Bill Gates says companies that replace workers with robots should pay the same taxes

Bill Gates has a plan to ensure people continue to be paid in an AI jobs apocalypse: tax the robots.

In an interview with The New York Times that aired on Tuesday, the billionaire philanthropist said “society decides” how to support its workers – even if AI is pushing them out.

“You define a unit of work and say, whether that is provided by a human or a robot, you are paying the same FICA tax that a human worker would pay,” Gates said, referring to the US payroll tax.

The FICA tax works by having workers pay portions of their wages for benefits such as Social Security and Medicare, with employers matching workers’ contributions.

Taxing robots that take human jobs would provide both a monetary safety net for citizens and continued tax revenue for the government, Gates said.

Gates, who co-founded Microsoft in 1975, has previously warned that artificial intelligence and robotics are poised to destroy “white-collar jobs”.