Bernie Sanders: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/opinion/artificial-intelligence-bernie-sanders.html

by timmg • 2 months ago

17 15 2 months ago

nytimes.com

postflopclarity2• 2 months ago

Don't be a ridiculous socialist, clearly 50% is too much. The true capitalists believe that the USG should only own

* 10% of Intel

* 15% vig of Nvidia chip sales to China

* largest shareholder in several materials and mining companies

* option for 8% of Westinghouse

* "Golden Share" of U.S. Steel

damnitbuilds2• 2 months ago

I think you'll find the USG is only holding those shares temporarily and they will be transferred to ... someone ... just before January 20th, 2029.

daveshistory3• 2 months ago

I understand the cynicism but there isn't going to be a plausible legal route to do that. No, all these corporate stakes are just going to hang on bizarrely in the government until someone sells them off again.

Although, I guess, you can't really just dump a 10% stake in Intel overnight without causing problems, can you. Geez what a mess.

tqi• 2 months ago

I think people are opposed to all of these.

richwater• 2 months ago

Yet another completely un-implementable, insane take from someone who has accomplished very little in the way of legislation. I mean seriously? We're going to start to seize companies now? What even is an "AI" company? Google trains their own model? Are we going to seize Google? Give me a break. This is real life slop and would never get published if it weren't for the author's name.

daveshistory3• 2 months ago

US government already has a minority stake in Intel. Seems to be the season for this sort of thing.

You're right, though. New York Times printing calls for the nationalization of "all the big companies..."

postflopclarity2• 2 months ago

We're going to start to seize companies now?

already started by the current administration?

tmvphil• 2 months ago

A big 50% transfer of specific companies is probably too aggressive and arbitrary, but it's time to start thinking about how public ownership can work. Perhaps something like, "every year, companies over some size threshold must dilute their shares by 1% and give the new shares to the USG"

whalabi2• 2 months ago

His argument, whether you accept it or not, is that AI was built with humanity's stolen knowledge for the most part, which is somewhat accurate.

At least, models were trained on vast quantities of information produced by humans, much of it copyrighted, without consent or compensation.

"Zuckerberg approved Meta’s use of ‘pirated’ books to train AI models, authors claim" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/10/mark-zuck...

red-iron-pine2• 2 months ago

how much you wanna bet this gets traction right as the bubble is about to pop?

sometimelurker• 2 months ago

I think he knows this is too vague and unimplementable, he just wants to shift the conversation to more UBI-ish things.

whalabi2• 2 months ago

Gift article if that helps: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/opinion/artificial-intell...

Bernie Sanders: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies

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