Lately everyone’s been panicking about how screwed we are if a couple years from now, AI (whether powered by LLMs or newer tech) scales to a point where 40+% of the population is jobless. But hear me out - what if there’s actually a way to make this work by taxing AI to fund UBI? There’s 3 parts to it: First, tax robot workers like they’re employees. Amazon wants to use robots in their warehouses? Each robot has to “earn” minimum wage that goes straight to the government as tax. Waymo’s self-driving taxis? Every car is basically a taxi driver, so it pays minimum wage + payroll tax + social contributions per vehicle. Deliveroo using drones for delivery? Same thing - each drone pays back what a human delivery driver would have cost in wages and taxes. Now, I agree that the line gets a bit murky at some point, because do we also tax McDonald’s kiosks too? I don’t really have a clear vision on that. Second, tax companies where they SELL, not just where they operate the AI. Tesla manufacturing cars with AI but wants to sell in Europe? They get hit with a big consumption tax (maybe 50-60% or idk) on all European sales. Can’t dodge it by moving production to AI tax havens because the tax also happens at point of sale. Now I know what you’re thinking - “companies will just not operate there then lol.” But here’s the thing, which is my third point: what if it’s not just one area like Europe? What if 100+ countries all sign a pact because literally everyone is dealing with mass unemployment and needs to fund UBI somehow? No country benefits from being a tax haven if their citizens can’t eat. At that point, companies can’t just walk away from 90% of the global market. They’d lose way more abandoning all those customers than just paying the taxes. And what does that leave humans with? Honestly, small businesses might still employ humans as they might not have the capital to pay the huge upfront costs of AI robots or their profit margins are too low to justify paying “the AI tax”. So you’d still have mom and pop shops or small one-off gigs, plus UBI as your baseline. Or why not try entrepreneurship while still having a secure livelihood thanks to UBI? This also addresses the problem that "without jobs, big companies will have no customers” so I feel like everyone benefits from it except that big companies will have lower profits. I don’t know, maybe I’m missing something obvious here. Does this actually make sense or are there huge holes in this logic? submitted by /u/Hour_Source_4038
Originally posted by u/Hour_Source_4038 on r/ArtificialInteligence
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