Data Compensation

Stevenson proposes a "digital dividend" that treats AI-driven surplus as a collective product built on shared data, public infrastructure, and centuries of accumulated knowledge. Unlike traditional UBI framed as a handout, her dividend is structured as a return on a shared asset; citizens contribute data into the system and receive a dividend from that shared resource. She argues this framing preserves dignity and meaning while decoupling income from employment status, and compares the mechanism to Alaska's Permanent Fund but with data rather than oil as the underlying resource.

The Atlantic Council's GeoTech Center has advocated for data trusts as a mechanism to capture economic value from aggregated personal data — such as patient records, smart city data, or gig worker behavior — and redistribute it as annual dividends to data providers. The Council notes that American Airlines secured a $4.7 billion government loan using its loyalty database as collateral (valued at $18–30 billion), illustrating how a data trust managing similar assets could provide sizable dividends to members, potentially funding universal basic income for workers in an increasingly uncertain labor market.

Lanier and Weyl coined the term "data dignity" to describe a system where individuals are paid for the data they generate and pay for services that require data from others—replacing the current model of surveillance capitalism. They propose "Mediators of Individual Data" (MIDs), union-like organizations that would negotiate data royalties and engage in collective bargaining on behalf of data creators.

Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang launched the Data Dividend Project through his nonprofit Humanity Forward, aiming to mobilize one million Americans to "establish and enforce data property rights" under laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The project asks supporters to submit their email addresses to estimate how many platforms profit from their data, with the goal of building collective bargaining power to demand compensation.