1. Re: Why Bill Gates would tax robots (Ahmed Mohamed Maawy) On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 2:11 PM, <kictanet-request@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
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I for one welcome our robot overloads :-) First off, I think the problem is that the current system (the way things are and have been, status quo, if you will) is trying to maintain itself in the face of changes in technology and society, rather than adapting to the changes. To put this in perspective: the major reason the automation is such a big deal, is that people will lose employment and not be able to pay for essential services, but this can be fixed by dealing with a more pertinent question, "Why should people have to pay for basic services?" In a number of countries around the world, essential services like healthcare, education etc. are already free, meaning people really do not need to have an income to access these services. I think this can still be maintained in the robotic era without having to treat robots like humans (i.e. taxing the robots) I think that taxing the robots might be used as a stop-gap measure, but eventually, the system will have to adapt. The reason I say this is, robots are initially expensive to build/install, but once built, they do not need a salary, and can work for longer, and better than humans, especially for manual manufacturing steps. This is their main attraction to companies/institutions that consider them. Question becomes, how do you tax an entity that earns nothing? How exactly will we tax the robots? I think eventually governments might have to increase income-tax rates for companies, or come up with other measures to tax companies according to their automation efforts which will only lead to a slow-down of the automation efforts, but they will still happen. I have no solutions to this, but I do think we'll need to collectively look at the existing systems and think of how we could adapt or change the systems. Maybe we should bring back the idea of a universal basic salary on the table. Maybe we should rethink the funding of essential services in the face of technological changes... On the issue of AI taking over: I think humans will merge with AI/robots, from bionic augmentation, to the current use of multiple devices to increase our catchment area of ideas and opinions a.k.a the internet I am hoping this will be the trend, where we will have devices implanted in our brains and bodies to help us make use of the benefits of the larger AI. On the other side, I see the development of organic neural nets being added into robots. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_computer for a quick introduction) These 2 developments will mean differentiating between augmented humans and robots with organic parts will be difficult, and messy.