Socialists want to turn AI into a $7B slush fund realists know that would throw Americas greatest assets away

The AI industry is growing at a fierce pace, but so is skepticism about where it will lead, with some worried about data centers sucking up power and jobs being replaced with computers.Capitalizing on those fears, socialist wacko Bernie Sanders has proposed the “American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act” — which has grabbed headlines for claiming it will raise $7 billion and distribute thousands of dollars to every American.It’s a pie-in-the sky scheme, doomed from the start.Not least because it would force all major AI companies to hand 50% of their equity over to the federal government! Savvy Silicon Valley bosses have wasted no time in finding clever ways around it.Earlier this week, investors and the CEO of Altimeter Capital, Brad Gerstner, floated an alternative.

They propose key players in AI voluntarily giving up a much smaller stake in their companies, which the federal government could then distribute to the people.In an interview on CNBC this week, Gerstner even said he’s already spoken with the top players: xAI’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei (although he didn’t reveal what they’d told him about participating).The proposal is being sold as a capitalist response to a socialist solution, but still sets alarm bells ringing.Sensible people don’t feel the federal government should play a larger role in distributing wealth than they already do, an amount in the trillions each year — something Trump’s second term has been all about reigning in — and that’s before even thinking about how many billions are lost to fraud.It would also set a terrible precedent, taking the country’s most successful companies —the backbone of the current record-setting stock market — and expecting them to restructure, simply to assuage a little public anger.“It’s voluntary now but it accepts the premise that big businesses should restructure their operations to appease the masses,” Nathan Leamer, executive director...