Microsoft founder Bill Gates believes that governments should consider taxing AI tools and robots to avoid stagnation in the labor market and a reduction in tax revenues to state budgets.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates believes that governments should consider taxing AI tools and robots to avoid stagnation in the labor market and a reduction in tax revenues to state budgets.
In the era of AI, in his opinion, people will need retraining for new professions and other support from the social protection system.
«People will work less, which means they will pay less in taxes. Government revenues will fall just when the demand for it is greatest. The money will have to come from somewhere when budgets are tight. I believe we should tax AI and robot tokens,» Gates expressed his vision in a long essay for his own blog.
According to him, currently employers pay taxes on employees' wages from their own income, but the situation with robots is fundamentally different.
«If you buy a robot, you can usually write it off as a business expense right away. The tax system encourages you to replace people with machines. A tax would slow down the hype around reducing human labor a little and would attract funds for retraining and strengthening the social protection system,» the techno-businessman believes.
According to Gates, such a tax should be targeted to somewhat slow down the application of AI and robots in the labor market, but not slow down the use of artificial intelligence for medicine and education.
«Critics of this idea point out that it is not optimally efficient from an economic point of view, but they do not take into account the broader value of work to individuals and society. And with all the accelerated innovation that we will have, we will be able to afford a little inefficiency as the price of preserving jobs,» the Microsoft founder is convinced.
He says the idea for a «robot tax» originated with him many years ago, but he is still a passionate supporter. «While it is not a complete solution to the threat of artificial intelligence, it is part of a wise response,» he states.
Interestingly, on the eve of the show, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also shared his thoughts on the development of AI at this stage on a podcast. According to him, the AI revolution is not happening as quickly as expected.
«I think I got a few things wrong. One of them is that the economy has a lot of inertia,» he said, referring to the slow transition of many industries to AI.
Recall, Altman previously stated that humanity has reached technological singularity .
