Does American Need an AI Sovereign Wealth Fund?
- Thread starter What Would Jesus Do?
- Start date
Yes - we should be investing in data centers and letting the profits fund govt services. Link health care and social security to a tax on compute so the public benefits. Leave income tax for defense and intel.
I was listening to Steyer speak on a similar subject last night. He was proposing a fee per calculation ran by AI to be paid back to the citizens of California.
In our current AI model tech oligarchs are using collective knowledge of society to build their technology. They are using power grids and driving up energy costs which are passed back onto citizens. Much of the energy burned is coming from AI bots running around the internet hyping up AI and encouraging more investments to create more wealth, and we are now in a place where most online content is not created by humans at all, outside of bots using stolen content.
They also have ambitions for AI to remove human jobs. My belief is that it will be used to drive people out of certain industries, create job desperation, and drive people to take the same positions with lower salaries.
In our current AI model tech oligarchs are using collective knowledge of society to build their technology. They are using power grids and driving up energy costs which are passed back onto citizens. Much of the energy burned is coming from AI bots running around the internet hyping up AI and encouraging more investments to create more wealth, and we are now in a place where most online content is not created by humans at all, outside of bots using stolen content.
They also have ambitions for AI to remove human jobs. My belief is that it will be used to drive people out of certain industries, create job desperation, and drive people to take the same positions with lower salaries.
seems like too easy a solution. They had the head of the chamber of commerce on CNBC today and she was against changing how business ownership in this country is created. I'm a little torn. I can see upside and downside. Do we want government to have voting rights in our corporations. We were against it when Trump invested government funds in Intel...
It's too easy for a conservative to say "if Bernie is for it there must be something wrong". But I would say explore it and then make a determination. We need to do something to change our country's financial dynamic.
Do I want the federal government to own a piece of major corporations? With voting rights and an ability to put their thumb on the free market scale?
Because oligarchs owning them and keeping all the profits is working so much better, amirite?Do I want the federal government to own a piece of major corporations? With voting rights and an ability to put their thumb on the free market scale?
Governments should not own the means of production. It never works out well. If you think crony capitalism is bad now wait until the government has a board seat.
well, if we're being factual, shareholders own the companies. There might be one or two that are owned by "oligarchs" but off the top of my head I can't think of one. The profits are normally either returned to shareholders as dividends, reinvested or retained in the company.
well, here's a question I don't think has been asked (or it has and I missed it) where does the money come from to buy 50% of all the companies working AI.. There must be a market capitalization in the $trillions. And, US investment at least in the numbers being floated would drive the stock prices through the roof. Do we borrow it? If so, we'd have the interest on the loans to pay, and what if there are losses in our investments? Remember, when the government took over the student loan program it was supposed to earn us $100billion. (As a recall)... how did that work out for us?
Now, since Bernie is the proposer, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that he doesn't want to "buy in" at all...his plan might be for simply government takeover. That's more the socialist way. That's an extremely slippery slope. Do we want Donald Trump has head of our sovereign fund with 50% voting block?
It's sort of funny how many of the responses here sort of immediately jump to how the G should 'invest' in certain industries. That is indeed what happens on the back end of sovereign wealth funds. But on the front end, there is typically some inherent state resource or asset like, oh, say, oil, that funds the investments. No one seems to be identifying the inherent resource or asset that we're going to be using to finance these investments, which makes me wonder whether folks are saying we should essentially just tax them.
BTW, re: sovereign wealth funds, the truly hard part is whether the leadership that manages the sovereign wealth is, or is not, enlightened and civically dedicated. In places like Norway, it very much is. In places like the Middle East, it's a mixed bag. A little to the south-southwest of that...generally not so much. I have to say, I'm not entirely convinced that we would fall on the good end of that spectrum, particularly with two cases pending before scotus about independent agency officer removal authority and a congress that routinely raids so-called 'lockboxes'.
BTW, re: sovereign wealth funds, the truly hard part is whether the leadership that manages the sovereign wealth is, or is not, enlightened and civically dedicated. In places like Norway, it very much is. In places like the Middle East, it's a mixed bag. A little to the south-southwest of that...generally not so much. I have to say, I'm not entirely convinced that we would fall on the good end of that spectrum, particularly with two cases pending before scotus about independent agency officer removal authority and a congress that routinely raids so-called 'lockboxes'.
When the country is essentially an oligarchy then the crony capitalists who are in essence the government own the means of production. We have a system where tech oligarchs lawyers write tech laws and the government pays the tech oligarchs for data, access, and services. I feel like the line is so blurred that the thing you are worried about is happening but by different means.
I agree the thing I’m worried about is already happening. I guess my take is that creating a fund like OP proposes would just accelerate that.
You and I have different perspectives on capitalism, but I think we both agree that concentrating power in fewer and fewer hands is not the path forward. A fund like this is a force of concentration not a force of democratization. At least not in a country with citizens united, permissible government insider trading/outright bribery and the like.
I just wish we had a responsible and functioning government so we could get some regulations that lookout for the masses. Those days seem so far away at this point.