Open AI: "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First" (April 2026)

 

 

I have been looking at the way in which the various elements of the tech vanguard has sought to project their efforts to constitute both a common language and a common vision of a future dominated by the products, processes, and structures they develop, first to advance human collective development, and then perhaps to reshape it, that is to oversee the elaboration of systems at one point were instruments of human development and then may become the drivers of development in humans are the instruments and objects.  There is profit to be made either way, even if that profit is manifested in the privileges of a managerial or oversight vanguard (perhaps identified by their "ownership" of economic collectives that tend to tech based organisms and their components. 

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Palantir sought to engage in the discussion from the perspective of the organization of human collectives, leaving for later the relationship between that human collective and the collection of tech based organisms created and deployed or in conversation with those human collectives.  Reflections on the Palantir "Manifesto": The Oracular Semiosis of a "Technological Republic" Within its Own Cage of Techno-Modernization. Anthrop/c, on the other hand, it reduces technology to a tool the deployment of which is a critical instrument in competition among different and divergent normative political-economic models. Science Fiction Double Feature: Anthrop\c's "2028: Two scenarios for global AI leadership," in the Shadow of Palantir's "Manifesto". Both seek a common language, even if that language hides the fracture in the meanings and values represented by words or other communicative symbols, actions, devices, etc. A Common Language Containing Differentiating Meanings Within Evolving International Standards for Sustainability Disclosure in Financial Statements: IFRS Foundation 2025 Annual Report—Fit for the Future. These represent variations on a global conversation about development. That conversation, like our common language is separated by the differences in the cognitive cages  within which political-economic systems can be crafted from out of the ideology necessarily produced from within the ordering of reality possible within such cages. Reflections on 张冠梓: 从世界历史纵深把握中国式现代化的时代价值 [Zhang Guanzi, Grasping the Contemporary Value of Chinese Modernization from the Depth of World History ]--The Marxist Variation on Leninism and the Constitution/Realization of Modernization. Each in its own way worries about the construction of barriers that preserve a space for their own variation of modernization, while preventing subversion of that project by others with different realities and objects. 肃清反动分子的任何阴谋破坏活动 [Eliminate any act of conspiracy or sabotage by reactionary elements]: 中华人民共和国反外国不当域外管辖条例 [Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Countering Improper Extraterritorial Jurisdiction by Foreign States].

Now comes Open AI into the American conversation. In its April 2026 discursive object "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First" (April 2026), Open AI seeks to signify technology, enterprise role in technology, the state, and the masses within the cognitive construct that is the political economic model of the U.S. Republic. Its fundamental ordering premise is an objectives based progress but one significantly different from that of Marxist-Leninist progress:

The drive to understand has always powered human progress—creating a flywheel from science to technology, from technology to discovery, and from discovery onward to more science. That inexorable forward movement led us to melt sand, add impurities, structure it with atomic precision into computer chips, run energy through those chips, and build systems capable of creating increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. ("Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First" p.2)

This drive now presents the possibility of disorienting change (and by disorienting one can mean a change in the orientation of society and its self-conceptions, as well as the mechanics and politics of its operations). "This shift will reshape how organizations run, how knowledge is created, and how people find meaning and opportunity. It will also highlight the limitations of today’s policy toolkit and the need for more ambitious ideas to keep people at the center of the transition to superintelligence." (Ibid.).

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As Lenin never tired of asking, then, "What is to Be Done?." Lenin of course suggested  the constitution of professional revolutionaries which eventually became as the victorious elements of a vanguard of social forces, the driving force in the management of social modernization toward the constitution of a communist society. What does Open AI want? It wants a transformed society in which the society remains insulated from the consequences of transformation. It wants from artificial intelligence the continuity of an artificial society that can preserve the outward appearance of, not continuity, but sameness within a social system marked specifically by foundationally transformative change.

While we strongly believe that AI’s benefits will far outweigh its challenges, we are clear-eyed about the risks—of jobs and entire industries being disrupted; bad actors misusing the technology; misaligned systems evading human control; governments or institutions deploying AI in ways that undermine democratic values; and power and wealth becoming more concentrated instead of more widely shared. Indeed, we highlight these risks here to raise awareness of the need for policy solutions to address them. Unless policy keeps pace with technological change, the institutions and safety nets needed to navigate this transition could fall behind. Ensuring that AI expands access, agency, and opportunity is a central challenge as we move towards superintelligence. We should aim for a future where
superintelligence benefits everyone,

That is indeed a tall order.  It is one in which Baudrillard's notion of simulacra is inverted in a sense, where the object of artificial intelligence is not to create simulacra but to transform humanity into a living simulation of itself. 

To those ends Open AI offers a program, or better put a path--not the Socialist Path of Marxist Leninism that carriers its travelers toward a communist society, but an AI Path that leads to a hyper static social order made more palatable through the miracle of technology. That is not a bad thing, it is just that such a vision can be understood only be reference to the dialectics and the transformations that the path grounded in non-transformative transformation must lead--both for human and virtual collectives. 

What are the markers of this path?: (1) Share prosperity broadly; (2) mitigate risk; and (3) democratize access and agency. ("Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First" p.3). That provides the basis for a "New Industrial Policy.":

Society has navigated major technological transitions before, but not without real disruption and dislocation along the way. While those transitions ultimately created more prosperity, they required proactive political choices to ensure that growth translated into broader opportunity and greater security. * * * History shows that democratic societies can respond to technological upheaval with ambition: reimagining the social contract, mediating between capital and labor, and encouraging broad distribution of the benefits of technological progress while preserving pluralism, constitutional checks and balances, and freedom to innovate. The transition to superintelligence will require an even more ambitious form of industrial policy, one that reflects the ability of democratic societies to act collectively, at scale, to shape their economic future so that superintelligence benefits everyone. On this path to superintelligence, there are clear steps we need to take today. People are already concerned about what AI will mean for their lives—whether their jobs and families will be safe, and whether data centers will disrupt their communities and raise energy prices.(Ibid., pp. 3-4).

To those ends a vanguard is needed--not markets ("In normal times, the case for letting markets work on their own is strong. * * * But industrial policy can play an important role when market forces alone aren’t sufficient—when new technologies create opportunities and risks that existing institutions aren’t equipped to manage. It can help translate scientific breakthroughs into scaled industries and broad-based economic growth." Ibid., p. 4). The "State" then is necessary (ibid., pp. 4-5), one well informed by a vanguard of techno-leading forces committed to the (re)constitution of the ideal of the American golden age. (See my discussion "Liberal Democratic Leninism in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Tech Driven Social Progress: Remarks by Director Kratsios at the Endless Frontiers Retreat and "The Golden Age of American Innovation"). This may also require a great democratic patriotic campaign. See "The golden age of America begins right now": Text of Mr. Trump's 2nd Inaugural Address 20 January 2025 and Brief Reflections." But this new State leadership is to be crafted as a united front of institutionalized collective consultative democracy.

A new industrial policy agenda should use government's existing toolbox for aligning public and private activities: research funding, workforce development, market-shaping tools, and targeted regulation. But governments should not act alone. Nongovernmental institutions should pilot new approaches, measure what works, and iterate quickly, then governments should reinforce successes by aligning incentives and scaling what works through procurement, regulation, and investment. This public-private collaboration should stave off regulatory capture and centralized control, instead preserving the freedom to innovate while ensuring that the onset of superintelligence isn’t dominated by the most powerful forces in society. "(Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First" p.4).

And beneath this exterior analytics is fear--a fear of a world in which the necessary balance between consumers and producers is upended and producers, having shorn themselves of income absorbing consumers will have no one to consume the products that are now created by non-human life forms (Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass; Behind the Curtain: A white-collar bloodbath).  And then the fantasy becomes real (AI firms should face 'minimum wage for robots' to limit job cuts, says tech boss).

This is the American analogue to the Chinese  modernization of Leninist democracy, but one with American characteristics meant to elaborate American values.  (On the Chinese variation see Larry Catá Backer, A Democratic Consultative Constitutionalism for Marxist-Leninist (Socialist) Political Systems—The Theory and Structure of “Whole(Socialist) Political Systems—The Theory and Structure of “Whole
Process People’s Democracy” (全过程人民民主)). The structure of this preservative transfornmaiton includes several parts: (1) building an open economy (Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First" pp.4-8); (2) building a resilient society (ibid., 9-12). Each is elaborated  with policy suggesitons that mean to keep the structures of the social order and its cognitive cages even as it transforms some or all of its "insides." A nice conservative approach.

But I leave the assessment of these plans to the reader. The  Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First" may be accessed online HERE. It also follows below.