3 Reasons Bill Gates is Wrong about the Robot Tax
Disclaimer: I deeply respect and admire Bill Gates. I identify as a bleeding-heart libertarian. I believe in basic income. I am not speaking for my employer. These are my personal, unfiltered thoughts.
1. His argument is inconsistent.
Bill Gates: Certainly there will be taxes that relate to automation. Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.
There are many technologies that “do the same thing” as a human worker that used to earn an income. Bing, and other search engines, have taken away jobs from human librarians and research assistants. Online travel agents have taken away jobs from human travel agents. Spell checker assistants, such as those found in Microsoft Word, have taken away jobs from human copyeditors.
Why single out robots as being solely responsible for lost income and social security taxes? If robots are to be taxed, all technologies that make our lives easier should be taxed. Otherwise, it seems rather arbitrary.
2. His argument seems a little… self-serving.
Bill Gates: There are many ways to take that extra productivity and generate more taxes. Exactly how you’d do it, measure it, you know, it’s interesting for people to start talking about now. Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the labor-saving efficiency there. Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax. I don’t think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. It’s OK.
If Microsoft had a viable robotics division, I’d be less skeptical of his reasoning. As it stands, why don’t we tax all “artificial intelligence” technologies? Microsoft could pay an extra tax on Cortana, which is marketed as a personal assistant and is thus clearly taking away jobs from human personal assistants. Gates wouldn’t be outraged about a tax. It’s OK.
3. His argument is short-sighted.
Quartz: And you’re more on the side that government should play an active role rather than rely on businesses to figure this out?
Bill Gates: Well, business can’t.
Business absolutely can do something about it. I’ll admit I am biased but, in my personal experience, roboticists are more aware of the human impact of their work than the average computer scientist. The very physicality of the robot and the necessity of deploying it in 3-dimensional space means that it’s almost impossible to not consider how humans will interact with it. I have yet to meet a roboticist who hasn’t considered the broader implications of her work. I know many a programmer who hasn’t given a second thought to the blue-collar worker whose job he’s “disrupting.”
So yes, I think Gates is wrong… but not entirely. Here are three reasons why he’s right about the impact of robots (but not about the tax):
1. Humans are uniquely suited to jobs for which we currently have a shortage of talent.
Bill Gates: And what the world wants is to take this opportunity to make all the goods and services we have today, and free up labor, let us do a better job of reaching out to the elderly, having smaller class sizes, helping kids with special needs. You know, all of those are things where human empathy and understanding are still very, very unique. And we still deal with an immense shortage of people to help out there.
Every technological advance frees humans from monotonous labor and creates the opportunity to unleash our collective potential. Humans are uniquely suited to jobs that require interacting with other humans on an emotional level. That’s why a McKinsey report last year noted that healthcare professionals “whose daily activities require expertise and direct contact with patients” are unlikely to be replaced with automation.
2. We need to support transition programs.
Bill Gates: Well, at a time when people are saying that the arrival of that robot is a net loss because of displacement, you ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed of that adoption somewhat to figure out, “OK, what about the communities where this has a particularly big impact? Which transition programs have worked and what type of funding do those require?”
We need to help those who are impacted by broad technological shifts transition into the new economy. This is not just the moral thing to do but is also important for economic and political stability. This is why Obama had launched the TechHire initiative, which included a grant to train coal miners how to fly drones.
3. Government has a role to play.
Bill Gates: But the inequity-solving part, absolutely government’s got a big role to play there.
Implement basic income. It’s the only solution that makes sense.
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