Governing AI
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders's proposal to bring major AI companies under public ownership has gained considerable attention. The proposal itself should not come as a surprise. These companies, first, rely on information produced collectively; second, their tools become better as more users adopt them; and third, unlike industries where increasing returns to scale can often be addressed through price and quantity regulation, AI firms do not have a clear marginal cost structure and many of their tools are offered for free. As I have discussed elsewhere , these features make a public-utility approach to Big-Tech a plausible route toward public control. Guastella and Burgis , in separate articles, have supported the nationalization approach. It is worth re-emphasizing some of their key observations. Guastella presents the popular direction of AI firms as a fair and straightforward way to address the problem of companies serving private interests while benefiting from public resource...