IT Home October 23 news: The Washington Post published a blog post yesterday (October 22) reporting that three AI giants — Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceXSI — are brewing "the largest wealth donation in modern history," which could amount to nearly 300 billion US dollars (IT Home note: approximately 2.01 trillion yuan at current exchange rates).
Anthropic announced it will donate 5% of the company's shares to a new public-interest fund. If the company reaches a valuation of 2 trillion US dollars at its IPO (approximately 13.38 trillion yuan at current exchange rates), the fund could reach 100 billion US dollars (approximately 668.823 billion yuan at current exchange rates); its seven founders have also pledged to donate 80% of their personal wealth. The money could be used to subsidize specific groups affected by AI automation and to fund related research.
OpenAI's charitable foundation reportedly holds about a quarter of the company's shares, worth more than 1,800 亿美元 (approximately 1.2 万亿元人民币 at current exchange rates), and has already invested 8.55 亿美元 (approximately 57.18 亿元人民币 at current exchange rates) in public welfare projects.
Musk, meanwhile, saidhe plans to gift every child in the United States a share of SpaceX next year; based on SpaceX's recent share price, the total donation could exceed 11 billion US dollars (approximately 73.57 billion yuan at current exchange rates).
However, the outlet also pointed out that most of these "donations" are unlisted equity or future pledges, and the actual disposable amount depends heavily on the IPO valuations of Anthropic and OpenAI and on SpaceX's share price.
The outlet interpreted this as follows: on one hand, this charitable giving promotes the commercialization of the technology, but more importantly it responds to the potential shocks it may cause to employment, income distribution and social stability, downplaying the impact of "AI taking jobs."