This weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the 8th Naval Academy Science and Engineering Conference in Annapolis, MD, which was focused this year on two themes: Artificial Intelligence and Space Exploration. The conference featured lectures, panel discussions, and breakout groups on various issues regarding these themes. My specific group focused on the ethics of automation (ha!) and presented a presentation to the group at the end about what the US government and industry needs to do in the next five years to ensure the automation age is ushered in responsibly.
Before we compiled our thoughts, it was important to get some background information and ask panelists tough questions to better understand the issues at play. One of the speakers at the conference was democratic Congressman John Delaney, head of the new bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Caucus in Congress. He was certainly concerned that automation would temporarily disrupt industries such as transportation but seemed confident new jobs would arise to fill the void. Someone asked about Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Congressman Delaney was somewhat dismissive. “It’s too early to begin talking about that yet,” he said.
My specific question regarded a loss of tax revenue associated with the outsourcing of taxable, human tasks to machines. The thought is, if McDonald’s has the choice between a $35k/year employee and a $35k kiosk, it’s preferable for them to replace the human worker, even if the machine costs more initially. The kiosk is never late to work, never misses an order, and cannot be rude to customers. However, this decision actually has huge consequences on tax revenue. While the employee’s salary would have been taxed, the machine’s total cost would not have for completing the same task! Ultimately, this leads to a loss of tax revenue for the federal government unless we decide to start taxing robots–a strange concept today, but perhaps our only option tomorrow.
I was disappointed that my question wasn’t particularly addressed because I see this as a complex issue. Congressman Delaney seemed to echo again that new jobs would be created in the process and that those would also get taxed. Ultimately, I suppose, without much data, it is difficult to make accurate predictions about what jobs will be lost, how much tax revenue is lost (or gained), and when this is all going to happen. Some people in my breakout group argued that the economic surplus of automation would be enough to fund Social Security for decades and pay down the national debt! There are also likely subtleties that exist that are not quite clear now. For instance, a report published this summer noted that the automation of transportation would actually put more money into the pockets of everyday Americans as less people bought cars and more used transportation as a service. Additionally, it’s hypothesized that advertising opportunities in self-driving ride-sharing services might bring the cost down further–i.e. McDonald’s subsidizes half of your ride to the movies in exchange for you watching a 4-minute ad during the ride.
I know it’s not satisfactory to put it this way, but it’s difficult to know exactly what impact automation will have. I think, in the long term, it will lead to more lives saved, more money in everyone’s pockets, and less stress–but we’re a long way from that point.