Your family’s $300 stake in OpenAI

你家庭在 OpenAI 的 300 美元股份

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s oft-discussed promise that Americans will share in the wealth AI creates was in the news again last week. On Thursday, the Financial Times reported that Altman is in talks with President Trump about giving the US government a 5% stake in OpenAI. OpenAI 首席执行官山姆·奥特曼（Sam Altman）曾多次承诺，美国人将分享人工智能创造的财富，这一话题上周再次成为新闻焦点。据《金融时报》周四报道，奥特曼正在与特朗普总统商讨向美国政府提供 OpenAI 5% 股份的事宜。

In some ways, Altman’s plan is old news. He wrote about a more radical version of this back in 2021, proposing that all companies above a certain valuation (not just AI companies) pay 2.5% of their market value each year into a fund that sends Americans annual disbursements. In April this year, OpenAI described a narrower proposal that closely resembles what Altman is reportedly discussing with Trump now. 从某种程度上说，奥特曼的计划并非新鲜事。早在 2021 年，他就曾提出过一个更激进的版本，建议所有超过一定估值的公司（不仅仅是人工智能公司）每年将其市值的 2.5% 投入一个基金，向美国人发放年度红利。今年 4 月，OpenAI 描述了一项范围更窄的提案，与据报道奥特曼目前正与特朗普讨论的内容非常相似。

And the notion has broad political appeal: Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed giving Americans a 50% stake in top AI companies. What’s the logic here? For would-be recipients, it’s twofold. First, AI learns directly from human-generated work—books, movies, art—but AI companies generally never pay the authors of that work. A free equity stake could serve as a form of belated compensation. 这一概念具有广泛的政治吸引力：参议员伯尼·桑德斯（Bernie Sanders）曾提议让美国人持有顶级人工智能公司 50% 的股份。其逻辑何在？对于潜在的受益者来说，原因有二。首先，人工智能直接从人类创作的作品（书籍、电影、艺术品）中学习，但人工智能公司通常从不向这些作品的作者支付报酬。免费的股权可以作为一种迟来的补偿。

Second, the payout could mitigate the widespread anxiety that AI will cause a collapse of the labor market (even if economists disagree) by providing a safety net. How large a safety net is up for debate. Details of OpenAI’s latest proposal are sparse, but let’s say the government were to distribute this equity stake directly to Americans. 其次，通过提供安全网，这种支付方式可以缓解人们对人工智能将导致劳动力市场崩溃的普遍焦虑（尽管经济学家对此有不同看法）。至于安全网有多大，尚有争议。OpenAI 最新提案的细节很少，但假设政府将这部分股权直接分配给美国人。

After its funding round in March the company was valued at $852 billion, making a 5% stake in OpenAI worth about $42.6 billion today (the company is reportedly delaying its IPO until it can reach a $1 trillion evaluation, a tall order given that it’s spending heavily on data centers and still has not turned a profit). Distributing that $42.6 billion equally among the roughly 133 million American households would give each about $320 in equity. 在 3 月份的融资轮次后，该公司估值为 8520 亿美元，这意味着 OpenAI 5% 的股份目前价值约 426 亿美元（据报道，该公司正在推迟 IPO，直到估值达到 1 万亿美元，考虑到它在数据中心投入巨大且尚未盈利，这是一个艰巨的目标）。将这 426 亿美元平均分配给约 1.33 亿个美国家庭，每个家庭将获得约 320 美元的股权。

But if it were to operate like other wealth funds, the government would not give equity directly to Americans but rather let the fund grow and then share a portion of the returns with everyone, perhaps delivering a bigger payout, if and when AI companies can ever start sustainably turning a profit. 但如果它像其他财富基金一样运作，政府就不会直接将股权交给美国人，而是让基金增值，然后与大家分享部分收益。如果人工智能公司能够开始持续盈利，这或许能带来更大的回报。

If this dividend does materialize, what’s in it for tech companies? Altman might hope the promise of payouts could help swing public opinion a bit more back toward AI companies. (A majority of Americans don’t trust companies to use AI responsibly and oppose construction of data centers in their area, and half are more concerned than excited about the increased creep of AI into their daily lives.) 如果这种红利真的实现，科技公司能得到什么？奥特曼可能希望，支付红利的承诺有助于让公众舆论更多地转向支持人工智能公司。（大多数美国人不信任公司会负责任地使用人工智能，并反对在当地建设数据中心；有一半人对人工智能日益渗透到日常生活中感到担忧多于兴奋。）

But the bigger prize for OpenAI might be that the Trump administration loves making tech deals—like its equity stake in Intel and its share of Nvidia’s sales to China, among others. Staying on the administration’s good side is pretty essential for AI companies right now (just ask Anthropic). It could mean not having your models deemed a supply chain risk, or getting more help from the White House in stopping your rivals from China. 但对 OpenAI 来说，更大的奖赏可能是特朗普政府热衷于达成科技交易——例如其在英特尔的股权，以及英伟达对华销售的份额等。对于人工智能公司来说，目前与政府保持良好关系至关重要（问问 Anthropic 就知道了）。这意味着你的模型可能不会被视为供应链风险，或者能从白宫获得更多帮助，以阻止来自中国的竞争对手。

My main takeaway is that these plans currently function more as a story than a policy. Altman has been talking about some version of this idea for five years and reportedly pitched it to President Trump soon after he took office, yet there is still little indication that a concrete plan is taking shape. The more ambitious proposal from Sanders is even less likely to gain traction. But what these plans do reveal is just how up for debate the future of AI still is. 我的主要结论是，这些计划目前更多是作为一种叙事，而非政策。奥特曼五年来一直在谈论这一想法的某个版本，据报道在特朗普上任后不久就向他推销过，但目前几乎没有迹象表明具体的计划正在形成。桑德斯更雄心勃勃的提案更不可能获得支持。但这些计划所揭示的是，人工智能的未来仍有巨大的讨论空间。

Altman drew inspiration for his plan from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which was set up in the 1970s to give Alaskans a share in oil profits. The idea was based on two premises: that oil is a shared resource, and that eventually it will run out. Altman seems happy to concede the first claim about AI. But he’d balk at the second, having promised that AI will generate extraordinary wealth for decades to come. Whether Americans ever receive a check is beside the point; the proposal’s real purpose may be to convince them that the AI boom will be large enough to share. 奥特曼的计划灵感来源于阿拉斯加永久基金（Alaska Permanent Fund），该基金成立于 20 世纪 70 年代，旨在让阿拉斯加人分享石油利润。这一想法基于两个前提：石油是共享资源，且最终会枯竭。奥特曼似乎乐于承认关于人工智能的第一个主张。但他会回避第二个，因为他承诺人工智能将在未来几十年创造非凡的财富。美国人是否真的能收到支票并不重要；该提案的真正目的可能是为了让他们相信，人工智能的繁荣足以让大家共享。