The problem
What needs solving
Why it matters and what counts as progress
Why it matters: AI is built on the work, writing and data of millions of people, yet its returns flow to a handful of companies and their owners. As AI replaces paid work, income shifts from wages to capital, and the public systems people rely on, funded mostly by taxes on labour, lose their base just when they are needed most. Left alone, this concentrates wealth and power further than ever before, weakens democracy and leaves people dependent on the goodwill of a few firms. Higher productivity is worthless to society if most people end up poorer, more insecure or less free. Ideas exist (public ownership stakes in AI, taxing AI profits and compute, citizen dividends, shorter working hours at full pay, collective funds owned by the public), but none has been put into practice at the scale the problem demands. What counts as progress: (a) A statistics office regularly publishes who captures the gains from AI: owners, workers and the public, for at least one large economy. (b) A jurisdiction puts a share of AI profits or AI ownership into public or collective hands, with an evaluation plan published in advance, and the income and wealth of the bottom half measurably rise relative to the top 1%. (c) Solved when, in an economy with high AI adoption, the wealth share of the bottom 50% grows and the share of the top 1% falls over ten years, and a majority of people report that AI has made their lives more secure.
Stater & version history
Stated by JonasLink
2 Nov 2026 — Proposed by JonasLink and numbered by the ideas council.