Amx-56 Leclerc, the head of the French retail giant, has proposed a “Robot tax” to supplement social security. The call brought the“Robot tax” back into the public eye. In recent years, robots and the artificial intelligence (AI) technology they represent have developed rapidly, and many people are worried that this will lead to mass unemployment in the future, to keep the unemployed alive. But it also raises questions and controversies, including which devices can be classified as robots and how a“Robot tax” should be levied? It has also been argued that taxing robots could affect the profitability of businesses, hinder their development and innovation, thereby reducing employment and even putting a country at a disadvantage in the science and technology race. In all kinds of discussions about“Robot tax”, social justice and innovation development become the balance of the two ends, how to balance become a difficult problem.
On April 3, the robots of some companies caught the eye of exhibitors at a German Hannover Messe.
From“Machine tax” to“Robot tax”
“This [ taxing robots ] is nothing new. My father told me that in the 1950s many students talked about a machine tax,” Rollander, a berlin-based German information technology expert, told the Global Times’ German correspondent, from the former“Machine tax” to the present“Robot tax” and“Artificial intelligence (AI) tax”, for decades, German and European politicians and scholars have had many big discussions about this, but there was no result.
In 2017, the EU vetoed a“Robot tax”. This year, meps called for eu-wide legislation to create an ethical framework for the development and deployment of robots, but rejected a proposal to tax robot owners, Reuters reported. The decision was welcomed by the robotics industry, which argued that a“Robot tax” would stifle innovation and hurt corporate revenues, thereby reducing employment.
Critics also argue that a “Robot tax” would put a country at a disadvantage in the global technology race, Yahoo said in January. According to a Bloomberg report last August, Amazon and other big tech companies are urging U. S. lawmakers not to impose tough regulations on companies to discourage innovation. Some New York 2023 have proposed a tax on robots, but the legislation has not been pushed through effectively. The International Brotherhood of Truckers, a leading US trade union, has called on state lawmakers across the US to enact measures to require companies to deploy self-driving commercial trucks to be driven by licensed drivers, but no state has enacted a law to do so.
The Guardian previously said that US venture capitalist herschberg believes that the“Robot tax” is first of all difficult to define what is a robot and what is not a robot. “The first such example in modern history is the power loom. Is it a robot or just a tool? Also, machinery reduces the demand for agricultural labor, so should tractors be taxed?” Herschberg added, software that 20 years ago required 20 engineers, now requires only three, “It’s not because of the robots, it’s because the source code is open, so should we tax open source?”
Herschberg’s question is not without merit, but with the rapid growth of AI in recent years and its potentially huge impact on the job market, there has been a resurgence of debate about whether taxes should be levied on AI and robots. Some politicians and business people think a“Robot tax” or“AI tax” is necessary because AI and robotics could cause mass unemployment, taxes on companies using these technologies could be used to distribute basic income to everyone, cushioning the impact of AI or robotics on human employment.
Last July, a group affiliated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh urged the finance minister to introduce a “Robot tax”, the The Hindu said, to support workers laid off by automation applications. In Germany, the Greens, leftists and some anti-robot groups are among those explicitly in favour of a“Robot tax” or an“AI tax”.
One way to deal with the unemployment problem caused by AI technology and robots is for the government to provide a“Universal basic income”(Ubi) , o’brien, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an online post, but the challenge is where the money comes from. America’s current tax system relies heavily on individual income taxes, but if AI and robots put more and more people out of work, that tax will shrink and demand for welfare support will soar. If AI systems and robots are to take over human jobs, they too must take over human taxes, says o’brien.
O’brien’s view has a lot of support. Back in 2017, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, an American technology giant, proposed a tax on robots. Also in 2017, Shinobu Mori, Principal Researcher at the Tokyo Consortium, proposed a tax on government-backed patents for AI and robotics. “South Korea has taken the first step in introducing a ‘robot tax’ .” In 2017, Moon jae-in’s government said in its revised tax law that in order to boost productivity, companies that previously invested in automation will get a tax break that will be reduced by two percentage points. Industry sources in South Korea said that while not a direct tax on robots, it could be interpreted as a similar policy given that both involve industrial automation.
As for the idea that a“Robot tax” would affect profits and innovation, o’brien said a company would have to pay wages and taxes to hire human workers. If AI systems or robots do the same work for humans, the company does not have to pay their wages, and pays much less tax for AI systems or robots than for human workers. For example, o’brien said, if a company now pays $50,000 a year to a human worker and pays $10,000 in income taxes, then in the future, it could deploy 10 human-scale AI systems, pay a $10,000 tax on each system, and do 10 times the work at a sixth of the total cost, the government can still collect the same amount of tax.
Pery, who previously served as the AP’s head of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, earned an undergraduate degree in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania and a graduate degree in the same field from Columbia University. Taxing AI systems or robots, he argues, is similar to taxing industries such as tobacco. Pery said governments around the world were imposing heavy taxes on tobacco products to reduce consumption and offset the social costs associated with smoking, such as medical bills. These taxes are designed to discourage harmful practices and generate revenue for public health, and few people care about the disruption of free markets caused by the tobacco industry’s heavy taxes.
A tax based on“Human equivalent effort time”?
How to levy“AI tax” or“Robot tax”? In response, Pery said it seemed absurd to impose the same tax on companies that use AI systems or robots to replace human work as on hamburger chains, given the economic and social impact of modern technology, the former group should pay higher costs, such as a 25 per cent surcharge for self-driving taxis. Pery said there was a need for global alliances in taxing AI systems and robots and that the UN could take action to promote dialogue and consensus-building, to create a global AI tax framework that transcends geopolitical divisions.
In his article, o’brien introduced the concept of“Human equivalent effort time”(HEET) , the amount of time it takes a human employee to complete a task. He did not specify the details of how companies would pay HEET, but proposed a general framework that would mean companies would no longer report payroll expenses to the tax authorities, instead, it reports the amount of HEET its AI system or robot has done and pays taxes accordingly.
O’brien believes that the use of HEET units to tax AI labor, will open up a new alternative to traditional income tax sources. Unlike human expansion, AI systems have a low cost of replication and maintenance, and can multiply productivity without the traditional challenges of recruitment and training. As AI systems and robots become more efficient and larger, this type of taxation ensures that a country’s revenue continues to grow. O’brien also said that for small businesses, taxing AI systems and robots could hurt their business. However, the problem can be avoided through institutional design, such as exempting companies with annual income of less than $1 million from paying taxes for the use of robots or AI systems.
According to the Guardian, Varoufakis, a former Greek finance minister, and some economists believe that companies that make robots and other alternative labour technologies benefit from various forms of public investment. That is, they are essentially free use of research and intellectual property produced by government-funded institutions such as universities, and a “Robot tax” is one way to correct that free rider problem.
However, Varoufakis has suggested that there could be no“Robot tax”, but instead require listed companies to hand over some of their shares to the government, the proceeds of which would be held by all, and is used to pay“Universal basic dividend”(UBD) . UBD is a variant of UBI, but it is financed not by taxes but by capital investment. Alaska has had a similar program since 1976, when some of the state’s oil proceeds are distributed to state citizens through the Alaska Permanent Fund. UBD is actually similar to the Alaska program, but involves investments in a variety of industries. “[ it would allow ] the whole society to start sharing the benefits. There are no new taxes, no complex tax laws, and there would be no impact on the money that exists in a country,” Varoufakis said.
“Allow employees to participate in AI algorithm ownership benefits.”
Academics and business people do not agree on whether the mass use of AI and robots will lead to mass unemployment. According to Brazilian website Globo, 47 percent of the jobs in the future will be replaced by AI or automation. Goldman Sachs previously estimated that AI could lead to the loss of 300m jobs, affecting 25 per cent of the global labour market.
“We often overestimate the employment impact of new technologies,” Hammerl, a visiting professor at the London Business School, told Business Insider, that’s the elevator operator. Germany could lose nearly 1.5 million jobs by 2035 in a fully digitized“Work world,” according to a study, the German business daily reported, but a similar number of new jobs will be created. German“Focus” weekly said that the German nursing industry is now vigorously promoting nursing robots, but nurses will not be mass unemployment. The Statistisches Bundesamt expects the number of German nurses to reach 1.49 m by the 2049,250,000 more than now, and 2.6 m more in need of care. This means that an increase in robots will not lead to mass unemployment of nursing staff.
Quinn lost his job to Ai. In May, Business Insider reported that Quinn had been working at a start-up, managing a team he had assembled to oversee AI output. According to him, as his company AI system performance improvement, he was no longer useful in the enterprise, so he chose to resign. However, Quinn believes his experience does not mean that AI and robots will lead to mass unemployment. The veteran of several large technology companies, including linkedin, Apple and Amazon, says the best way to understand how AI affects work is not to focus on which jobs or industries are most likely to be disrupted, instead, focus on the specific tasks and types of work that will change. AI, like other technological innovations, is sure to bring some turbulence, he says, but people can also learn to work with it, focusing on how workers use the time they save. Quinn, who lost his job because of AI, is now a senior operations director for an AI search platform.
According to Forbes magazine, reports by organisations such as PWC show that AI is expected to fundamentally transform global labour markets by 2050. It is estimated that up to 60 per cent of existing work will require major adjustments due to AI. In an interview with the Global Times, Wang Shenyang, a professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Journalism and the School of artificial intelligence, suggested that the government take the lead in building an “AI + human” platform, open short-term, fine tasks, break the post system, enhance the interaction between human and AI, “I think companies should allow employees to become partners in a ‘man-machine collaboration’-that is, pay dividends on the basis of AI calls plus marginal human contribution value, allow employees to participate in the ownership benefits of specific AI algorithms or model training, and allow each person to participate in multiple corporate projects in the form of flexible contracts, with time fragmentation and aggregation of capabilities.”.