Bill Gates Calls for Robot Taxes and ‘Human Reserved’ Jobs to Limit AI Job Losses
Key Takeaways
- •Gates said payroll taxes make human labor more expensive than automation, while robot purchases can often be written off quickly as business expenses.
- •He argued that direct taxes on robots and AI tokens could help protect jobs and generate revenue for governments facing lower income tax receipts and higher retraining costs.
- •Gates proposed setting aside some work as “Human Reserved,” citing childcare and jury service as tasks that should stay with people.
- •He said AI should not be banned from education or healthcare, but some functions in those sectors should remain human-led.
- •Gates said his approach could protect up to 40% of jobs, while acknowledging that many other roles may still change as AI advances.
Bill Gates, the billionaire and Microsoft co-founder, has backed renewed calls for a robot tax and proposed setting aside certain jobs as “Human Reserved.”
In a new essay on his Gates Notes blog, Gates said the proposals are intended to support workers who may lose jobs to AI over the next decade. He said the issue is becoming more urgent as more people worry about automation, and he expressed confidence that AI will hurt employment.
The call revives an idea Gates first floated in 2017, when he suggested that revenue from automation should help fund programs for displaced workers. Similar proposals have circulated in policy debates since, including a robot tax that European Parliament lawmakers declined to adopt that year, while South Korea moved in the same direction by limiting tax incentives for automation investment in what was widely described as the world's first robot tax.
The tax loophole Gates says favors machines
Gates said company tax rules create a disadvantage for human workers. When a company hires a person, it pays payroll taxes. But when it buys a robot, the cost can often be written off immediately as a business expense.
According to Gates, that difference means “the tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines.” He argued that direct taxes on AI tokens and robots could help preserve human jobs while also generating government revenue. As automation reduces the workforce, he said, income tax revenues fall while social security and retraining costs rise.
Gates also stressed that any such taxes should be targeted so they do not slow down beneficial AI applications, including efforts to reduce costs in education and healthcare.
What a ‘Human Reserved’ job would mean
Gates’ second proposal is to keep some jobs for people even if machines could do them.
He said some jobs should always remain human, and cited childcare and jury service as examples of work people do better. In medicine, Gates said a machine could deliver a terminal diagnosis, but should not. He suggested that in education and healthcare, some tasks should stay with people, while AI should not be banned entirely from those fields.
Gates said his plan would protect up to 40% of jobs, which he described as “as high as I can get.” That implies the remaining jobs could be open to change by AI and robots. That position places Gates on the more cautious side of an ongoing industry debate, as some technology leaders have argued that AI, like earlier waves of technology, will create new categories of work rather than only eliminate existing ones.
The broader effect of AI on employment is already being felt across industries worldwide, and Gates’s essay adds one of the technology industry’s most prominent voices to a question policymakers in several countries are already weighing. Earlier this year, Cryptopolitan cited a Morgan Stanley report showing that British companies are shedding more jobs than they are creating because of artificial intelligence.
