Exclusive: Alex Bores rolls out "AI dividend" plan to share AI wealth
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Alex Bores, a Democratic House candidate in New York and a top target of AI super PACs, is rolling out a plan to create an "AI dividend" in response to potential large-scale job displacement from artificial intelligence.
Why it matters: Bores is leaning into anxiety over AI's impact on jobs as voters grow more wary of the technology's economic effects, even as deep-pocketed tech interests spend big to defeat him.
Driving the news: Bores' plan, shared exclusively with Axios, comes as AI super PACs ramp up spending against his campaign.
- "At its core, the AI Dividend is simple: if AI dramatically increases productivity and concentrates wealth, the American people have a stake in those gains," a memo on the policy reads.
- The dividend would fund direct payments to Americans.
- It would also be invested into workforce training and education, as well as government capacity to "govern AI safely and fund independent oversight," per the plan memo.
What they're saying: "You don't take out fire insurance because you expect your house to burn down — you have insurance in case something goes awry," Bores told Axios in an interview.
- "Here we have, for the first time, a technology where the makers of the technology are explicitly saying that their goal is to replace all human labor."
- "The fact that they've put it out there means government needs to take it seriously."
Between the lines: Even if Bores' bid for federal office and his dividend plan go nowhere, his focus reflects a broader national uncertainty about how AI will reshape daily life and work.
Bores' team describes the AI dividend in the policy memo as a "direct payment program that kicks in if and when AI meaningfully displaces American workers."
- "It is not a punishment for innovation — it is an insurance policy."
The proposal would be funded through:
- A token tax, described in the memo as a "modest tax on AI consumption"
- Equity participation in frontier AI firms
- Changes to the tax code that would reduce incentives to invest in AI "when it leads to less work"
Bores says an AI dividend is urgent because he thinks the window for policy solutions will close once mass job displacement and concentrated wealth happens.
The intrigue: Bores' plan echoes warnings that AI CEOs themselves have been giving about job losses and AI, and ideas they've floated about how Americans can share in the wealth of their companies.
- Still, pro-AI growth super PACs funded by AI billionaires have poured money into defeating Bores.
- In addition to making AI safety and regulation a key part of his congressional campaign, Bores co-authored the RAISE Act, New York's frontier AI safety law.
- "If [AI companies] they can support this plan, that would show that they actually believe in what they're putting out there," Bores said. "If they're not doing it, then I think it shows that they're really putting window dressing out there."
The bottom line: Expect to see more candidates across the country preparing to answer to voter anxiety on AI and job loss.
