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Microsoft Exec Suggests AI Agents Will Need to Buy Software Licenses - Business Insider (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 15 points 6 months ago (5 children)

This gets close to an idea I heard long ago that I think has some merit.

Hire an employee? You must not only pay them, but cover taxes to have them there. Buy a robot to replace them? It's a business expense, no taxes!

Okay, pay taxes for your robot usage. Use that money to fund UBI, social programs and/or retraining people for other jobs.

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    Then they’ll just make one robot do multiple things. Suddenly the big company only has one taxable employee.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago*

    Depends. If the tax is based on jobs replaced, not the abstractly defined number of robots that exist, it would have an impact. Also, monolithic solutions tend to be inherently less efficient than similarly developed defined ones, so limiting the robot models for a tax benefit would have another limit on their efficiency.

    It's an issue that could be accounted for, if there were sufficient political will. If taxes from automation were committed to public good, there would likely be pretty widespread acceptance.

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