What we fight for
Ten proposals to keep the power and wealth generated by artificial intelligence under people's control, and the manifesto behind them.
The wealth AI creates must come back to the people whose work, words and research built it.
01
Groups with global revenues above €750m pay 10% of their revenue from AI and robotics. The money funds the public services in point 4 and supports workers who lose their jobs to automation while they retrain. Part of it goes to the writers, artists and researchers whose work was used to train these systems without their consent.
02
Very large fortunes pay an annual tax that rises with their size, and billionaires pay at least 2% of their wealth every year. Income from capital is taxed at the same rates as wages, and we close the inheritance and residence loopholes the very rich use to avoid paying. Private donations to parties and campaigns are capped, and no one may own a dominant share of a country's media.
03
A handful of companies own the computing power, cloud services and data that modern life depends on. We break up these monopolies and build public and cooperative alternatives, from computing capacity open to universities, small firms and civic projects to open models developed in the public interest. The data people produce is held in trust for them, not sold.
04
If machines do more of the work, people should see the gains in their own lives. The Terminator Tax and the wealth tax pay to expand public services. Priorities will differ from country to country, but some must become rights everywhere: free education, healthcare and childcare, and paid paternity leave equal to maternity leave. Where rent takes half a salary, affordable homes come first.
05
The largest data centres use as much water and electricity as a small city, and the tech giants building them have watched their own emissions rise instead of fall. A new data centre gets a permit only if it brings its own new renewable power, pays for the grid upgrades it causes and stays within strict water limits, and the towns that host it share in its revenue and its waste heat. The same principle holds across the economy: whoever profits from pollution pays for the transition. Workers in fossil industries are guaranteed a new job or their income as those sectors close.
No system may decide over a human life without a person who can be held to account, and every people deserves to shape its own future, free from the domination of any empire, state or corporation.
06
The public must always be able to switch off an AI system. The most powerful models need democratic approval before release and a shutdown mechanism tested by an independent authority, which can suspend them at any time. Executives who bring a system to market without these safeguards are personally liable for the harm it causes.
07
When an automated system makes a decision about someone's job, loan, benefits or medical care, that person can challenge it before someone accountable for the outcome. At work, a major AI deployment needs the agreement of workers' representatives, and the people whose jobs are changing have a say in how. In war, no machine may decide to kill, and we back a treaty banning weapons that select and attack human targets on their own.
08
AI gives governments powers no secret police ever had, from cameras that recognise every face in a crowd to software that reads every message. We ban real-time facial recognition in public spaces, mass interception of communications and social scoring, whether a state does it or buys it from a company. Platforms may not track people to target them with ads or political messages. Any use of AI by police or intelligence services needs a judge's authorisation and is reported publicly, and encryption stays strong, without back doors.
09
International law must bind the powerful as firmly as the weak, including our own allies. We end arms sales, dual-use exports and trade privileges for any government whose leaders face an ICC arrest warrant, until the conduct behind the warrant stops. Foreign troops and nuclear weapons leave national soil as a common defence among democracies replaces them. Every country also has to face its own history, from colonial wars to dictatorship.
10
No single country can tax billionaires, govern AI or resist empires on its own. We call for a constituent convention for a federal union of democracies, open to any country that meets independently verified democratic standards; a member that stops meeting them loses its place. A parliament elected directly by citizens would govern defence, foreign policy, AI and the taxation of the largest fortunes. Until then, the rules for AI should be made at the United Nations, where every country has a vote, and middle powers and the global majority should pool their computing power and build open public models together instead of renting from Washington and Beijing.
These ten proposals are where we start, not where we end. Join us to argue, improve and fight for them.
