TOBY SHAPSHAK: If robots are going to take humans’ jobs, they should also pay tax

If robots are going to take humans’ jobs, they should also pay tax. This is one of the peripheral, but important, conversations in the debate about the effect of automation and artificial intelligence on our jobs.

There’s a lot of scaremongering about the impact of robots on jobs. It’s worth remembering the first time there was a wave of automation, when factories and the production line debuted in the 19th century.

Call centre operators, retail staff and even low-level legal and tax workers could be replaced by robots

Manual labour was mostly done by skilled artisans, but the process of "deskilling" workers ultimately "substituted ... skills through the simplification of tasks", according to a 2013 report from the University of Oxford’s Oxford Martin School. Summarising these changes, the authors note how "the deskilling process occurred as the factory system began to displace the artisan shop, and it picked up pace as production increasingly mechanised with the adoption of steam power. Work that had previously been performed by artisans was now decomposed into smaller, highly specialised sequences, requiring less skill, but more workers, to perform."

Now, similar skills sets are under threat. Call centre operators, retail staff and even low-level legal and tax workers could be replaced. Robots and drones could substitute US$126m in labour costs in agriculture and construction in the US alone, according to a PwC report last year.

Another major wave of automation was made possible by the computer revolution, starting in the 1970s. A whole category of employment was lost when typists no longer had jobs after word processors became commonplace. The Internet has disrupted a range of industries, with online banking replacing branches and the travel industry shutting stores as airline and holiday bookings move online. Think what the barcode scanner has done to retail shopping alone.

Much has been made of chatbots, which allow customers to "chat" with software robots using messaging apps. Add artificial intelligence and the network effect of more people using the services, and it looks like both a threat to traditional workers and a boon to customer service.

Adapting current technology could result in 45% of today’s jobs being performed by robots, according to a 2015 McKinsey report. Another, from 2011, found that automation had allowed 44% of companies which had cut their headcounts after the 2008 financial crisis to reduce staff.

But, as industries shed jobs, the knock-on effect will not only affect individual income, but also countries’ ability to raise taxes. "You can’t just give up that income tax," Microsoft founder Bill Gates said recently.

It’s an interesting debate — and one that is even more pertinent in the gig economy, in which Uber drivers and Airbnb providers offer services that were once taxed.

What jobs will remain is the next question. The consensus is that those that require humanity’s innate creativity and face-to-face interaction will be safe. For now.

* Shapshak is editor-in-chief and publisher of Stuff magazine.