A handful of tech companies got rich building AI. Now everyone wants a cut of the wealth they didn't create with skills they don't have.
The article floats "radical ideas" about redistributing AI profits. Radical used to mean Che Guevara in the jungle. Now it means asking Microsoft for a check.
Here's the plan: Take money from companies that built functional products, then mail it to people who think ChatGPT is sentient because it wrote them a haiku. Flawless economic theory. Adam Smith is doing backflips in his grave. Excited backflips, definitely not the other kind.
The concentration of AI wealth among a few powerful firms bothers people who couldn't name a single AI researcher if you spotted them Yann LeCun. They demand their share of the spoils. Their contribution to the field was typing "write my essay" into a text box and feeling like a hacker.
Proposals include universal basic income funded by AI taxes, public ownership of AI models, and probably a few other schemes dreamed up by people who've never read a 10-K. The common thread: someone else should pay for it. Specifically, the companies that spent billions on GPUs while you were busy explaining to your book club why passive index funds are actually a scam.
Every redistribution plan assumes AI wealth keeps growing forever. Same energy as assuming your marijuana penny stock would hit a thousand dollars because you really believed in the product. Touching faith in exponential growth from people who've never modeled a decay curve.
The funniest part: retail traders salivating over AI redistribution checks already spent that money on leveraged tech ETFs, which they'll panic-sell the moment Nvidia sneezes. They'll get their universal basic income, route it straight into 0DTE options, then blame Powell when it evaporates.
You didn't build the models. You didn't train the networks. You didn't write the code. But sure, you deserve a slice of the profits because you have a pulse and a voting address.
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash
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