OpenAI has set out a policy vision for an economy reshaped by advanced artificial intelligence, combining market-oriented growth with proposals aimed at distributing gains more broadly across society. The framework is presented at a moment of growing concern over how AI could alter employment, public finances and the concentration of economic power.
The proposals rest on three broad objectives: spreading AI-driven prosperity more widely, reducing systemic risks and ensuring broad access to AI capabilities so that opportunity and economic leverage do not become concentrated in too few hands. A central element is the argument that taxation should shift away from labour and more towards capital. OpenAI warns that as AI changes the composition of economic activity, corporate profits and capital gains may rise while reliance on labour income and payroll taxes declines, weakening the tax base that supports programmes such as Social Security, Medicaid, SNAP and housing assistance. It raises the prospect of higher taxes on corporate income, AI-driven returns or top-end capital gains, and also floats the idea of a robot tax.
The framework also introduces mechanisms intended to widen public participation in AI wealth creation. OpenAI proposes a Public Wealth Fund that would give Americans an automatic public stake in AI companies and infrastructure, with returns distributed directly to citizens. On labour, it backs measures including a subsidised four-day workweek without loss of pay, stronger retirement contributions, greater employer support for healthcare costs and subsidies for childcare or eldercare. It also proposes portable benefit accounts that follow workers across jobs, though these would still depend in part on employer or platform contributions.
Alongside social and fiscal proposals, OpenAI couples its agenda with expansion and control measures. It supports containment plans for dangerous AI, new oversight bodies and targeted safeguards against high-risk uses including cyberattacks and biological threats. At the same time, it calls for expanded electricity infrastructure and faster AI buildouts supported by subsidies, tax credits or equity stakes, arguing that AI should be treated like a utility and kept widely accessible rather than controlled by a small number of firms. The tension running through the document is clear: a company now operating for profit is advocating a model in which rapid private-sector expansion is paired with new public claims on the wealth and disruption that expansion may generate.
