OpenAI’s stated mission is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity. A group of the company’s researchers is putting extra focus on the "all" part.
In an exclusive interview with The Deep View, the lead researcher on OpenAI's ambitious new blueprint, "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First," explained why this report is needed and what the company hopes it will accomplish.
Adrian Ecoffet, the OpenAI research scientist who spearheaded the initiative, told me that a group of around 3 dozen researchers at OpenAI came together to build this report in collaboration with the policy team. They created a series of working groups on various topics they wanted to include in the report and eventually settled on two main themes:
- Building an Open Economy (or spreading the economic impact of AI)
- Building a Resilient Society (or how we keep AI safe and under human control)
The company is on the verge of releasing its most powerful models yet, ones that could create crises ranging from economic dislocation to cybersecurity disasters. To preempt this, the researchers explored policies that could rein in the damage before it happens, creating a policy blueprint that could change the social contract in the biggest way since the New Deal. On the surface, this looks like a doc aimed at policymakers and public officials, but the reality is broader than that.
"This document is meant as a conversation starter," said Ecoffet. "The ideas are not fully baked. There are probably a lot of problems with them. In many cases, they are not very specific. And so what I hope is for people to react to it, and frankly criticize it [and] even come up with rip‑offs of it. And to really have a good conversation about these ideas."
The thirteen-page document has a strong egalitarian bent to it and proposes several revolutionary concepts:
- A Public Wealth Fund: The government creates a fund that invests in AI companies and shares the profits with citizens, so everyone benefits from what could be the greatest wealth creator in history, rather than just the wealthy. This would raise all kinds of practical challenges. But if their goal is to stimulate debate, this certainly will.
- 32-hour/four-day workweek pilots tied to efficiency dividends: If AI makes workers more productive, companies should pass those gains on to employees in the form of a shorter work week, rather than pocketing all the extra profits.
- "Right to AI" similar to universal internet access: Just as we made sure most people can access electricity and the internet, the government should make sure everyone can access affordable AI tools. Again, this keeps the benefits from accruing disproportionately to rich people.
- AI-driven corporate gains and automated labor: As AI replaces human workers and companies earn higher profits, those companies should pay higher taxes to help fund social safety nets that retrain and support displaced workers.
Ecoffet said the goal of these proposals is not to have them all accepted as-is. Instead, the goal is to bring the risks and impacts of AI to the public consciousness before AGI and superintelligence have fully come to fruition. That’s something that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also advocated, telling Ecoffet and other researchers in a roundtable published Tuesday that the public and policymakers alike need a long period of time to debate these ideas to make good decisions long before AI triggers potential crises that force us to act.
Al Gore, former vice president and founding partner of Generation Investment Management, echoed this sentiment in his keynote speech at the HumanX conference in San Francisco on Monday. Referring to Anthropic publishing its constitution for Claude in January, Gore told a crowd of several thousand attendees that “I think there ought to be a public discussion and debate of the constitution written for … each of the [frontier] models.” So far, none of the other frontier labs, including OpenAI, has published a constitution like the one Anthropic has opened up for Claude.
Our Deeper View
OpenAI believes we will need a New Deal-style policy moonshot to reframe the social contract around AI. Doing that is going to require raising awareness about these issues in the public consciousness, so that we come to a consensus around them by the time superintelligence gets here. OpenAI isn’t the first to call attention to these ideas. As companies continue their push for AGI, ethics organizations have been calling for regulation and governance of AI to keep humans in the driver's seat and allow the gains to be distributed more broadly. What makes this different from those movements is that OpenAI is the one shouting from the rooftops. In essence, the company is calling itself out and holding itself accountable, along with other frontier labs and leading players in the AI industry. It’s also an example of the kind of forward-thinking ethical position that usually characterizes OpenAI’s No. 1 rival, Anthropic.
Senior reporter Nat Rubio-Licht also contributed to this story.