Another election season is almost upon us, which means the rich and powerful are once again making lofty, dubious promises to the American public.
Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and not exactly a shining beacon of altruism, claimed in an X post early Monday morning that he would “give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America” next year. “This will be the first of many,” he added.
A social media post at 4am is a far cry from a legally binding pledge, of course, and it leaves many unanswered questions. For example, would the shares go to any minor under the age of eighteen or only to younger kids? Does “every kid in America” apply only to U.S. citizens? And by “first of many,” is Musk saying he’ll give away additional shares to more people in the future?
As Axios pointed out, with a little under 72 million legal minors in the U.S. and SpaceX shares priced at $146.03 as of Friday’s closing bell, that’d come out to a total giveaway of just over $10.5 billion—incredibly, only around 0.01% of Musk’s net worth. His market ambitions for the future of SpaceX, which was founded with the ultimate goal of helping humans colonize Mars and “spread the light of consciousness” throughout the cosmos, are similarly extraterrestrial in scope: “This will sound super crazy,” Musk said in another X post earlier this month, “but I see a path to SpaceX being worth orders of magnitude more than the current Earth economy.”
Good ol’ fashioned corporate one-upmanship also may have played a role in prompting Musk’s unofficial pledge: It arrived less than twenty-four hours after a similar pledge from Anthropic, the AI unicorn that could be valued at around $1.5 trillion following its much-anticipated stock market debut, expected shortly after next month’s midterms.
The startup said in a blog post on Sunday that it was launching a wholly-owned LLC funded by a portion of its shares, and “dedicated expressly to the public good.” That could come in the form of “large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations,” according to the blog post. The LLC, which Anthropic is calling its public benefit fund, would initially hold 5% of the company’s total shares, though the blog post added that this figure must first be approved by stockholders. From there, an additional 2% of shares would be added every time the company’s valuation jumps another 50% over an established baseline (which wasn’t specified in the post). The fund would not go towards lobbying or political donations, Anthropic promised.
Neither Musk nor Anthropic’s leaders are running for elected office, of course, but the technology on which their companies are based is expected to be a central issue in the upcoming midterms.
A survey conducted by NBC and published last month found that almost two in every three American adults (70%) are more concerned about the impacts of AI than excited about any benefits it might bring, a skepticism undoubtedly born in part by the fact that Musk, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and many other prominent figures in Silicon Valley have predicted that the technology will upend the job market and even potentially lead to human extinction. Many lawmakers on either side of the political aisle, sensing the winds of public opinion, have started calling for federal regulation of the AI industry, with its dependency on sprawling data centers and huge reserves of power.
Seen in that light, Musk’s and Anthropic’s ostensibly magnanimous gestures feel more like politicking than goodwill. And maybe it’s just because it’s hard not to see political motives everywhere during election season, but it’s also hard to look at corporate promises like these and not see a resemblance to Trump’s (highly questionable) pledge to pay every American adult $5,000 if Republicans are able to hold on to control of the House and the Senate next month. The “Trump Dividend,” as the 80-year-old commander-in-chief has called it, would, according to one estimate, cost taxpayers well over $1 trillion. It would also need to be approved by Congress and could very well be illegal.
Unlike Trump, whose $5,000 check scheme feels like a straight-up desperate political bribe, Musk and Anthropic don’t need the majority of Americans to vote for them in order to hold onto their wealth and power. But they do need to curate a narrative around AI that will win American hearts and minds—something stronger than the currently prevailing narrative, which revolves in large measure around sprawling data centers, job loss, and armageddon. For now, that’s about as tall an order as Trump’s aspiration to turn next month’s elections in his favor.
