AI Lunch + Learn: Who Deserves the AI Windfall?
Join the Center for Community-Engaged Artificial Intelligence (CEAI) and the Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science (CAIDS) for the next session of our Applied AI Lunch and Learn seminar series and enjoy a free lunch. Registration is required: Seating is limited and available on a first-registered, first-served basis. Please register at the AI Lunch + Learn Registration Form link.
TOPIC
Who Deserves the AI Windfall? The Political Economy of Advanced AI
PRESENTER
Thomas Mulligan
Principal at Acadia Research and Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University
ABSTRACT
Advanced AI promises to generate extraordinary economic gains while concentrating income and wealth among those who own the relevant models, compute, data, and complementary capital. Diverse policies have been proposed to address this possibility--universal basic income, AI-focused sovereign wealth funds, new regulatory structures, token taxes, and more. While these proposals explain how AI gains can be redistributed, they often neglect the more fundamental, normative question: Who has a moral claim on what AI produces in the first place?
I argue two things. First: Much of the income generated by AI systems reflects the contributions made by the public rather than the contributions of the companies that develop and deploy these systems. The public therefore deserves much of this income. Drawing on cooperative game theory, I show that we can rigorously distinguish the contributions made by AI companies to their systems from those made by the public. Second, I advance a novel approach to AI taxation--an ability-indexed tax on AI systems--which draws from Mirrleesian optimal tax theory and is theoretically efficient and politically viable.
I conclude by considering how increasingly capable AI interacts with familiar ideas about contribution, taxation, and citizens' just deserts--and the institutions that might justly govern an economy being transformed by AI.
BIO
Thomas Mulligan is Principal of Acadia Research, a New Orleans - based independent research and consulting firm focused on advanced AI, and a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics. His research focuses on the political economy of advanced AI and on institutional and epistemic resilience in an AI-transformed world. He is the author of a book, Justice and the Meritocratic State, and 22 articles spanning political philosophy, decision theory, and artificial intelligence. Recently, he was a Technology and Security Policy Fellow at the RAND Corporation and served as a senior executive for the City of New Orleans. Earlier in his career, he served as a Central Intelligence Agency case officer and as a U.S. Navy officer. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Tulane University.
ID REQUIREMENT
Please note that you will need a Splash Card, a driver’s license, or state ID to enter the library.
ADA ACCOMMODATIONS AND ROOM LOCATION
Enter Howard-Tilton Memorial Library at the ADA-accessible entrance at the front of the library. Proceed to the lobby elevators and take an elevator to the third floor. When you exit the elevator, the entrance to CELT/ILC will be to your left. Turn left after you enter, and the workshop room, Room 306, will be one room down and to your right.
For other ADA accommodation needs, please contact Meg Keenan at mkeenan@tulane.edu or 504-862-8381.