Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

english.elpais.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 1001 posts

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#461

Post by hombre_fatal »

lelandfe wrote: post #408
ashleyn wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument hinges rather strongly on whether or not AI is going to create a broad, durable, and lasting unemployment effect. Tractors did not cause this phenomenon because jevons paradox kicked in and induced demand rendered the problem moot, or demand eventually exceeded what mere tractors were capable of doing for agricultural productivity. The same can probably be said for contemporary AI, but it's tough to tel…

> technological unemployment is not something that will be sudden or obvious I already have friends experiencing technological unemployment. Programmers suddenly need backup plans. Several designers I know are changing careers. Not to mention, the voiceover artist profession will probably cease to exist besides this last batch of known voices. Writer, editor - these were dependable careers for friends, once. A friend…

I think it's too early for AI to have impacted software work at a systemic level. There are various reasons the market is crap right now, like how you're (perhaps unknowingly) competing with cheap foreign labor in your own metro centers for tech work.

AI is just the other pincer that will finish the kill shot.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#462

Post by FrozenSynapse »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #436

Does automation use generally pay taxes? Should Amazon pay taxes for using factory robots in lieu of people? Should fabric manufacturers pays taxes for using automated looms instead of hand weaving ? Even if lawmakers wanted to tax AI, how would they do it? How do you measure the AI usage level at a company, or the number of workers it has displaced?

Tax everything the company produces/profit more and reduce the tax on the human workers.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#463

Post by echelon »

twodave wrote: post #424
lelandfe wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> technological unemployment is not something that will be sudden or obvious I already have friends experiencing technological unemployment. Programmers suddenly need backup plans. Several designers I know are changing careers. Not to mention, the voiceover artist profession will probably cease to exist besides this last batch of known voices. Writer, editor - these were dependable careers for friends, once. A friend…

People keep trying to tie these two things together, forgetting the fact that ZIRP also ended 3 years ago, and that combined with the end of the COVID-era employer credits are when the layoffs really began. I won't say LLMs are having no impact at all on employment, but not to the degree where the job pool has dried up. Companies were encouraged to over-hire for years, and now that the free money is gone, they're act…

ZIRP, IRS Section 174, and irrationally exuberant over hiring caused the first few rounds of layoffs.

The layoffs you see now are due to offshoring disguised as AI taking over. Google, Amazon, and even Hollywood are getting in on the offshoring craze.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#464

Post by wongarsu »

renewiltord wrote: post #377
ashleyn wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument hinges rather strongly on whether or not AI is going to create a broad, durable, and lasting unemployment effect. Tractors did not cause this phenomenon because jevons paradox kicked in and induced demand rendered the problem moot, or demand eventually exceeded what mere tractors were capable of doing for agricultural productivity. The same can probably be said for contemporary AI, but it's tough to tel…

Basic income doesn’t do anything. We already have food stamps and so on. The largest sector of US federal spending is health and social welfare. We’d have to end pretty much all those programs to run a minuscule basic income.

> We’d have to end pretty much all those programs to run a minuscule basic income

Isn't ending all those programs one of the core ideas of universal basic income? Instead of having a huge bureaucracy administering targeted social welfare you cut all the overhead and just pay everyone enough to exist, regardless of whether you actually need it. It'd still be more expensive, but giving people something dependable to fall back on would hopefully increase innovation and entrepreneurship, offsetting some of the costs

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#465

Post by cjbgkagh »

Gaines in efficiency is probably the number one thing that can’t be effectively taxed long term. Perhaps it could be possible to tax a specific process but even then the incentive to create loopholes would be immense, since the process is already porous those who can effectively avoid the tax make more money to invest back into making more loopholes. If we can’t stop such corruption when it is subsidizing less efficient industries that waste much of their surplus on their inherent inefficiencies how could we expect to stop it when it’s subsidizing more efficient industries.

Additionally the improvements in technology enables vertical integration at much lower scales and this means there is left surface area to tax, cheap raw goods go in, cheap refined goods come out. This already scales down to such an extent I DIY many personal projects with CNCs, and by leveraging services like Send-Cut-Send and PCBWay I can build all sorts of stuff that I otherwise would have spend 10x more on. Instead of having to earn more money that is taxed in order to purchase it I can build it as a hobby. Increasing the tax on the pipeline on purchased goods would just increase the proportion of projects that are more economical for me to make. My hobby would make money if I sold the items, but since they’re for personal use this does not get taxed.

Something unusual about the AI revolution is that the increase in productivity does not appear to be mirrored by an increase in consumption. More of what people consume is entirely digital, many people spend their lives scrolling TikTok and they do appear to be satiated. Sure there is a data center boom but I think that’s more of a mania and is going to end up over built.

The computer and internet revolutions are still slowly propagating throughout the world, there are still many technological gains to be made here and I think one of the limiters to adoption is the lack of available tech talent in the long tail. AI is different as it requires far less tech talent to use and additionally makes it easier to take advantage of the computer and internet revolutions. Not only can it propagate without the same limiting factors but it facilitates the propagation of the other revolutions at the same time.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#466

Post by KaiserPro »

vjk800 wrote: post #344

Tractors largely replaced human labour in farming about a hundred years ago. Should we have started taxing tractors? I really have difficulties seeing AI as anything else than yet another type of machinery. If your argument is "but it's replacing ALMOST ALL human labour" - well, the same argument was valid for tractors a hundred years ago (when almost everyone was employed in agriculture).

Tax is kinda tangential to all of this, but:

> Tractors largely replaced human labour in farming about a hundred years ago

And what happened around that time? yeah it wasn't a period of smooth calmness was it? Periods of massive changes in productivity (ie lots of people going into unemployment) causes huge societal changes.

The thing that staved off revolution in the US was lots of spending, banking regulations, federal reserve, new deal and the like. Those that didn't do that, fell.

So its less about who pays tax, and more about who is going to give money to the unemployed?

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#467

Post by 9rx »

komali2 wrote: post #351
stevex wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does that UBI money come from if there are 50% fewer people paying taxes? That's the problem.

Governments can print money. But yes, you're right, the core problem is that in the USA, people need to justify their existence through labor. If they can't labor, they can't justify their existence (barring the slim few outliers on benefits, who are constantly under attack for being lazy or whatever). However, if we take a step back and just consider reality for itself, we're just talking about resource allocation.…

What would the money be used for, though? It does not serve as viable nourishment or shelter.

Money is, after all, just a record of debt to facilitate trade so that transactions do not have to be completed immediately. Consider your job. You work so you can eat, but you might not be hungry at work. So, instead, you offer your employer a loan. The employer issues an IOU (money) to denote the promise to give you food later. Then, you take the IOU to the grocery store later and hand it back in to receive the food promised.

But in a world where a few people own all the core resources (land, minerals, etc.) and have all of their needs met by AI, they won't have any need for trade. They'll summon the AI to deliver anything they need.

It seems the only thing it might be able to serve is a record of who gets what after civil war captures the spoils from those rich few. But said civil war will require significant effort from all, perhaps even against their will; which is quite unlike a UBI system.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#468

Post by jijijijij »

thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #406

“Boo capitalism” on the outside, AI personhood on the inside. Actual agenda: disposable moral vehicles. AI liability is the goal. A tax on corporate profits is a tax on cost cutting already. A tax on “AI” is a way to compartmentalize. But you can’t, and you shouldn’t. First, you won’t be able to formalize which gains are “AI” and which are not. Is it deep learning? If so, a gunshot detector is taxed and a McDonald’s…

I don't think it's overly complicated. We could create a corporate tax which inversely factors human salaries in relation to created value/profits. It's not an AI tax, but rather an automation tax. Since salaries are taxed, it seems sensible to divert those losses for the collective elsewhere. After all, robots are ultimately not consuming any goods or services with personal income. The profit has to come from somewhere. Along the distribution of resources, collective infrastructure and social services need to be maintained and payed by taxes. You could alternatively tax the money spent, but this creates wrong incentives, I think, and the burden would be unfairly distributed (e.g. everybody has to eat about the same amount). As long, as we don't have something like universal income/wealth redistribution, "efficiency" in automation is parasitic for the collective and shouldn't be incentivized by essentially tax cuts. As long as the collective's needs are met, it doesn't matter if humans or machines did the work.

Basically if you got a business which creates a certain amount of value, the collectives' total tax income (considering possible employees' income tax) should be the same, independently of people employed and paid. 500M profit from fully automated web hosting should result effectively in the same collective tax income as 500M profit from a factory employing 10K people.

Note: I am throwing all "taxes" in a bucket. E.g. humans need health insurance, therefore the fully automated business tax needs to reflect these costs too.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#469

Post by andsoitis »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #332
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks like to hate on capital gains tax. I think it's perceived as a rich-person deal. But homeowners, do they get taxed each year on the increase in value of their house? Almost the same thing, but not hated on the same way.

Homeowners get taxed every year on the value of their property. Let's do that to stocks, too.

> Homeowners get taxed every year on the value of their property

By the local municipality, not the federal or state government.

Post reply on HN