Common inheritance
AI rests on collective knowledge, public research, culture, data, language, labor, and discovery.
For ourselves and one another
The AI Pledge for Humanity calls on those who benefit from artificial intelligence to help build an AI dividend: a permanent, unconditional income floor that turns nonhuman labor into human freedom.
The case
The pledge is built around one simple systems claim: when machines increase productive capacity, people still need purchasing power, bargaining power, and the freedom to say no.
AI rests on collective knowledge, public research, culture, data, language, labor, and discovery.
Its gains should become an income floor for everyone, not another engine of concentrated wealth.
Unconditional income gives people exit power, bargaining power, and room to build lives beyond survival.
Those who see the disruption coming should invest now in making the safer path politically real.
The pledge text
In the spirit of common cause, and with eyes open to the Age of AI upon us, we sign this pledge.
We stand at the dawn of abundance. Artificial intelligence is poised to reshape civilization, ushering us into a future previously imagined only as science fiction. Built on humanity’s collective knowledge and creativity, AI is now unlocking capabilities beyond what once seemed possible.
AI's capabilities come from all of us. Each of us has contributed in some way to the creation of technology that now emulates us, augments us, and displaces us.
AI was trained on the labor of all; every word written, every image drawn, every song composed, every video published. It leans on discoveries we all funded, born from government research grants, public universities, and the collective achievements of generations past.
Its promise is real: AI will multiply our capabilities, automate drudgery, and generate wealth at scales previously unimaginable. As machines approach the ability to produce almost anything with minimal human labor, we face an extraordinary opportunity to transform this productivity into universal human flourishing. But this outcome is not inevitable. Another path is ever more extreme inequality, and it’s the path we’re currently on.
For fifty years, productivity has soared, yet wages have not. Most of the gains have gone to the top 1%, while the middle class has eroded. If AI is allowed to further widen the chasm between rich and poor, owners and workers, then its great promise becomes a grave threat.
This threat is compounded by those building AI who see its economic impacts coming and fail to act accordingly. When the people creating the disruption won't invest seriously in preparing for it, they send a clear message: it must not be that urgent. But it is urgent. And every month of inaction narrows the window to act.
We reject this path. The bounty of AI must serve all because it was born from the labor of all. Its gains are for sharing, not hoarding. They are a dividend of civilization and a rightful inheritance. Justice demands they be common wealth.
To ensure machines serve humanity, we must provide people directly with the purchasing power to obtain what machines create — and, just as importantly, the power to negotiate the terms of our own labor and the policies that govern our lives.
When every person has enough to live unconditionally, the power to say no enters the economy for the first time. Workers gain real power. People trapped in abusive situations gain an exit. The desperate default position that forces people to accept whatever they are given — bad wages, unsafe conditions, exploitation — loses its grip. And the millions of parents, caregivers, volunteers, and community builders doing essential work without pay are finally recognized as the workers they have always been.
An unconditional dividend does not just distribute money. It distributes freedom.
Imagine a society where everyone has a financial foundation to build upon, where the entrepreneur in every community has the security to take risks, where artists can create without starving, where scientists can explore the unknown, where parents can invest time in their children, where workers can retrain without fear. This is the promise of shared AI prosperity.
Our Pledge to Humanity
We, the undersigned, now pledge to make this vision reality:
This isn't charity. It's an investment in humanity, and a far less expensive one than the status quo. Without an income floor, we pay instead through worse health, higher crime, lower productivity, and the lifelong costs of children growing up without enough.
An AI dividend that grows with productivity is not only logical, it’s just. It’s how we turn nonhuman labor into real human freedom. It is venture capital for the human spirit—seed funding for millions of potential entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, caregivers, and innovators.
When people have money to spend, they thrive. New businesses are born. Main streets bustle. Purchasing power in the real economy empowers risk-taking and sustains small businesses. Universal income is fuel for widespread economic participation.
This idea transcends ideological lines. It’s not of the left or the right, but of the human. It’s been championed by voices across the political spectrum from Martin Luther King Jr. to Milton Friedman because it offers a direct, efficient, and nonpartisan way to guarantee freedom, economic security, and dignity for all.
It is not a panacea and need not solve every problem to be worth doing. Healthcare, education, housing, climate—these all demand attention. But an unconditional income floor via a universal dividend is the foundation upon which other structures can stand. And UBI need not wait for AI to justify it — it has long been a good idea. But AI makes it urgent.
We commit to the path where no one is left with nothing, and where machines work for everyone. And so we begin right now, investing our resources to get us onto that path.
We all made AI possible. We all deserve a share of what it makes possible.
We choose abundance over scarcity.
We choose universal prosperity over concentrated wealth.
We choose a destiny shared by all, and denied to none.
Founding signatories
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