Target: Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House
Goal: Support efforts to curb AI’s detrimental impact on workforce.
Labor Day brings questions about what the future of human labor may look like. According to one of the world’s most influential employers, Bill Gates, that future will be “turbulent.” In a recently released essay, the Microsoft founder envisioned an incoming workplace where many jobs would have to be “human reserved.” The tech giant spoke of artificial intelligence and rapidly developing dexterous robots (capable of mimicking human movements) that could displace workers in areas typically viewed as more resistant to automation – such as construction and hospitality – by decade’s end.
Gates, however, does see a path forward that could ease the turmoil. One of the cornerstones of this path involves taxation on robots and AI tokens (processors instrumental to the success of artificial intelligence). These taxes could then be used to benefit workers by supplementing lost incomes and by creating new job opportunities for displaced workers. Currently, employers are more incentivized to automate jobs because they don’t have to pay any taxes on or wages to the technology (unlike human employees), which is in a sense slave labor. Meanwhile, AI companies profit from ever-increasing subsidies and ever-decreasing regulation. Everyone wins but the human workforce.
Bills are circulating through Congress that take on these issues, but thus far they have seen little movement. Sign the petition below to demand elected leaders confront a looming labor crisis.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Speaker Johnson,
In 5,900 words, Bill Gates starkly outlined a reality that could displace millions of American workers. In his essay about the threat emerging robotic and AI technologies pose to blue-collar jobs, Gates bluntly stated, “Waiting until people are already displaced or underemployed will be too late. AI is a structural challenge to the way our economy is organized, and it requires thinking and action now.”
Many of his proposed actions fall in lockstep with proposals recently introduced in Congress. For one, the AI Tax and Work Protection Act touts AI token taxation as a remedy for implicit automation tax breaks gifted to employers. Even influential voices in the world of AI, such as the CEO of Anthropic, support more robust taxation policies for the technology. This CEO warns that, if left unchecked, AI and robotics could lead to unemployment levels that rival or even surpass the Great Depression. Other proposals – ranging from the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act to a bifurcation taxation policy bill – could help avert “the biggest wealth transfer in history from the bottom to the top,” in the words of one of the latter proposal’s sponsors.
By all accounts, every one of these urgent bills is stagnating in unsupportive committees. Demonstrate your leadership. Support these efforts, and support your constituents – and the futures of all American workers – before it is too late.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Phasmatisnox
