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Bill Gates says AI will be very bad for the job market and wants a robot tax to slow it down.

Jensen Huang says he loves Bill, but does not see what Bill sees. Neither man shows a single number.

Issue 1930 August 20263 receipts4 min
AI illustration for: Bill Gates says AI will be very bad for the job market and wants a robot tax to slow it down. Jensen Huang says he loves Bill, but does not see what Bill sees. Neither man shows a single number.
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Bill Gates published an essay warning AI will be very bad for the job market and proposing a robot tax and legally protected 'Human Reserved' jobs. Jensen Huang publicly rejected that view three days later, calling AI a net job creator at a scale never seen before.

Before you read on. Your call?

both statements are confirmed, on the record, from named billionaires. Neither one comes with a quantified figure, a percentage, or a date. TechCrunch's and Fox Business's full coverage of both men confirms the absence of hard numbers on either side.

The twist

Gates floated a nearly identical robot tax in 2017, and economists dismissed it then as a tax on productivity dressed up as a tax on progress, this is not a new argument updated with new evidence, it is the same argument re-run nine years later with the word AI swapped in.

0quantified job-loss figure
2017year Gates first floated a robot tax -- economists dismissed it then as a tax on productivity dressed up as a tax on
3 daysgap between Gates's essay and Huang's on-record public rejection

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Say this in tomorrow's meeting“Bill Gates and Jensen Huang publicly disagree on whether AI wrecks the job market. Neither one has a number to back up his side.”

Receipts

  1. Supports techcrunch.com: The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines
  2. Context thenextweb.com: He first proposed taxing robots in February 2017, when the argument was about factory automation rather than models, and the reasoning was the same
  3. Refutes finance.yahoo.com: I love the heck out of Bill, Huang told Fox Business this week

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