Is it time we started taxing robots? Not the robots themselves, of course – their wages remain stuck at zero – but employers who would automate human jobs out of existence.
Bill Gates thinks we should: in a recent interview, he argued that we should raise the same amount of money as we would lose in payroll taxes from the humans they supplant. That money could be directed towards more human-dependent jobs, such as caring for the young, old and sick. His remarks came just a day after EU legislators , perhaps swayed by the robotics industry’s claims that it would slow innovation and ultimately damage the economy.
That’s only going to get worse as machines become ever more capable of doing human jobs – not just those involving brute labour, but ones involving thinking, too. In a much cited 2013 study, researchers at the UK’s Oxford Martin School suggested that as many as 47 per cent of jobs were at risk in the next two decades. Subsequent research has produced both higher and lower estimates, but even a change of a few per cent would amount to millions of jobs, at a time when unemployment and under-employment has led to huge discontent.
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Those who back the robot revolution often point out that previous upheavals have always created new kinds of jobs to replace the ones that have gone extinct. However, one important pressure valve might not work this time. Previously, when automation hit one sector, employees could decamp to other industries. But the sweep of machine learning means that simultaneously. So maybe it’s not about how many jobs are left after the machines are done taking their pick, but which ones.
Unsatisfying work
The evidence so far suggests they might not be very satisfying. For example, we have seen the rise of the “gig economy”, in which algorithms direct low-skilled human workers. While this is an employer’s dream, it is frequently an insecure, unfulfilling and sometimes exploitative grind for workers.
What of those jobs that don’t yet exist? So far we have only the germs of what these might be. On-the-fly machine translation could help workers across borders and language barriers – which might re-ignite debates about employing non-local staff. Or perhaps augmented reality could deliver expert systems that could be staffed by people who no longer need to have years of training. Both , for example, have touted specs for future technicians. However, the laws of economics imply that technologies like this will lessen the wages these jobs command – and might simply be a stepping stone to full automation as smart machines learn from the humans’ activities.
If you want to stop this, it’s the employers you need to convince, not the people making the technology. In his influential 2015 book, Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford argued that the drivers of automation are not fundamentally technological – despite much talk in Silicon Valley about the inevitability of progress – but economic. Employers have huge incentives to replace all-too-human workers with machines that never stop working and never get paid. That points to the need for economic measures to preserve human jobs rather than simply trying to oppose the technology: the equivalent of making Uber recognise its workers as employees, for example, rather than campaigning to outlaw the service outright.
Gates, for one, thinks the robot tax is a more measured approach. It might help raise funds to re-orient education and training towards the lucrative jobs that remain. But it is only one possibility: another is the much-discussed proposal to introduce a basic minimum income to take the sting out of joblessness, currently being trialled in several countries. A more business-friendly middle ground might be for governments to subsidise reductions in human working hours, an approach that has fended off labour crises before.
A robot tax, provided it is properly designed, might encourage companies to look for ways to use automation that are both socially and economically advantageous. Properly designed tax breaks for companies that embrace retraining and up-skilling workers might help too. It’s always better to wield both carrot and stick.
