AI LLM Use Disclosure:
The thinking, analogies, questions, and language in this post are mine. I used AI LLM as an editing tool and to pull in research references. I have read, rewritten, and fully endorse every word here.
I have been reading a lot of narratives from leaders leveraging AI for efficiency, and from companies building AI models for transformative value delivery. What I have not read enough about is this: what happens to the people losing their jobs due to AI agentic models?
We know white-collar jobs — software, legal, finance — are the first to be hit. We are already seeing large organisations lay off workers under the language of efficiency and cost reduction. The wealth being generated is increasingly concentrating into two or three companies. The disruption is distributed across millions of workers.
We have been here before.
When Norway found oil, they did not let extraction companies simply take the value out of the country. They taxed oil companies at 78% and created a sovereign wealth fund — now worth over $2 trillion — to benefit future generations. The wealth stayed connected to the people it affected.
Nigeria had the same resource. Very different outcome. The difference was not the oil. It was the policy.
OpenAI itself proposed in April 2026: robot taxes, a nationally managed public wealth fund, and automatic safety net triggers when AI displacement hits preset thresholds. The conversation is starting. But it is not moving fast enough.
UBI pilots in Finland and the Netherlands showed something important — not dramatic employment recovery, but improved wellbeing, stability, and confidence. Exactly what people need when the ground shifts under them.
So here are the three questions I want to leave with this community:
1. Attribution — the problem nobody has solved yet.
Before any fund or levy can work, we need to establish how we prove that a specific person lost their job because of AI — and not market shifts or restructuring. Who defines the threshold? Who audits it? Without this, any policy has a loophole big enough to drive a data centre through.
2. The Norway model applied to AI.
If oil companies paid 78% tax into a fund that outlasted the oil itself, what is the equivalent ask of AI companies generating billions through automation? A mandatory AI displacement levy, ring-fenced into a sovereign fund governments can draw from — is this viable? What would make it work, and what would kill it?
3. Worker equity in the machine that replaced them.
What if companies were required to allocate a small percentage of their AI-driven productivity gains — as Disruption ETF units or equity stakes — directly to the employees they displace? When the job goes, the worker holds a share in the wealth
that replaced them. Not charity. Not retraining vouchers. Ownership. Is this a product someone is already building?
And I will say this — a handful of us who have been working in the impact space have been quietly thinking about what a real solution or product could look like. Something that could make this transition, and the layoffs that come with it, less disruptive for the people on the receiving end. We are early. We do not have it figured out. But we are
thinking about it seriously.
If this question resonates with you — reach out. And equally open to the ideas on how to manage this transition?
