone,” OpenAI wrote.
