Should AI (?!) pay taxes? no. Should the big companies pay their FAIR share, yes!
If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
141–150 of 1001 posts
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taxing income is straightforward in that there is a stream of it going by and some of it can be diverted. Taxing wealth is difficult because you don't really know what it is. Arguably the value of a publicly traded corporation can be known because it is being traded continually. [1] For a privately held corporation it's quite opaque. Right now, for instance, Open AI is estimated to be worth $500B and might IPO at $1T…
I think I am fine with taking an approach to that that is just brutally tilted against large values and brutally tilted in favor of transparency. So like, you can't do anything with your ownership share in that privately-held company --- can't use it as collateral for a loan, can't present it to investors to get more funding, can't trade it, can't sell it, can't in any way derive any benefit from it --- without commi…
So why would anyone start businesses or continue doing business in such a country?
You’re literally just describing an end to private property, where a privileged government representative can take anything you have. The “government job” will become so lucrative that the position would be passed down within families, father to son. It is already known how these economic systems function, I think.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#143Looking 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.
Directly taxing AI is very hard. Imagine if a company had to pay taxes for every AI agent operating in the U.S. or the E.U. As if they were regular employees. Big corporations would simply move the AI agents to countries without taxes.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#144By this logic owners of wheel barrows should be taxed for all the manual labour jobs the wheel barrow destroyed.
Exactly. This is such a silly argument. The article takes the argument "if a lot of jobs disappeared since they are now done effectively for free, what about tax revenue??" It really misses the forrest from the trees. You're transported into a world in which efficiencies mean that much fewer people need to work, but somehow government services and entitlements are unchanged and we need to hit roughly the same percent…
Or...infrastructure, public services and schools go unmaintained? How about the magic technology supposedly allowing for all of this efficency, all the while it imagines a human has six fingers, who will maintain that?
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#145In a world where many western states extort their subjects for almost half the wealth they produce (OECD average is 34% and in countries like France the state extorts 46% of all GDP in taxes and other mandatory contributions and an insane 82% of all gross salary), some people first thought when they think of AI, is: “but how are we going to tax it?”. People on the left love to say “true communism has never been tried…
"True capitalism has never been tried". Be glad that it hasnt, otherwise you would have been charged half of your whole net-worth for an epi-pen.
That’s just fantasy in your head. But even that fantasy world be better than paying 82% of your gross salary like you do in France. I would still be 32% in the positive that way.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#146Looking 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 also don't let steam engines and carts pay taxes just because they 'replace' (=displace) human labor.
It is funny because in the copyright debate, AI is often treated as human. Like "we didn't steal your data, the AI just learned from it!"
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#147Earlier 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.
> We also don't let steam engines and carts pay taxes just because they 'replace' (=displace) human labor. It is funny because in the copyright debate, AI is often treated as human. Like "we didn't steal your data, the AI just learned from it!"
They will use the analogy that’s most advantageous to them at any point.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#148Don't the subscriptions on AI services charge VAT? Do the AI companies pay corporate taxes?
But as others pointed out, this is a silly anthromorphisation of AI - it's a tool, just like any software, nothing more. Tax the companies for sure, but don't treat LLMs like people or human-like entities. There's generations of automation tools that should be taxed as such, otherwise.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#149Looking 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.
Directly taxing AI is very hard. Imagine if a company had to pay taxes for every AI agent operating in the U.S. or the E.U. As if they were regular employees. Big corporations would simply move the AI agents to countries without taxes.
It's actually trivial. AI apis are pretty streamlined by now. Just slap a tax on processed tokens and you're guaranteed to reach every AI agent out there. It already happens everywhere with sales tax for normal products. Just treat tokens as the product and create an extra tax for it.
Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?
#150Don't the subscriptions on AI services charge VAT? Do the AI companies pay corporate taxes? But as others pointed out, this is a silly anthromorphisation of AI - it's a tool, just like any software, nothing more. Tax the companies for sure, but don't treat LLMs like people or human-like entities. There's generations of automation tools that should be taxed as such, otherwise.
That "AI is just like your coworker / friend / companion" view is intentionally created by people who need the bubble part of AI to go as far as possible.
I only know about this TED Talk because it was in a mandatory training course for my work, but these is the kinds of things being said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKNCiRWd_j0 (he's trying really hard with the Steve Jobs look)