Artificial intelligence threatens to cause a jobs shock across offices, warehouses, call centers, clinics, classrooms and more. Faced with backlash among displaced workers, the industry and its lobbyists will likely lean on cash‑transfer schemes — universal basic income and its like — as a release valve. 

That path would paper over dislocation while entrenching gatekeepers. It would weaken bargaining power at work and create new and unintended social and fiscal dependencies.

We can do better than that. We have an opportunity instead to bend the trajectory, level the playing field and ensure that the public that pays for the externalities of AI also benefits from its returns. 

What does this entail? Open and contestable markets; modern data rights; liability that governs control; guard-railing technological change to serve the shared good; and most importantly, public sharing in AI’s upside.

The U.S. should establish a professionally managed, firewall‑insulated Public AI Wealth Fund that holds diversified stakes across the AI stack and distributes an annual dividend tied to the AI upside (i.e. realized returns).

This would put the focus on public dividends, not basic income; it would give the public a meaningful, lasting stake in AI’s returns, while using competition, data, labor and energy rules to keep the field open and the harms in check.

The deal between Nvidia and AMD and the U.S government, which involves payments of 15 percent of revenue from sales of some advanced chips, provides precisely the platform to kick-start the creation of this Public AI Wealth Fund.

Capitalize it with equity warrants from firms receiving large subsidies, tax credits or preferential contracts; a compute excise above thresholds set by rulemaking; a windfall‑profits surtax on extraordinary AI margins; and location‑based fees where data centers draw on subsidized energy or water. 

Adopt a simple fiscal rule: preserve principal and pay a universal dividend from realized returns. Dividends will start off modest and grow as the fund matures, aligning public returns with performance rather than with permanent deficit finance.

Sharing in the upside should complement — not replace — open markets and individual economic choice.

Congress should treat exclusive deals as presumptively anticompetitive once market‑share triggers are met; bar self‑preferencing in AI marketplaces; and scrutinize “model‑plus‑platform” tie‑ups as potential vertical restraints. Interoperability and portability — APIs, export formats, and the ability to move fine‑tunes — should be the default, with clear timelines and contractual exit rights. These rules ensure the public is not forced to buy into entrenched barriers.

Individuals need a clear opt‑out for the use of personal data in training, a right to know whether their data was used, and remedies for unauthorized use. For high‑risk uses — hiring, housing, health care, finance and critical infrastructure — deployers should bear a duty of care: documented impact assessments, human‑in‑the‑loop plans, incident reporting, and audit trails. The burden should rest on those who profit from deployment to show they have met these duties.

The Federal Trade Commission can scrutinize deceptive AI claims, dark patterns and data misuse. The Justice Department and the FTC can challenge exclusionary bundles and exclusivity in contracts. The Securities and Exchange Commission can require disclosure of material workforce impacts from AI deployments, not just AI “strategies.” Civil‑rights agencies can enforce explainability, auditing and appeal rights in automated decisions. Energy and water regulators can require facility‑level reporting from hyperscale data centers and condition interconnects on demand‑response and conservation plans.

The executive branch and states should move in parallel. States should seed their own AI wealth funds with data‑center and related revenues and equity warrants tied to subsidized projects, coordinated with — but independent from — the national fund. A federated research cloud across universities, national labs and state innovation hubs would give academia and students access to shared AI infrastructure without having to depend on vendor credits.

Ask schools, employers and hospitals which systems they use, how they were evaluated, and how you can appeal decisions. Insist that public dollars tied to AI come with ownership, transparency and exit rights.

Talk to your elected officials and those that are running for office; tell them it is time for our nation to build a Public AI Wealth Fund.

John deVadoss was a general manager at Microsoft for two decades. He did his Ph.D. work in AI, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, specializing in Machine Learning.

The federal government said it would deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda after he declined a plea deal, according to court filings.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday offered Abrego Garcia the option to “live freely” with refugee or residency status in Costa Rica after serving prison time for federal human smuggling charges in exchange for a guilty plea, per his lawyers in the Saturday filings.

Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in his native El Salvador, declined the offer on Friday to instead return to his family in Maryland. He had been imprisoned in a Tennessee jail.

After his return to Maryland, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys were notified later in the day that he must report to an Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) field office in Baltimore on Monday — and that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intends to deport him to Uganda.

Uganda is one of the latest countries to strike an agreement with the Trump administration to accept deportees. But some critics have sounded the alarm over human rights violations in the East African country.

“The only thing that happened between Thursday—Costa Rica—and Friday—Uganda— was Mr. Abrego’s exercise of his legal entitlement to release under the Bail Reform Act and the Fifth Amendment…,” Abrego Garcia’s defense team wrote.

“There can be only one interpretation of these events: the [Justice Department], DHS, and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Abrego to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat.”

The Friday release from prison is the first time Abrego Garcia has been outside custody since March, when he was deported due to an “administrative error” and sent to a megaprison in El Salvador despite an immigration judge barring his return to his home country in 2019.

The Trump administration has previously mused about deporting Abrego Garcia to a third country.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Friday condemned the El Salvadorian native’s release, calling it a “new low.”

“Today, we reached a new low with this publicity hungry Maryland judge mandating this illegal alien who is a MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator be allowed free,” she said in a statement.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys did not offer any additional comments on the matter, and DHS did not immediately respond to inquiries.

The Wall Street Journal slammed the raid of President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton’s home on Friday, labeling it a part of the president’s “vendetta campaign.”

Law enforcement said the investigation into Bolton was over classified records stored at his residence in Bethesa, Md. But, the Journal argued the probe reeks of political “retribution.”

“It’s hard to see the raid as anything other than vindictive. Mr. Bolton fell out of Mr. Trump’s favor in the first term and then wrote a book about his experience in the White House while Mr. Trump was still President. Mr. Trump tried and failed to block publication,” a Friday op-ed from the outlet reads, referencing Bolton’s 2020 book.

“The President then claimed Mr. Bolton had exposed classified information, though the book had gone through an extensive pre-publication scrub at the White House for classified material,” it continues. 

The Journal says Trump is “out for blood,” citing other blows to Bolton, including the president’s January decision to nix his security detail.

Bolton has made frequent cable appearances critiquing Trump’s foreign diplomacy efforts, alleging the leader is a pawn for Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.  

The Journal argued on Friday that this criticism is the motive behind the federal government’s probe.

“It’s unlikely that Mr. Bolton broke any laws on national secrets, and he certainly didn’t share any with us over our long association with him. But perhaps Mr. Trump intends for the process itself to be the punishment even if there is ultimately no criminal charge,” the op-ed says. 

“Mr. Bolton has to pay for legal counsel, and his family has to endure the anxiety of being under federal government siege,” the Journal adds. 

Agents raided Bolton’s home on Friday after he left for work and confiscated his wife’s phone. 

Despite some questioning whether the raid is an act of retribution, Vice President Vance said the investigation is not tied to political revenge. 

“What I can tell you is that, unlike the Biden DOJ and the Biden FBI, our law enforcement agencies are going to be driven by law and not by politics. And so, if we think that Ambassador Bolton has committed a crime, of course, eventually prosecutions will come,” Vance told MSNBC’s Kristen Welker in an interview airing Sunday. 

Trump told reporters Friday he was unaware of the raid at Bolton’s home and would remain distant from any prosecutorial efforts led by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The president sued the Wall Street Journal a few weeks prior to the Friday op-ed over an article stating he sent a suggestive birthday card to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump slammed the outlet’s credibility in several posts following the move.

New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (D) raked in over $1 million in campaign funding in recent weeks, out-earning both former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams.

Mamdani raised just over $1 million through a pool of small donations from his grassroots campaign efforts between July 12 and Aug. 18, according to the city’s campaign finance board. 

The Democratic nominee’s average donor contributed $121 with almost an equal split of contributions from both in and outside of state.

Cuomo’s donations totaled $541,301 during the same period, with an average contribution size of $646. Some of the funding was pulled from his former state campaign account.

Adams, who is running as an independent, fundraised $425,181  with an average donation of $770.

Mamdani’s dominance in the campaign funding realm has also translated into a clear lead in the polls.

Early August surveys show him leading the five-person field race by double digits.

A poll from Sienna College found Mamdani ahead of his challengers by almost 20 points, while a poll average from Decision Desk HQ’s (DDHQ) projects him besting Cuomo, who is also running as an independent, by 13 points. 

Mamdani’s policies promoting a rent freeze, city run grocery stores and free childcare has resonated with voters in recent weeks, with some dubbing him the “champion” of working class voters.

If elected, he’d become New York City’s second democratic socialist mayor.