NPR.

There's a lot of fear out there that AI could eliminate a ton of jobs, form a permanent underclass, and enrich just a few people. Right now, we haven't seen large layoffs,

but tech hiring is slow and we've seen huge growth in wealth at the top since the launch of ChatGPT.

Yeah, just scan the rich list. Elon Musk, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos,

Google's Larry Page.

These are all people whose wealth is ballooning with the race to build AI.

The richest 26 Americans' wealth has grown an estimated 127% since November 2022.

And so if this is just a taste of the future, some lawmakers are demanding we tax AI and give the rest of us an AI dividend.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darien Woods.

And I'm Waylon Wong. Today on the show, should we tax AI?

The AI race has made a lot of people richer, but most of those gains seem to have gone to those already with metaphorical bathtubs full of money.

Yes.

Meanwhile, everyday workers aren't seeing big pay raises.

We speak to a congressional candidate who wants to tax AI, and we talk to a tax expert who has her reservations.

New York State Representative and current Democratic Congressional candidate Alex Boris has a range of measures he's proposing to fund an AI dividend.

Alex Boris is an interesting politician on AI because he really knows the technology.

He's a computer scientist who's actually worked at machine learning startups.

I'm saying what all Americans are saying, which is this is happening way too quickly,

and government right now doesn't seem up to the task to protect us.

Alex's AI dividend would be a direct cash payment to Americans.

It would also pay for jobs retraining and education to help workers laid off by AI.

Alex has two main ways he's proposing to tax AI, which will help fund this dividend.

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