In 2020, the Future of Life Institute published a report entitled "The Windfall Clause: Distributing the Benefits of AI for the Common Good." (They also wrote an abridged version to be published in the Proceedings of AIES. Also, fun aside: Metaculus' own @Anthony got a shout-out in the acknowledgements.) Essentially, they expanded on an idea from Bostrom's Superintelligence that a firm working on transformational AI technology could limit global inequality as a result of their breakthrough by pre-committing to keep only a fraction of the fabulous profits, and distribute the rest.

Though there are numerous obstacles barring the path to making this plan a reality, the FLI research lowers many of these bars, including investigating the legal apparatus for enacting such an agreement and envisioning some of the logistical means by which a windfall might be distributed. What really remains is buy-in. If this plan will work, it will work because the companies positioned to develop windfall AI technologies signed on to a Windfall agreement in advance.