Do not tax robots now

by David Vivancos

Again the forecasts I have been stating in my Artificial Intelligence conferences over the last five years are sadly taking shape, today in Spain (probably other countries are thinking it too) opened the door to tax companies with robots to compensate for the human job losses and pay for the future (human) retirement plans. Again a very shortsighted measure like setting taxes for using solar panels.

It is good to understand the implications of automation regarding human jobs, but it is very wrong to don’t understand that what is going on, is a huge change of paradigm, beyond what some people think as the fourth industrial revolution, I think it is a bad name to describe what is going to happen, since it narrows our perspective due to the changes and challenges involved, now it will transcend beyond that, and even redefine our own human nature, the phrase I coined to describe it is “the transition from the digital world to the fully automated world.”

So thinking in setting taxes to robots now, to compensate, will only reduce the competitiveness of the country applying it. It is the time to invest in generating new models of society to cope with the coming age of automation, and change the paradigm, something by the way not resolved yet, instead of adapting and using the old one with a shift in the actors.