OpenAI Backs 32-Hour Workweeks and Portable Benefits in New Policy Paper

OpenAI on Monday released a document titled “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age,” outlining three broad policy goals for the AI transition: sharing prosperity widely, mitigating risks, and democratizing access and agency.

The document states that the world is entering the transition to superintelligence and argues that the policy decisions made today will shape how its benefits and risks are distributed for decades to come.

Proposed Policies

The paper proposes several practical steps, including requiring AI data centres to bear their own energy costs, generate local employment and tax revenue, and operate under sensible regulations focused on child safety, national security, and innovation. It also supports public-private coordination through research funding, workforce development, market-shaping tools, and targeted regulation.

The recommendations extend to labour and social policy. The document calls for giving workers a formal voice in how AI is deployed, introducing portable benefits that move with individuals across jobs, and creating automatic safety nets that activate during AI-driven disruptions. It also advocates for a “right to AI,” ensuring that schools, workers, small businesses, and underserved communities can access foundational models affordably.

To ensure broad participation in AI-driven gains, the paper suggests modernizing the tax base, creating a Public Wealth Fund, expanding grid capacity, and translating efficiency gains into higher wages, improved care support, and potentially shorter workweeks.

The second half of the document focuses on resilience. It calls for stronger audits, provenance tools, containment plans, incident reporting systems, model safeguards, and international information-sharing mechanisms to prepare for emerging cyber, biological, and other risks.

Why Policy Matters?

Framed as an early-stage policy discussion, OpenAI emphasises the need to keep people at the centre as AI evolves from handling short tasks to managing work that could soon span months.

The document argues that superintelligence could accelerate scientific discovery, reduce costs, boost productivity, and create new forms of work, creativity, and entrepreneurship, provided governments and institutions act quickly to shape its trajectory.

At the same time, it warns that advanced AI could exacerbate inequality, disrupt jobs and industries, empower malicious actors, weaken human oversight of powerful systems, and concentrate wealth and power. To manage these challenges, the paper reiterates its three core goals: broad-based prosperity, risk reduction, and democratized access and agency. It stresses that AI should improve living standards for all, remain safe and controllable, and not be confined to a small elite.

The document also makes a case for a new industrial policy, drawing on historical precedents such as the Progressive Era and the New Deal, when democratic societies built institutions to respond to disruptive technological change.

It concludes by describing the proposals as starting points for a democratic, global, and iterative conversation, adding that OpenAI is actively seeking feedback and convening discussions to advance the process.