My current position is that AI companies should be taxed and the money should be distributed to open source developers.

There is a strong legal basis for this to happen because if you read the MIT license, which is one of the most common and most permissive licenses, it clearly states that the code is made available for any "Person" to use and distribute. An AI agent is not a person so technically it was never given the right to use the code for itself... It was not even given permission to read the copyrighted code, let alone ingest it, modify it and redistribute it. Moreover, it is a requirement of the MIT license that the MIT copyright notice be included in all copies or substantial portions of the software... Which agents are not doing in spite of distributing substantial portions of open source code verbatim, especially when considered in aggregate.

Moreover, the fact that a lot of open source devs have changed their views on open source since AI reinforces the idea that they never consented to their works being consumed, transformed and redistributed by AI in the first place. So the violation applies both in terms of the literal wording of the licenses and also based on intent.

Moreover, the usage of code by AI goes beyond just a copyright violation of the code/text itself; they appropriated ideas and concepts, without giving due credit to their originators so there is a deeper ethical component involved that we don't have a system to protect human innovation from AI. Human IP is completely unprotected.

That said, I think most open source devs would support AI innovation, but just not at their expense with zero compensation.