Sorry Mr Bill Gates, but Robot Tax is not a very smart idea
The coming revolution of AI and Robots taking over jobs from humans have people from all walks of life on edge and in a alarmist mood.
Recently, Microsoft co-Founder and Billionaire Philanthropist, Bill Gates said in a recent interview that Robot who replace humans at work, should pay taxes. Or rather the companies who employ those robots should pay this “Robot Tax”. Here is the link to the said interview…
This coming from an average Joe politician is understandable, given their tendency to say stuff to appease the populace. However, this coming from a celebrated ex-technologist and highly successful business person is odd.
There are multiple issues with this “Robot Tax” proposal…
How would you define a robot? Is it something which looks like a human. Or are you going to include any robotic machine which automates a certain task, no matter what it looks like. What about a robot which doesn’t have a shape? Like an algorithm which lives and runs in the cloud and automates knowledge related jobs? For example, Goldman Sachs recently replaced majority of their traders with a algorithm and a small software team. Should these companies be paying taxes on behalf of all those replaced traders? For how long?
Would you consider an ATM machine a robot? Because it obviously replaces a Bank teller?
And once you give this tax to the politicians, where are they going to stop? Are they going to tax every email sent because that leads to less need for mailmen?
So you see, this is a slippery slope. There is a need for a public discourse on how we are going to best handle the coming AI and Robotic revolution. However, imposing “Robot Tax” is not it.
