Bernie Sanders calls for 'robot tax' to protect workers from the impacts of AI

Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a possible solution for changes to the labor market driven by AI and automation: a robot tax.

The Vermont senator, who is the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, released a report this week about how AI will impact the workforce in the coming years.

The report projects that AI could lead to the elimination of 100 million jobs in the United States over the next decade.

"The agricultural revolution unfolded over thousands of years. The industrial revolution took more than a century," the report reads. "Artificial labor could reshape the economy in less than a decade."

Among the various policies proposed in the report to address this disruption is a "robot tax" for large corporations, with the goal of using the revenue raised by that tax to benefit workers who may be harmed by AI.

It's an idea that's been around for a while — and it's not just progressives who are into it.

Bill Gates said in 2017 that automated labor should be taxed just like human labor in order to maintain funding for social safety net programs.

Sanders later wrote in his 2023 book, "It's OK To Be Angry About Capitalism," that he agreed.

"If workers are going to be replaced by robots, as will be the case in many industries, we're going to need to adapt tax and regulatory policies to assure that the change does not simply become an excuse for race-to-the-bottom profiteering by multinational corporations," Sanders wrote in the book.

The report proposes several other policies, including moving toward a 32-hour workweek, allowing greater worker participation on corporate boards, and passing pro-union legislation.

As part of the report, Sanders's staff asked ChatGPT to predict which jobs are most vulnerable to replacement by AI and automation in the next 10 years.

The model found that 89% of fast food and counter workers could lose their jobs, along with 62% of retail salespeople, 54% of software developers, and high percentages of other professions.

"While this basic analysis reflects all the inherent limitations of ChatGPT, it represents one potential future in which corporations decide to aggressively push forward with artificial labor," the report states.