OpenAI calls for a people-first industrial policy as superintelligence approaches

OpenAI used an unusual venue for a major AI announcement this week: policy. In a paper published on April 6, 2026 titled Industrial policy for the Intelligence Age, the company argues that the transition from today’s frontier models to superintelligence will be disruptive enough that governments cannot rely on small regulatory patches. OpenAI frames the issue as a broad economic and institutional redesign problem, not only a model-safety problem.

The document says society should aim for three parallel outcomes. First, AI-driven gains should be shared broadly rather than captured by a small group of firms or asset owners. Second, governments and companies need stronger institutions to mitigate misuse, alignment failures, and concentration of power. Third, access to useful AI should be democratized so participation in the AI economy does not depend only on access to the most powerful closed systems.

OpenAI’s paper is notable because it tries to move the conversation beyond conventional talking points about innovation versus regulation. The company explicitly says AI data centers should pay their own way on energy so households are not subsidizing the build-out, and that local communities should see jobs and tax revenue from that infrastructure. It also argues that policy should protect children, address national-security risks, and avoid regulatory capture that locks in incumbents.

On the labor side, the document puts unusual emphasis on worker voice during AI deployment. OpenAI argues that employees know where AI can improve safety, remove repetitive work, and raise job quality, and it suggests policies that would let workers shape adoption rather than simply absorb it. The paper also outlines ideas around “AI-first entrepreneurs,” a broader “right to AI,” and modernization of the tax base as profits and capital gains rise relative to labor income.

OpenAI is pairing the paper with concrete follow-through. It says it is collecting feedback at a dedicated email address, launching fellowships and focused research grants of up to $100,000 plus up to $1 million in API credits, and convening policy discussions at a new OpenAI Workshop in Washington, DC opening in May. That combination matters: it turns a position paper into an attempt to shape the policy ecosystem around advanced AI.

The practical impact will depend on whether policymakers, labor groups, researchers, and other AI companies treat this as a starting point rather than a corporate manifesto. Even so, the release is significant because it signals that one of the field’s leading labs now expects the economic transition around advanced AI to be large enough to require new institutions, new distribution mechanisms, and a more explicit public debate about who benefits from the intelligence economy.