AI should answer to users, not Washington

Vice President JD Vance recently offered a stark warning about artificial intelligence. AI will “unleash a lot of wealth creation,” he told Joe Rogan on his show recently, but “if that wealth creation all goes to some segment of people, you’re going to have communism.”

If the concern is that AI-generated wealth will accrue to too few people, one response is to allow for expanded private ownership. Another is to have the government own the companies instead. It is the latter that has long been the central economic prescription of communism. 

And that history makes current proposals from the administration for federal ownership stakes in the AI industry especially hard to square with his concern.  

President Trump is exploring ways to give the public a financial stake in leading AI companies. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), meanwhile, has gone much further, calling for the government to own half of the largest AI firms and to receive board representation. 

But if Washington takes an ownership stake in the companies behind these tools, it risks changing what AI companies actually compete for. Instead of answering first to users, they will have a powerful new incentive to answer to politics.

Government ownership would not merely distribute gains. It would reshape the incentives that determine which companies succeed and shape the future of technology to bureaucrats’ whims. 

Indeed, claiming a piece of the AI industry outright would mark a dramatic escalation in Washington’s burgeoning push to take ownership stakes in private companies. The federal government already shapes AI........

© The Hill