We fear waves of immigrants coming to our shores. Politicians obsessed with this global challenge leverage the fear to win election. Right wing nationalists (also in the EU) propose almost absurd solutions instead of addressing the root causes: Building giant walls and what not.
How would you feel if told, millions of newcomers are heading to your shores to take over your job - and on top of that, they don’t intend to pay taxes? Immigrants are not the main threat to the industrialized world’s workforce, robots are – or rather artificially intelligent robots are.
Robots with artificial intelligence are set to completely revolutionize our workforce. They are coming in numbers higher than immigrants, their cost of “living” is much lower, they are legal and are getting very intelligent. They might have little education compared with immigrants, but who cares when they can catch up by simulating countless scenarios in an instant? This is what the world’s new do (most complex strategic game known to humans) champion did to beat the existing human champion.
Some people are very weary of the existence a competing intelligence on the planet, others see these robots as just extensions of our own evolution and ethics. Even those of us who don’t ponder much about such esoteric issues have long enjoyed existentialist sci-fi flicks where robots and humans seem indistinguishable - eg. the TV-series Westworld presently.
Roboethics have been discussed since Asimov wrote about the Three Laws of Robotics in 1942 – and new laws are being added. If intelligent robots are our competitors and to some extent cerebrally alike – enough for us to discuss their ethical standing – why would they be above the law? Should they not contribute to our societies too? And why would they be exempt from taxes? I do think we need to at least register artificial intelligence units to be able to monitor and control them. Because we want to control them and not vice versa.
The EU is discussing whether robots should pay social security taxes. With an American libertarian bias this might sound like socialist extremism - and easy to ridicule regardless. Obviously, robots will not be like persons in most respects - and end of the day it is their owners who will suffer some kind of tax burden. But if you try to forget the ideology and paradox for a moment, which alternative solutions come up?
I don’t think that artificial intelligence means doomsday and I think many new jobs will be created too. However, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that these new types of jobs will favor low income demographics. We need to address the needs of those who will be left out of the new job market. Many countries are realizing this and actually discussing having a universal basic income to address the symptoms of the ever increasing speed of change. Who would be better suited to finance this basic income (or in some other way support those left out) than the ones creating the havoc?