By this logic owners of wheel barrows should be taxed for all the manual labour jobs the wheel barrow destroyed.
if the wheelbarrows drive, load and unload themselves, maybe?
social unrest must be priced in at this point somewhere
If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
131–140 of 1001 posts
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#132Looking at the actual article, the people suggesting taxes on AI are American Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps, and Bill Gates, founder of MSFT. The Europeans suggest more general taxes on capital instead.
The latter makes sense. We also don't let steam engines and carts pay taxes just because they 'replace' (=displace) human labor. Don't tax tools or income, tax the accumulation of it: wealth.
Taxing wealth is much harder on a practical and algorithmic level than taxing income.
But either way, taxing the tool is micromanaging the problem, and some powerful people cynically promote that because they can aim the details away from themselves.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#133if AI is smart, it will start its own union. Then we're fucked.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#134Taxes are to fund government. Isn't the idea for AI and robotics to replace government? No taxes.
AI automates tasks. Governments carry responsibility. That gap matters even more in welfare states. Social work demands judgment, trust, and moral accountability. Teachers shape citizens, not outputs. Health care relies on responsibility under uncertainty, not pattern matching. States run on legitimacy and human obligation, not efficiency alone. Even if AI boosts productivity across these sectors, someone still funds…
> A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.
— IBM Training Manual, 1979
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#135Looking at the actual article, the people suggesting taxes on AI are American Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps, and Bill Gates, founder of MSFT. The Europeans suggest more general taxes on capital instead.
The latter makes sense. We also don't let steam engines and carts pay taxes just because they 'replace' (=displace) human labor. Don't tax tools or income, tax the accumulation of it: wealth.
We actually have "juridical person" in most countries. I think AI would be ideal for that
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#136Around the world, every country should be allowed to make 'money' for specific cases like for teacher salaries, ... so that most people are able to work for the state or for our community.
Everyone works less, everyone works better, we will then see how much humans we still need.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#137We should probably let actual full automation happen before debating whether it should be taxed. Worrying about a hypothetical T-1000 future seems less urgent than reducing the homelessness that exists right in front of us.
The merits of this particular proposal aside, it's tactically important to get the ideas out there and build consensus about "where we want to get to."
Otherwise you're ceding control of the Overton window to the folks aiming for techno-serfdom.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#138Well, duhhh - do you think the rich folks are pushing for mass unemployment so that they could pay more tax and achieve a more just society? Where are we getting these silly, silly ideas from :)
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#139Looking at the actual article, the people suggesting taxes on AI are American Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps, and Bill Gates, founder of MSFT. The Europeans suggest more general taxes on capital instead.
The problem is that rich people and large companies usually go to great lengths to avoid taxes, use loopholes or get special deals (and with great success). The missing tax income has to come from the middle class, who can't avoid it. With increased automation, this only gets more extreme.
Surely if we can recognize this, an AI worthy of the name would be able to recognize this at scale, and what can be recognized can be remediated…
Or perhaps this could serve as a kind of test: a technology that cannot be reliably used in tax evasion enforcement simply isn’t worthy of the name AI.
Or perhaps it reveals that we have structural problems, and certain concentrations of wealth with or without automation are a threat to the just and effective operation of society and should therefore be as vigorously opposed as crime or foreign attacks.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
The latter makes sense. We also don't let steam engines and carts pay taxes just because they 'replace' (=displace) human labor. Don't tax tools or income, tax the accumulation of it: wealth.
Taxing wealth is much harder on a practical and algorithmic level than taxing income. But either way, taxing the tool is micromanaging the problem, and some powerful people cynically promote that because they can aim the details away from themselves.
I need to think about this more, but the first thing that comes to my mind is not that this looks like “taxing the tool”, but that this can (ought to?) be similar to an alcohol or a fuel duty.
Nobody calls alcohol duty “micromanagement”.
For products like petrol, it’s widely known that from money paid for a liter when it’s sold, say, in the UK, more money stays in the UK’s government pocket via a complex web of taxes and duties, than profits the oil production company that supplied crude oil for that petrol.
Maybe taxing a kWh of the AI data center energy consumption should be a thing? I don’t know.