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If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

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

#651

Post by Pet_Ant »

triceratops wrote: post #628
Pet_Ant wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The work was given to other humans. They paid taxes. Says who? I mean what if black artists said they gave blues to black people, and white people making rock'n'roll? Black people spent money in black communities, now it's white people making it and spending it in theirs. In essence they are the same point about outflows of value from the originating community. How you define a community, and what is integral is su…

Still humans giving to humans. "White rock n roll artists" in your example paid taxes and those taxes benefited everyone.

That is your distinction because you chose to draw the line around all humans. But who is to say that the line shouldn't be drawn around black-people, or just men, or just Christians?

And no, taxes don't just magically benefit everyone. It's actually the point of them, that they are redistributive.

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

#653

Post by fragmede »

zkmon wrote: post #171
Spacecosmonaut wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take the ambitions of robotics and AI companies seriously then what they are trying to create is the equivalent of unleashing 100 million cloned copies of the smartest and most well adjusted people you know upon the economy at a fraction of the cost. If they succeed it would absolutely reduce jobs significantly. In fact, its a little hard to imagine how the average Joe would have any economic value at all.

Amazon website is equivalent to 100 million cloned sales people who work at retail shops. It didn't cause global unemployment.

When was the last time you went to the mall? If no retail shops around you have closed down, I'd be surprised. The effects will take forever to reverberate through, but it's not like Amazon hasn't had an effect on the job market. Instead of being sales associates there's now Amazon warehouse workers. Instead of human copywriters, there's human fact verification as a service.

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

#654

Post by triceratops »

mike_hearn wrote: post #650
triceratops wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's summarize: airstrike : zero taxes on capital are a bad idea mike_hearn : Switzerland has no capital gains taxes and it's great. triceratops : Ok but it still taxes capital. mike_hearn : I live in Switzerland. No capital gains taxes are great and everywhere other than Switzerland has a lower tax rate for them than income because we want more capital gains. Also wealth taxes can cause startup founders to be taxed…

You're right, the origin of this thread was making an argument about all taxes on capital, not just capital gains. I missed that, I guess because nobody mentioned wealth taxes specifically and it's fairly rare for taxes on capital to mean anything other than capital gains tax. Mea culpa. > The startup wealth tax problem has another solution: allow payment in non-voting startup shares, instead of liquid cash This is a…

I came up with it myself. It's possible there's prior art but nothing that I've read personally.

I don't think it's a particularly revolutionary idea because sovereign wealth funds already exist. Improving productivity means using less labor which means lower income tax revenues as time goes on (and that's what you want - higher productivity, fewer labor inputs).

And yet, the government needs revenue. What's growing? Wealth. Liquidating wealth to pay taxes is problematic. Hence the sovereign wealth fund. You can apply this to most forms of wealth - even publicly traded stock, real estate, crypto, and artwork.

I've proposed it on this site several times in the past.

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

#655

Post by triceratops »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #651
triceratops wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still humans giving to humans. "White rock n roll artists" in your example paid taxes and those taxes benefited everyone.

That is your distinction because you chose to draw the line around all humans. But who is to say that the line shouldn't be drawn around black-people, or just men, or just Christians? And no, taxes don't just magically benefit everyone. It's actually the point of them, that they are redistributive.

Who is to say the line should be drawn using discrimination?

Taxes fund the state. The state provides a minimum set of services - law and order, border security, fire safety - to everyone regardless of ability to pay. That others may derive additional state benefits is beside the point. Everyone gets something.

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

#656

Post by carlosjobim »

jijijijij wrote: post #468
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 somewh…

> 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.

That would be extremely complicated. And would of course be corrupted to the core by all kinds of different parties seeking to benefit from it.

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

#657

Post by epolanski »

cubefox wrote: post #489
epolanski wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about that to be honest. 1. Financial perspective. People are too focused on what "the best" is, rather than what is the most financially viable at scale, which is what really matters. At the peak of the Ethereum mining craze in 2016/2017 the GTX Titan X was the best performing GPU. But buying 200$ AMD Polaris GPUs was what gave you the most performance per $ and per watt. 2. Open source models keep bein…

> 1. Financial perspective. People are too focused on what "the best" is, rather than what is the most financially viable at scale, which is what really matters. I don't think so: People flocked to ChatGPT because it was the best, even though there are far cheaper options. If you are 10% better than any competitor, you don't get just 10% more market share, you get far more. It's a winner-takes-most situation.

That's a money loser, I'm talking about who's gonna be able to monetize and leverage this.
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