[kictanet] kictanet Digest, Vol 118, Issue 9

[Frederick Muriithi]

1. Re: Why Bill Gates would tax robots (Ahmed Mohamed Maawy)

On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 2:11 PM,  <kictanet-request at 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.