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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?

#941

Post by GFischer »

doener wrote: post #184

No, not the AI. Just the owner of means of production like AI. The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is, in my view, one of the fundamental problems of our time.

I don't understand why socialists or communists don't tax the means of production accordingly, if they don't have money, take partial ownership (or complete ownership and turn it into a co-op or something).

Owners of capital and means of production have succesfully gamed the system and most of the tax burden falls on us middle class idiots that pay taxes on our work.

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

#942

Post by program_whiz »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #808
int_19h wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same place they've always gone: to consumers purchasing the products made by those automated processes. The people who are "automated away" and have reduced income are also less of a consumer. In a society where most jobs are automated, who are the consumers?

You've spent your whole life living in a society where that's already happened. 1000 years ago nearly everyone was employed in agriculture. Now nearly all those jobs are automated. So you tell me: where are the consumers? Why aren't we all unemployed and unable to afford to buy anything now that those agriculture jobs have been automated away? Or did we find other productive activities to spend our time on?

This sentiment is constantly echoed on this site -- "just look at past times where tech removed jobs, this is no different". But the difference now is that we will soon have super-humans in terms of intelligence, dexterity (robots), and cost (cheaper, no healthcare, etc.).

I put the onus on the yay-sayers, can you name a job that a human can do that this new AI / robot cannot (or will not soon) do? Otherwise, I think its time to stop drawing false equivalence with agriculture, luddites, etc. Those were "narrow" machines, incapable of coding, writing a symphony, or working in a factory. In the next decade we're talking about building a better human.

I think a better example is to draw a parallel to horses. There is nothing left for them to do; we keep a few around for sport and entertainment, as a novelty. At one time, they were indispensible, but there's no rule that any organism (including humans) has infinite economically viable uses. At some point, everything worth doing (economically) might be automated to the point that human labor no longer makes sense (and hence we have high unemployment). There is no cosmic law written that "if jobs are replaced by tech, new jobs shall fill the space!" Just look at areas in the rust belt where literally nothing replaced the lost jobs -- there is just rampant unemployment, black market dealing / drugs, and despair.

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

#943

Post by Ajedi32 »

program_whiz wrote: post #942
Ajedi32 wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've spent your whole life living in a society where that's already happened. 1000 years ago nearly everyone was employed in agriculture. Now nearly all those jobs are automated. So you tell me: where are the consumers? Why aren't we all unemployed and unable to afford to buy anything now that those agriculture jobs have been automated away? Or did we find other productive activities to spend our time on?

This sentiment is constantly echoed on this site -- "just look at past times where tech removed jobs, this is no different". But the difference now is that we will soon have super-humans in terms of intelligence, dexterity (robots), and cost (cheaper, no healthcare, etc.). I put the onus on the yay-sayers, can you name a job that a human can do that this new AI / robot cannot (or will not soon) do? Otherwise, I think…

That's a very different argument about a hypothetical future problem that may or may not ever actually materialize. (I'd argue given the current trajectory of AI it probably won't for the foreseeable future.)

But yes, if we develop artificial superinteligence to the level where humans become literally useless (e.g. we don't just automate 90% of everything, but 100%, and there's actually no tasks left in the world that humans can do better or cheaper than computers) then assuming humanity survives we'll need a different economic system for distributing the nearly-unlimited resources resulting from that. Probably in that situation the best thing to do would be to ask the AI to design our new economic system, since it would obviously do a better job at that than any human.

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

#944

Post by burnerRhodov2 »

ralgozino wrote: post #501
burnerRhodov2 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was mind blown when i found that this is a major investment thesis in argentina.

Argentina is a special case. When inflation is absurdly high like in Argentina, Economy does not make sense any more. Basic economic assumption are not true and you get things like that or that "spending" is actually "saving". I don't think it relates.

At federal minimum wage, you make 15k a year. NASDAQ 100 is on average 14.6% per year. It only takes 100k to passively earn more than the vast majority of labor.

We have arrived to the point where capital is vastly more important and productive than labor. AI has only make that worse. Historically, there has been a balance because it was Capital and labor that were required to generate outsized returns. But once you strip out incremental cost with software, and tack on an AI "service" layer, where are the need for employees?

The one saving grace, is that this will also break the VC model. When one youtuber who has 100k subs can spin out 20 different apps a year, we fragment the app space, allowing alot of micro businesses to form around "brands". But "brands" will just be social media influencers.

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

#945

Post by program_whiz »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #943
program_whiz wrote: post #942

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sentiment is constantly echoed on this site -- "just look at past times where tech removed jobs, this is no different". But the difference now is that we will soon have super-humans in terms of intelligence, dexterity (robots), and cost (cheaper, no healthcare, etc.). I put the onus on the yay-sayers, can you name a job that a human can do that this new AI / robot cannot (or will not soon) do? Otherwise, I think…

That's a very different argument about a hypothetical future problem that may or may not ever actually materialize. (I'd argue given the current trajectory of AI it probably won't for the foreseeable future.) But yes, if we develop artificial superinteligence to the level where humans become literally useless (e.g. we don't just automate 90% of everything, but 100%, and there's actually no tasks left in the world tha…

Couldn't it get a lot worse much sooner than that? Even if a handful of industries collapse, its not clear we have more jobs for 100M displaced workers. I just haven't seen any proposals of what that future looks like that seem good, but I do hear "don't worry more jobs will appear". But can anyone say where 50-100M workers will go? All the answers I think of or see seem like things that can easily be automated.

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

#946

Post by iso1631 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #709
cheema33 wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you telling us that the party of golden ballrooms... err.. fiscal responsibility is not actually being fiscally responsible?

You tell me. It's not like the other party is doing better. California is posting a $18 billion deficit next year, despite the highest taxes in the country, and despite record tax revenue from the AI boom.

Clinton and Obama seem very different results to Reagan/BushI and BushII

Odd that.

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

#948

Post by jlawson »

ragazzina wrote: post #411
jlawson wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies on basic income have shown that it's harmful to the people who receive it. They report no improvements on any measured outcome. Not lower stress, not more education, not better health. They work a bit less but that doesn't help them or their kids. Over the long term it harms them because their productive skills, values, and emotional capacities atrophy away from lack of use.

> Studies on basic income have shown that it's harmful to the people who receive it. That's extremely interesting, can you link such studies?

This podcast covers a bunch of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5nj3DLvT64

It's one of those things that can be tricky to research because almost all the researchers and journalists on the topic very much don't want to see this conclusion. So there's a tremendous amount of misrepresentation and wishful reasoning about how to interpret the data. The truth comes out from actually reading the data, not researcher or journalist summaries.

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

#949

Post by ori_b »

tredre3 wrote: post #857
ori_b wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> volunteering Sure, I guess -- if you're not charging for your time, it's more efficient to use human labor than AI+robots. > inventing If we get working AI, humans will be unemployable at inventing useful things. > teaching There are already multiple startups trying to replace teachers in the classroom.

> If we get working AI, humans will be unemployable at inventing useful things. The point you're responding to is that humans would be able to do it for personal fulfillment and thus preserve their mental health, not to be useful to someone else.

Yeah. I also hope the AI remembers to flick the bundle of feathers on a stick to entertain me, and fill the food bowl when I'm hungry.

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

#950

Post by jlawson »

int_19h wrote: post #744
jlawson wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we limited individual wealth to $999 million--just outright capped it, and enforced that--it would not impact these people in the slightest. It would certainly impact their willingness to do the company-building that creates all those innovations and jobs. With such a rule, Tesla wouldn't exist, no electric cars, no SpaceX, no cheap advanced launch tech; basically most of the modern world would be choked in the…

If some person isn't willing to do company building because they are already at the cap so it won't make them any more money, that just means that someone else will do that. We have a planet of 8 billion humans; there's no shortage of human talent.

From experience, there is a huge shortage of human talent.

Some people really are exceptional and there are very few of them.

How many Einsteins do you think are just kicking around? How many Robin Williams's or Tom Hanks's?

How many Kobes? We know not many because there's a huge search to find more.

There aren't 20 more Elons waiting in the wings there. Or 20 more Jensens. And so on.

It's actually far more rational as a society to pay the one guy who can create 100B his 10B for it.

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