Bernie Sanders’ AI sovereign wealth fund plan is good. But we think this is better | Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier

LAnd no one is accusing Bernie Sanders of dodging the big questions. The senator asked in the New York Times last week: “Will the future of humanity be determined by a handful of billionaires who have promoted and developed AI, with virtually no democratic influence, and who could become even richer and more powerful than they are today?”

We fully agree that this is one of the most pressing issues facing global democracy today. Our book, Rewiring Democracy, examines the new uses and implications of AI in democracy around the world and comes to the same conclusion: The greatest risk posed by AI is the concentration of power, wealth and control among tech oligarchs.

And yet we have come to a completely different conclusion than Sanders about what to do about it.

The senator points to a once radical but increasingly popular solution: the creation of a US sovereign wealth fund by taking 50% stakes in AI companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI. There are two arguments for this…