AI Is Making Many People Richer. Economists Want More Americans To Get A Cut

While artificial intelligence companies and investors have seen billions of dollars added to their valuations, many are asking whether more Americans should receive a direct share of the technology's economic gains.

An Emerson College poll released last week found that only 27% of Americans support building data centers in or near their communities, while 63% oppose them. The results mark a significant shift from December 2025, when one-third of respondents supported such projects and opposition stood at 42%.

That frustration was captured by Ohio resident Will Hollingsworth during a public hearing on a proposed 257-acre data center campus in Portage County. "When I see the data center proposal, I don't see progress," Hollingsworth said. "I see a gamble where the big tech companies get the gold while Portage County foots the bill."

His comments quickly spread online and echoed a sentiment increasingly shared across the country as AI infrastructure rapidly expands. Several proposals are now being discussed to distribute AI wealth more broadly.

One idea centers on creating an AI sovereign wealth fund that would allow the public to own a financial stake in the industry's success. Separate, unconfirmed reports have suggested that OpenAI discussed offering the U.S. government a 5% equity stake before its anticipated initial public offering.

Another proposal focuses on compensating people whose data helps train AI systems.
Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist at Microsoft Research and longtime advocate for what he calls "data dignity," argues that individuals should receive payments when their information contributes to AI development.

"Good data and supervision," Lanier told CNBC, "can result in enough real money having a significant impact on people's lives." Lanier, however, warned against concentrating too much power in either governments or technology companies, favoring what he described as a more distributed economic model.

University of Chicago computer science professor Raul Castro Fernandez believes such compensation systems are technically achievable. "The strongest version of profit sharing is not a tax but a compensation system tied to the human contributions that make AI systems valuable in the first place," Fernandez said.

However, researchers Nicholas Vincent of Simon Fraser University and Brent Hecht of Northwestern University argue that "Seemingly minor design choices can seriously change the distribution of data values, a serious concern for any human-AI system seeking to incorporate such values for payments or other purposes."

They concluded that "If a technology is reliant on the collective contributions of millions or billions of people, we already know each individual value will be very small, so why bother spending time and energy performing [potentially costly] data value estimation?"

Other experts believe workers should gain influence rather than direct payments. Matt Prewitt, president of the RadicalxChange Foundation, advocates creating new legal associations that would function as a modern version of labor unions for the AI era. These organizations would negotiate with AI companies over governance, compensation, and ownership rights on behalf of the public.

Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, argues governments could distribute AI wealth through stronger corporate taxation, tougher antitrust enforcement and expanded labor protections. Baker has also suggested companies could satisfy corporate taxes by transferring non-voting shares to the public.

Rather than replacing jobs entirely, Baker believes AI's productivity gains could eventually allow workers to spend fewer hours on the job while maintaining living standards. "We set the 40-hour work week 90 years ago and it has not changed since," Baker told CNBC. "If AI is going to give us the promised boom in productivity, let's lower the threshold to 32 hours."