1. United States
2. Idaho
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to consider the unprecedented economic challenges we may face as artificial intelligence continues its rapid advancement toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). For two centuries, the Industrial Revolution and subsequent technological shifts have followed a reassuring pattern: disruption, transition, and the emergence of new jobs. Throughout this period, labor remained the scarcest and most valuable factor in our economy, ensuring that human workers captured the gains from productivity growth through rising wages. We were the bottleneck, and that made us valuable. However, if the quest for AGI succeeds, we face something qualitatively different. When machines can perform not just specific tasks but learn new jobs faster and more cheaply than humans, the historical pattern breaks down. Labor itself may become optional for economic growth. When a machine can do a worker's job, that worker's wage will eventually fall toward the machine's operating cost, regardless of how many new sectors emerge. The good news is that AGI would generate enormous economic gains and dramatically increase total output. The challenge—and the urgent policy question—is ensuring that humans share in that abundance when our labor is no longer required to generate it. Historically, wages have been the primary mechanism for broadly distributing economic benefits. We may soon need new mechanisms that decouple income from labor: broad-based capital ownership, universal basic income, or approaches we haven't yet imagined. We need to start building those institutions now, before the transition is upon us. I urge you to prioritize legislative frameworks that address this potential transformation, ensuring that technological progress benefits all Americans, not just capital owners. The decisions we make today will determine whether AGI leads to shared prosperity or deepening inequality.