A CNBC interview with me and Oren Etzioni of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence on Bill Gates’s support for a tax on robots:
A CNBC interview with me and Oren Etzioni of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence on Bill Gates’s support for a tax on robots:
Martin Ford 
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-27/minimum-wage-massacre-wendys-unleashes-1000-robots-counter-higher-labor-costs
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/03/how-fast-and-impactful-will-artificial.html
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/43018-humans-likely-to-revolt-over-robot-job-loses
https://www.ft.com/content/42ab292a-000d-11e7-8d8e-a5e3738f9ae4?segmentId=7ac5b61e-8d73-f906-98c6-68ac3b9ee271
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pwc-robotics-jobs-20170324-story.html
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/job-stealing-robots-millennials-see-hope-fear-cathy-engelbert
Universal Basic Income bad idea http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2017/04/03/Universal-Basic-Income-Idea-Whose-Time-Should-Never-Come
Robert Schiller worried about automation and AI http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-what-scares-nobel-prize-winning-economist-robert-shiller-about-the-economy-2017-04-04
Robot tax is seductive but bad idea http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/23/bill-gates-robot-tax-seductive-yet-terrible-idea/
More on taxing robots https://www.wired.com/2017/05/will-pay-future-not-robots/
UBI is not a panacea https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-04/universal-basic-income-is-neither-universal-nor-basic
really enjoyed your ted talk and reading your blog… the one biggest thing people have to worry about is letting too much of their freedoms get taken through government support. We, as a society, could end up back in serfdom days and it won’t be because people aren’t working thanks to automation… just our 0.02c
I agree that the “robot tax” is a bad idea due to both of Martin Ford’s concerns:
1) What a “robot” is will be difficult to judge, and
2) We should not be doing things to slow down automation.
Taxes should always be aimed at punishing “bad” things, rather than punishing “good” things. That is, things that should be taxed include things like pollution, things that harm people (cigarettes, or even sugar), etc.
It’s very surprising to me that Bill Gates would recommend a “robot tax.” It doesn’t seem like a well-thought-out idea.