OpenAI wants to give us 5% of its success. It's a bad bargain.

Link: OpenAI proposes handing Trump administration 5% stake, by Cristina Criddle in the Financial TimesIn order to ward off backlash against AI and curry favor with the Trump administration, Sam Altman has floated the idea of giving 5% of OpenAI to a wealth fund that pays dividends to both the government and citizens — and that every leading AI vendor should do the same.“Sam Altman, chief executive of the ChatGPT maker, has argued that giving the public a financial stake in the company is the best way to share the upside of AI and has suggested a stake of this size in early conversations with the administration, according to two people familiar with the talks.”It’s transparently a way to align everyone with AI vendor profits. If the sector increases in value, the government and the voting population benefit. If it decreases in value … well, the government is incentivized to prevent that from happening. It also wouldn’t be without precedent: it’s modeled on the Alaska Permanent Fund,…