Bill Gates has published a new essay on his Gates Notes blog outlining plans for a robot tax and a category of Human Reserved jobs to counteract the effects of artificial intelligence.
The Microsoft co-founder argues that while slowing down development, as suggested in the open letter Pacing The Frontier, is a sensible goal, he doubts such a pause would be sustainable in the long term.
His views on scientific and medical progress remain positive, though concerns over employment are central to the piece. These arguments mirror policy discussions from companies like Anthropic, but the specific proposals here are distinct.
A tax on automation
Gates suggests taxing the acquisition of robots to offset current tax incentives. At present, employers pay payroll taxes on human wages, whereas purchasing machinery is often treated as an immediate business expense.
Right now, if you’re an employer and you hire someone, you pay payroll taxes on their earnings. But if you buy a robot, you can usually write it off right away as a business expense. The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines.
A tax would slow the rush away from human labor a little and raise money for retraining and a stronger safety net.
This approach aims to reduce the incentive to replace workers with machines while generating funds for upskilling and social support.
Jobs kept for people
The second proposal involves designating specific roles as Human Reserved, effectively banning AI from performing them. This measure could be implemented relatively quickly by regulators.
We might set something aside as Human Reserved for economic reasons. For example, we may do it because allowing machines to take over a certain role will displace a large number of people who can’t easily change jobs. You can’t tell a 55-year-old who has worked in construction their whole career that they need to go work at an elder care facility and expect them to find it fulfilling.
Sometimes the decision to make something Human Reserved will be driven by other factors. In health, for example, imagine a robot giving you the awful news that you have an incurable disease. There’s no technical reason why it couldn’t. Yet it shouldn’t.
The Human Reserved domain will evolve over time — for example, we should consider setting aside some jobs now and phasing in AI slowly over years or decades with a commitment to preserve some jobs.
The list of protected roles would likely expand and shift as technology advances.
Both measures would significantly reduce the profit margins of major technology labs. This financial impact may explain why these specific ideas have not been widely discussed until now.
Questions remain regarding which bodies would enforce these rules and the exact definitions of the restrictions if they are adopted.
What it means
These proposals suggest a shift from purely voluntary ethical guidelines to structural economic and legal barriers. They imply that protecting workers may require active intervention in how businesses spend money and what tasks machines are allowed to perform.
