OpenAI Calls for New Economic Rules and Industrial Policy for AI Era

OpenAI argues that if AI advances toward superintelligence, productivity and corporate profits could surge while eroding the wage-based tax base and disrupting social safety nets and employment. Its policy blueprint therefore puts wealth distribution, worker protections and safeguards against concentrated power at the heart of a government-led rewrite of the social contract for the AI era.

OpenAI released “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age” on April 6, 2026, outlining 20 policy ideas. They include taxing automated labor, creating a public wealth fund and piloting a 32-hour, four-day workweek with no reduction in pay. The report does not specify tax rates, the size of the fund or an implementation timetable, and is intended as a starting point for policy debate.