Research & Insights

Predistribution AI Lab Discussion Paper Series - Part II: Beyond Ghost GDP: Who Owns Our Future? A Predistributive Blueprint for the AI Transition

This discussion paper, the second in PDI's Predistribution AI Lab series, offers practical models for addressing risks identified in Part I of the series, particularly via broadening equity-linked compensation and corporate governance participation to include workers, communities, and content creators who take risk and create value alongside executives and investors in the production process. The report further contextualizes the current technological transition in the broader backdrop of decades of declining returns to labor versus capital, depreciating cash relative to appreciating asset values, and corporate governance that is more strongly oriented toward shareholders versus other corporate stakeholders. At the core of Part II is a recognition that the economy and productivity have been advanced in recent history through the contributions of workers (formally and informally employed, collectively “human capital”), communities who host infrastructure and natural resources projects (collectively “social capital”), and content creators and others who provide data which has advanced technology (a mix of human and social capital). However, with financial capital being prioritized by corporate governance over human, social, and natural capital, these other stakeholders have not been compensated in a manner that keeps pace with financial capital, resulting in rising economic inequality, misalignment of incentives across stakeholder groups, disenfranchisement, loss of trust in institutions, polarization, and domestic and geopolitical conflict. Broadening ownership and governance of companies can align stakeholder incentives to contribute to technological advancements, leverage important perspectives to safely train and roll-out AI, and sustain the aggregate demand upon which the economy and financial portfolios depend.