At the Saudi-American Investment Forum in November, Elon Musk sketched out a future in which artificial intelligence and humanoid robots will do almost all the work. Money, he suggested, will become almost irrelevant. Jobs will be “optional,” more like hobbies like gardening. Machines will wipe out poverty, as everyone will receive a “universal high income” from the state.
Musk is hardly the only tech giant with this vision of the future. Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis looks forward to an era of “radical abundance,” in which artificial intelligence will bring extraordinary productivity and prosperity, and the benefits will be “fairly” distributed. Mustafa Sulejman (Microsoft AI) advocates for “universal basic security,” which would treat access to powerful AI systems and digital services almost as a right. And Sam Altman (OpenAI) has proposed an “American Equality Fund,” which would tax large companies and private land at a rate of 2,5% per year, in order to pay every adult American an annual dividend.
Simply put, leading AI architects openly admit that they are creating systems whose success in generating material abundance could simultaneously wipe out large parts of the labor market. In their imagined future, “sources of cooperative wealth” will be so abundant that people will be paid “according to their needs,” not according to the number of hours they spend on the factory floor.
If that last sentence sounds familiar, it's because it comes from Karl Marx. Are capitalism's most celebrated exponents actually socialists in disguise? In a sense, yes. The people who create advanced artificial intelligence are unusually open-minded about the distribution of wealth. They accept that if machines can do jobs more cheaply than humans, labor's share of national income will decline. If wages disappear, people will need other ways to feed themselves and provide for themselves, and the economy will need new mechanisms to maintain purchasing power.
But look more closely at the proposals of tech leaders and you’ll see that their apparent affinity for socialism is fading fast. Altman is not advocating worker control of OpenAI, nor public ownership of infrastructure. He wants states to socialize only the returns. And while a “universal high income” could help share the spoils, the chips, models, and platforms that create that spoils would remain firmly in the hands of a few extremely wealthy people.
That wouldn't be socialism as we know it. A very small elite would own the "commanding heights" of artificial intelligence and hand out a check or some form of digital ration to everyone else. That amount would be enough to live on, but not enough to challenge the power of those at the top.
But, some will argue, if the universal income offered is high enough to provide a comfortable life, it doesn't matter who owns the algorithms and data centers.
There are at least three reasons for doubt.
First, we are told that the generous AI dividends will only come when productivity gains are fully unleashed. But history teaches us that once wealth and ownership are entrenched, their beneficiaries rarely willingly agree to dilute their own power. Already, a handful of AI and platform companies account for a staggeringly large share of global corporate value.
And what about the vast majority of countries that don’t have a single leading AI company? If local jobs are automated while profits pile up in California, Seattle, or Shenzhen, who exactly will fund the incomes of their citizens? AI company founders are conspicuously silent on this issue.
By the time any serious AI-funded income program arrives, much of that value will have already been converted into concentrated capital and dynastic wealth. Expecting today's AI barons to retrofit egalitarianism into such a structure is like asking Victorian textile mill owners to invent the welfare state.
Second, even if some form of distribution scheme were to materialize, what about the vast majority of countries that do not have a single leading AI company? If local jobs are automated, while profits pile up in California, Seattle, or Shenzhen, who exactly will fund the incomes of their citizens? The founders of AI companies are conspicuously silent on this issue.
Third, a monthly paycheck—no matter how generous—is no substitute for a meaningful life. Work has long been one of the primary ways we contribute to society. Through work, we prove to ourselves and others that we matter. It gives our lives purpose, structure, and validation. Without it, we risk becoming a society of passive bystanders—well-fed, perpetually entertained by artificial intelligence-generated content, and cared for by humanoid robots, but devoid of the dignity that comes from caring for others and feeling needed.
A scholarship can be pacifying; but it can also be a fuel for rebellion. A population that is materially well-off but politically powerless is unlikely to remain docile forever.
So even if governments find a way to provide a universal high income and ensure a meaningful social share of the gains brought by artificial intelligence, the answer to mass automation cannot be reduced to taxing robots and buying everyone a new Tesla. Income is important, but so is power.
This means ensuring that governments and civil society have control over the evolving AI landscape. Rules, constraints, and safeguards must not be left to powerful private-sector architects. Moreover, a significant portion of any future AI spoils should be spent on specific goods that belong to the “human economy”: care, education, the arts, local democracy. The goal would not be to create meaningless jobs, but to maintain the idea that citizenship is based on contribution.
Finally, we need global mechanisms to protect countries that don’t have leading AI companies from becoming collateral damage. One possible option would be an International AI Dividend Fund, funded by a modest tax on the profits or computing power of the largest AI and cloud companies, with payments directed to the countries most affected by automation. Such a scheme would be imperfect and politically demanding to implement, but it would at least answer the question that Musk and his colleagues ignore: Who pays for everyone else?
Tech giants offer us a future of socialism from above: they keep the means of production, we get a pocket change. Our task is to promote democracy from below. That means demanding not only a share of the wealth that AI brings, but also the power to shape and control the means that create it.
The author is an honorary professor at the UCL Policy Lab, where she leads research on artificial intelligence.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2026. (translation: NR)
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