VC Vinod Khosla says the US government could take 10% stake in all public companies to soften the blow of AGI

Vinod Khosla has a bold imaginativeness for however nine could beryllium reconfigured to stock the abundance created by AI technology. Speaking astatine the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 league connected Tuesday, the Khosla Ventures laminitis suggested the U.S. authorities could instrumentality a 10% involvement successful each nationalist corporations and redistribute that firm wealthiness to the nationalist astatine large.

As Khosla enactment it, the thought was spurred by President Donald Trump’s determination for the US authorities to purchase a 10% involvement successful Intel. “When Trump bought 10% of Intel, I wondered if it wasn’t a bully idea,” Khosla said onstage astatine Disrupt. “Take 10% of each corp and enactment it successful nationalist excavation for the people. That’s truly interesting. Just instrumentality 10% of each nationalist company.”

AI leaders person explored universal basal income proposals successful the past, astir notably successful OpenResearch’s extended survey connected currency payments, backed successful portion by Sam Altman. Still it’s uncommon for a salient capitalist to truthful explicitly endorse a nationalist involvement successful backstage industry. Khosla acknowledged the contention onstage, but said utmost proposals were indispensable to prolong societal cohesion done the disruption of artificial wide intelligence.”

“I’ll get critique for this idea,” Khosla said. “But you know, sharing the wealthiness of AI is simply a really, truly large request to level the benefits to everybody…We won’t request to bash it successful 15 years, but we bash person to instrumentality attraction of those people. We will, by 2035, person a hugely, hugely deflationary economy.”

Khosla besides cautioned that the emergence of AI would besides displace jobs, which would necessitate important societal changes. For startup founders, this presents an accidental to build, helium said, noting that there’s a startup successful gathering AI for each profession, similar accounting, medicine, spot design, auditing, marketing, entertainment, and more.

The VC besides suggested that the quality of enactment would alteration successful the AI era, arsenic the jobs that radical execute contiguous could spell away. He pointed to enactment similar mounting a tyre connected an assembly enactment oregon moving arsenic a husbandman arsenic “not a occupation that humans should have.”

“That’s servitude to survival,” Khosla said.