Sanders proposed a 50% equity tax on AI giants, with the wife of a DeepMind scientist as the driving force behind it.

According to CoinWorld, Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a bill proposing a 50% equity tax on AI companies with annual sales exceeding $200 million to establish a sovereign wealth fund. The bill's advisor is Sarah Boltz, a law professor at UC Davis, whose husband, Adam Brown, leads Google's DeepMind subsidiary, Blueshift. Under the proposal, eligible AI companies would be required to contribute half of their equity to the fund, managed by a seven-member bipartisan committee nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. This committee would have the authority to appoint directors to AI companies and participate in major decisions, and would distribute approximately 5% of the fund's value annually to all citizens, estimated at around $1,000 per person per year. This proposal has sparked anxiety in the venture capital community, with critics arguing that a heavy tax could scare away private equity capital. However, Boltz and co-author Jeremy Baylor-Frend believe that the public should share in the value of large models as owners. The bill has garnered support among some AI developers; former Google researcher Joel Sauer agrees, stating that technologists are already reflecting on the way large models are built and the issue of wealth concentration.