What OpenAI and Anthropic Think Happens Next With AI

**Nathaniel Whittemore** (0:00)
Today on the AI Daily Brief, what OpenAI and Anthropic think about what happens next in AI? Before that in the headlines, is the US government going to take a stake in the big AI labs? The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.
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Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief Headlines Edition, all the daily AI news you need in around five minutes. And boy, do we have a juicy little end to this week. First up, Bombshell Reporting claims that the US government is in talks to acquire equity in major AI companies. Writes Notice, Senior US officials have held primary discussions with major artificial intelligence companies about the potential for the federal government to acquire some shares in their firms. The commentary is sourced to three people familiar with the matter. Notice adds that Sam Altman has discussed this idea periodically with senior administration officials since the beginning of the second Trump term. In fact, Altman is said to have pitched the idea directly to the president in early 2025 Discussions have reportedly continued with senior officials in recent weeks. Sources said that Altman viewed this as a way to more broadly distribute the economic benefits of AI to the public. And what's more, people familiar with the discussion said that it currently centers on the idea of AI labs, quote, voluntarily ceding shares to the government. The shares would then produce returns that could be directed to public purposes, such as cutting an AI dividend check to all American households. Now that language of voluntarily ceding makes it a little unclear whether the government would pay for the shares. And sources also state that Anthropic is not involved in discussions about providing equity at this time. Now for those of you with one eye raised on the sourcing, Notice is a relatively new publication but has extremely strong credibility, founded by Politico reporter Robert Albatron. Former Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein is the lead journalist on this story, and Stein is generally considered to be one of the most well-sourced and highly regarded journalists in Washington. Now overall, while some of this is fairly dramatic, it's also not entirely unexpected. This administration has floated the idea of building a sovereign wealth fund and taken steps towards it by acquiring minority stakes in numerous companies including Intel. It's also not, as we saw earlier this week, entirely novel thinking in Washington, with Bernie Sanders floating the idea of the government taking a 50% stake in AI companies through a one-time tax earlier this week. The idea has made for some strange political bedfellows, with figures on the populist right finding themselves aligning pretty closely with Sanders. Responding to the Sanders proposal, Steve Bannon said this week, You can smell the stench of desperation emanating from the oligarchs They run heedlessly to a public market takeout. We should not take tip money but force them to cough up 50% of the equity, to be disbursed to American citizens. The horseshoe theory of American politics is well and truly intact. Now in terms of the public reaction, a lot of folks just question simply why taxation wasn't the right way to do this. Georgetown law professor Peter Harrell writes, The government should tax and regulate them and potentially distribute the taxes as a dividend, but ownership risks giving the government control outside of public view and potentially the wrong incentives. Bobak McGuffin writes, What if they set up some system where the company sent a certain percentage of their profits to the federal government every year in quarterly installments? Maybe the states could also choose to tax the companies if they operate in that state. Joel Griffith was more blunt, writing, More quote unquote capitalism, but with Chinese Communist Party characteristics. Brought to you not by AOC and Bernie Sanders, but by the current United States president. Even Axios business editor Dan Primack wrote, This is basically the Bernie proposal. Really never expected that electing Trump would push the US government so far towards actual socialism. Not even a judgment call, just surprise.