As governments grapple with how to manage the economic fallout of superintelligent machines, OpenAI has released a set of policy proposals outlining the ways wealth and work could be reshaped in an “intelligence age.” The ideas blend traditionally left-leaning mechanisms like 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 declaration that helps elected officials, investors, and the public understand how the $852 billion company sees the world shifting in an age where artificial intelligence transforms labor and the economy.
The proposals were released amid intensifying anxiety around AI, which has been colored by concerns over job displacement, wealth concentration, and data center buildouts across the country. They’ve also arrived as the Trump administration moves toward a national AI framework and in the run-up to the midterm elections, signaling an attempt at bipartisan positioning. That effort sits alongside a more direct political push: OpenAI President Greg Brockman — who has donated millions to President Donald Trump — and other tech billionaires have funneled hundreds of millions into super PACs supporting light-touch AI policies.
OpenAI’s proposed framework centers on three stated goals: distributing AI-driven prosperity more broadly, building safeguards to reduce systemic risks, and ensuring widespread access to AI capabilities so that economic power and opportunity don’t become too concentrated.
OpenAI has proposed shifting the tax burden from labor to capital. The company stops short of specifying a corporate tax rate — which Trump dropped to 21% from 35% 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 labor income shrinks.
“As AI reshapes work and production, the composition of economic activity may shift—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 category of policy that pushed Marc Andreessen to back Trump after Biden proposed taxing unrealized capital gains in 2024. OpenAI also floats a potential robot tax, something Microsoft founder Bill Gates proposed in 2017, which involved the robot paying the same amount of taxes into the system as the human it replaced.
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