▲ U.S. President Donald Trump and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
Amid growing frustration over rising layoffs in the tech industry despite overall corporate profit growth, a majority of Americans appear to want more accountability from companies through an artificial intelligence (AI) public fund.
According to a survey of 1,690 U.S. adults conducted by polling firm VeraSite and released earlier this month, 69% of respondents said they support a senator's legislative proposal to require AI companies to transfer 50% of their stock to a public fund.
In detail, 21% said they strongly support it, while 48% said they somewhat support it.
Those who opposed the idea accounted for 32%.
Specifically, 12% said they strongly oppose it, and 20% said they somewhat oppose it.
Benjamin Leff, CEO of VeraSite, stated, "In the eyes of the public, an AI public fund is seen as a tool to redistribute the profits generated by the AI industry back to the broader society."
In June, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the AI Wealth Fund Act, which includes these provisions.
In a statement, Senator Sanders said, "The legislation will ensure that the economic benefits created by AI are used to improve all of our lives, not just to make the wealthiest people in the world even wealthier."
As companies continue to increase capital expenditures (CAPEX) to expand AI infrastructure, the rise in layoffs among major U.S. tech firms has left many workers frustrated and raised concerns about job stability, according to the U.S. business news outlet CNBC.
Joseph Briggs, a senior global economist at Goldman Sachs, estimated in a report released last month that about 15 million workers—more than 9% of the total workforce—could lose their jobs over a 10-year period during the AI transition.
"This would be similar to the automation and displacement shocks we saw in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and during other major technological shifts," Briggs said.
"However, we believe these losses will be temporary, based on the expectation that while AI will eliminate existing jobs, it will also create many new ones in the long term," Briggs added.
According to data from the Windfall Trust, a sovereign wealth fund could finance capital-intensive AI infrastructure to lead AI development at a national level, secure equity in AI companies, and recover a portion of the economic gains driven by AI for the national treasury, CNBC reported.
However, such a sovereign wealth fund could simultaneously struggle to balance public interest with global competition to build AI capabilities.
"There is a tension between fiduciary duty (maximizing returns for citizens) and strategic duty (building national AI capacity and maintaining influence over advanced systems)," the Windfall Trust added. "This is because these two goals can conflict when the best financial investment is not a domestic company, but a foreign AI firm."
(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)
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