That’s fucked. Public ownership of stocks is done through brokers. When you buy stocks, you don’t own the stock, but rather it’s the broker that holds onto it.

That’s why the GameStop thing advocates that people directly registers their shares to take it out of the market. Otherwise, the brokers can still lend out shares that shareholders own. Because you don’t own the shares.

If people ‘own’ shares, they might not necessarily get a say, but rather their financial security would be tied to the value of the company. So if AI goes bankrupt, you’d lose your retirement.