AI is likely to generate economic gains to rival the most productive decades of the past century. However, these returns will flow primarily to those who own AI infrastructure, and most of the world’s population is not connected to the systems in which that wealth accumulates.
The people furthest from these gains are not the white-collar workers who are dominating the discussion. The deeper problem is the roughly 700 million people living in extreme poverty who hold the lowest asset ownership, the weakest representation, and the least access to digital infrastructure. They will be excluded not because AI takes their jobs, but because they hold no stake in what it creates.
Windfall Trust is building a coalition of actors interested in directly tackling the issue of global inequality in AI-driven economic futures. We propose the founding of a global endowment on behalf of all of humanity, beginning its distribution to raise the floor where it is the lowest. The Fund will create a shared stake in that prosperity for those the market will not reach.
Windfall Trust is a global policy accelerator preparing society for the economic disruption of transformative AI.
Our mission is to ensure that the economic benefits of advanced AI are broadly shared, rather than captured by a few. We do this by raising awareness, building coalitions, and strengthening the evidence base for policy action.
Our Scenarios Program convenes economists, AI researchers, policymakers and civil society leaders to explore plausible economic futures and identify the policy responses each future demands. The workshops are complemented by the Policy Atlas, Windfall’s evolving map of policy options for governments preparing for AI’s economic consequences. Our Global Dividend Fund is an initiative intended to respond directly to the growing issue of global inequality in AI economic futures.