Superpowerful AI Will Destroy Jobs — OpenAI Demands Tax and Retraining

The authors of the document believe that AI development can radically increase productivity and living standards, but at the same time lead to massive social upheavals — job cuts, rising inequality, and security threats. For this reason, OpenAI believes a radically new economic and social policy is needed so that the benefits of technological development are distributed among people, and AI serves society.

Among the proposed reforms are the introduction of a tax on AI usage, reducing the workweek to four days, and creating retraining programs for those who lose their jobs. After the document's publication, former head of AI policy at the UN Office for Digital and New Technologies Lucia Velasco stated that OpenAI is the most interested party in discussing societal changes with the arrival of AI, but the document does not mention actions the company itself will take. At the same time, she acknowledged that OpenAI is right on government policy issues: "Most still view AI as a technological problem, whereas it is actually a structural economic shift requiring proper industrial policy."

AI policy expert Soribel Feliz, in turn, agreed that OpenAI deserves credit for "putting the problem on paper," but emphasized that much of what is proposed is not new, writes the Telegram channel "Beware, News." "Some of these points have been the basis for all major AI governance discussions since ChatGPT came out in 2022," she said, adding that similar proposals have been heard in the US Senate for several years.