Gates puts a number on the robot tax: a levy on tokens and 40% of jobs held back for people

Robert Seamans, a professor at NYU Stern, said in 2017 that policymakers must rethink fiscal policy for the 21st century, but that based on the data then available a robot tax would be bad policy because it would dissuade firms from investing in robots, lower economic growth, and where robots complement labour lead to less hiring and lower wage growth.

Gates argues governments will collect less income tax if fewer people are working while facing greater demand for retraining and social security benefits, writing that "the funds will have to come from somewhere at a time when budgets are stretched."

Fortune reports the nearly 6,000-word essay came hot off the news that U.S. government borrowing has hit $40 trillion.

Gates wrote that a tax "would slow the rush away from human labor a little and raise money for retraining and a stronger safety net," and that it "would need to be targeted so it does not slow down the purely beneficial uses of AI, like making medicine and education cheaper."

Gates says critics are "not considering the broader value of work for individuals and society" and that "we'll be able to afford a little inefficiency as the price for keeping people employed."

Gates proposes a "Human Reserved" category of work society deliberately keeps for people even when AI could technically do it, with childcare and jury service as his cleanest examples and education and healthcare in a fuzzier middle tier where humans stay in the room while leaning on AI.

Gates capped the Human Reserved idea at roughly 40% of jobs under its most aggressive form and said he could not push the number any higher without the argument falling apart.

Gates splits the protection into permanent, for roles such as caregiving, and temporary, aimed at workers such as a 55-year-old who has spent a whole career in construction and cannot realistically retrain on short notice.

Pew Research found 71% of US adults think AI will lead to fewer jobs in the United States over the next two decades, up from 64% in 2024, while only 5% think it will lead to more jobs.

In the same Pew study, 73% of young people believe they will get fewer career opportunities because of AI over the next 20 years.

A Yale Budget Lab and Brookings study published in October found no sign of mass displacement in federal employment data through July.

California's newly launched AI-unemployment tracker shows no statewide layoff wave so far, though it flagged rising unemployment claims among college-educated workers in AI-exposed occupations.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs will be gone within five years.

Gates said "I'd love to be convinced that I'm wrong about the job market, but I'm not," adding that he would stake his reputation on AI turning out "very bad for the job market."

Gates frames AI as ending up "either the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice," decided in the next few years, and calls for new national coordinating bodies and an international institution to manage the handoff.

Gates argues the comparison to past technology transitions does not hold, because AI can substitute directly for human cognition in law, customer service, medicine, software and manufacturing within one decade rather than several generations.

Pew's split implies roughly 14 US adults expect AI to reduce American jobs for every one who expects it to increase them.