新镀金时代需要公民领袖，而不仅仅是慈善家（博客）

With AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic expected to generate enormous personal fortunes in the years ahead, speculation is already mounting about how this new class of ultra-wealthy individuals will direct this windfall, and what that might mean for society. It is reasonable to assume that at least a portion of these fortunes will flow into philanthropy, potentially adding hundreds of billions of dollars in new charitable giving over time.

Predictably, much of the public discourse has focused on which problems these new philanthropists should choose to address and the practical questions that follow: What funding strategies will be most effective? What kinds of organizations should be built or scaled? What infrastructure, talent, and organizational forms will be required to translate these resources into meaningful impact?

These are important questions but perhaps not the most important for our time. The more weighty question is what responsibilities accompany extraordinary wealth in a world beset with declining trust in institutions, deep polarization, and widespread feelings of political and economic disenfranchisement.

Many of the recent generations of wealth creators, including Gates, Zuckerberg, and Bloomberg, accumulated their fortunes during a period of extraordinary technological transformation, much like the current one. Their philanthropic endeavors reflected a distinctly technocratic ethos: identify a tractable but underinvested problem, assemble the best experts, fund solutions, measure outcomes, and scale what works. This model has produced extraordinary advances in global health, scientific research, education, and public policy.

The defining challenge for this new generation of billionaire philanthropists is therefore not simply determining what to fund but how to exercise influence in a society where trust is fragile and legitimacy cannot be bought.

Read more stories byPriya Shanker.