American Enterprise Institute
Centre-right DC think tank shaping Republican policy on AI, trade, foreign affairs, and elections.
On 22 March, American Enterprise Institute argued that AI tools raise lower-skilled workers’ performance, challenging Senator Bernie Sanders’s case for a levy on AI-driven layoffs.
Last refreshed: 22 September 2026 · Appears in 2 active topics
Can AEI's market-optimist AI case survive the MAGA foreign-policy rupture that has made it a lightning rod on the right?
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Pandemics and BiosecurityBackground
American Enterprise Institute is a centre-right think tank in Washington, DC, founded in 1938. It works across economic policy, domestic policy and foreign affairs, and is associated with free-market advocacy.
Its 22 March intervention on AI and work shows how the institute applies that outlook to new economic questions. AEI argued that existing evidence did not support treating AI primarily as a destroyer of jobs, instead describing the technology as a tool that can improve lower-skilled workers’ performance.
AEI remains relevant because its research and scholars contribute to arguments inside the American right on markets, government and Foreign Policy. In March, MAGA critics cast the broader neoconservative establishment as responsible for the Iran campaign, illustrating the ideological pressure on institutions associated with Republican policy expertise.
AEI defends AI as an equaliser
On 22 March, American Enterprise Institute rejected Senator Bernie Sanders’s account of AI-driven job displacement. It argued that AI tools act as skill equalisers, raising the performance of workers with less experience rather than simply eliminating their roles.
That intervention placed AEI in the policy argument over how the United States should respond to automation. Sanders’s proposed per-position levy treated displacement as a looming fiscal and Labour-market threat; AEI’s response defended a market-led reading of the available evidence.