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> The easiest way would be a straight tax on AI usage, and using that tax to pay a universal basic income Every call for UBI should be qualified with two estim
by Aurornis 6mo ago
> The easiest way would be a straight tax on AI usage, and using that tax to pay a universal basic income
Every call for UBI should be qualified with two estimates:
1) How much money you think UBI will pay out
2) How much money you think the tax will generate
Creating a UBI program with AI taxes sounds like a clean solution to something until you do any math.
If we estimate today’s AI revenues across all the big providers at $100B annually (a little high) and divide by the population of the US, I get around $24 per month per person.
So a 100% tax on AI plans would allow us to give UBI of about 80 cents per day.
Even 10X the revenues wouldn’t make bring that to parity with UBI expectations. A 100% tax would also be an incredible gift to foreign AI companies that could offer similar services for half the price to everyone else in the world.
- cortesoft 6mo agoThis is based on the assumption that AI is going to take all our jobs. If this is true, than as more jobs are absorbed by AI the revenue would increase.
- Aurornis 6mo agoYou’re assuming that this AI will be in the same taxable jurisdiction as the people whose jobs were replaced. The work that is most replaceable by AI is work that is mostly digital. That work most easily moves to another country. When the work is replaced by AI you can relocate it to another country much more easily than when you have to relocate workers.
- VitaliyKorbut 6mo agoAs more jobs are absorbed by AI the revenue would increase, but not dramatically. As AI competition will lower the prices to the cost of serving tokens, which is close to zero. We’ll get more stuff done and the world would be better off. Even if we don’t invent new jobs we can compete for existing jobs harder, for example we can have 3 times more of X (for example restaurants) at 1/3 the client base on average. It doesn’t mean that everyone will be of a higher social status than average, which is what people actually want, and which is mathematically impossible.