What to Know About OpenAI’s Ideas for a World With ‘Superintelligence’
Source: What to Know About OpenAI’s Ideas for a World With ‘Superintelligence’ Publisher: The Wall Street Journal | Author: Amrith Ramkumar Published: April 6, 2026 | Archived: April 6, 2026
April 6, 2026 5:30 am ET
OpenAI released policy proposals for a world with superintelligence—or artificial intelligence that far surpasses human capabilities.
The ideas could represent trillions of dollars of new government programs. They were published as Congress prepares to debate AI legislation and the Trump administration tries to win support for its company-friendly tech policies ahead of the midterm elections. The proposals come as the AI industry faces pressure to share the benefits of the technology with consumers and their advancements encounter pushback from some Americans.
Here’s what to know:
An AI-centric tax system
In its report “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age,” OpenAI says superintelligence could boost corporate profits and capital gains while cutting income and payroll taxes that fund government programs like Social Security. That may create the need for higher taxes on companies and capital gains for the wealthy, along with new ideas like taxing businesses that replace human workers with automated systems.
Some experts predict the industry could achieve so-called artificial general intelligence—or AI that matches human thinking—in the next few years. Superintelligence would follow that.
Workers risk being left behind
Many of the ChatGPT maker’s ideas focus on benefiting workers. They include bolstering safety nets such as unemployment insurance and Medicaid, and creating incentives for firms to increase employer-sponsored benefits including those for retirement and healthcare. Companies could experiment with shorter workweeks while keeping pay constant and support so-called portable benefits that follow individuals rather than being tied to an employer, OpenAI suggested in its report.
The company also proposed a public investment fund focused on AI that could regularly distribute returns to Americans, a concept similar to a sovereign-wealth fund in Alaska. It said the government could make it easier for workers to get jobs in human-centric fields like child care and could do more to recognize caregiving as work valuable to the economy.
Addressing the industry’s unpopularity
Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, said in an interview that Democrats and Republicans are beginning to hear more from constituents worried about how AI will affect their job prospects.
“We do feel an urgency to this conversation,” Lehane said.
The company is opening a new office in Washington to have policy conversations and funding fellowships and research grants on the topics.
OpenAI wants to stay bipartisan
OpenAI has embraced President Trump’s AI strategy, including his approach of limited guardrails for the industry. But it is trying to maintain credibility with Democrats and AI researchers who have cheered rival Anthropic for fighting with the administration over what are appropriate guardrails.
OpenAI aligns with Trump’s position that limited regulation is needed to stay ahead of China in the tech race. The company included policy ideas in line with the White House’s approach, such as giving everyone access to AI and investing more in the power grid so it can handle additional AI data centers.
Other concepts were more in line with some proposals from the Biden administration, such as cooperating with the rest of the world in identifying dangerous AI systems and containing them while giving the government a bigger role in evaluating models.
News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.
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Appeared in the April 7, 2026, print edition as ‘OpenAI Charts Policy Ideas for an AI Future’.
Amrith Ramkumar is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington covering tech and crypto policy. He previously covered clean energy and was a Journal markets reporter in New York who wrote about special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, when SPAC mergers were a popular alternative to traditional initial public offerings. He also previously wrote about stocks and commodities, including battery metals such as lithium and cobalt.
Amrith joined the Journal as a markets intern after graduating from Duke in 2017.
