As many people now know there was a recent Youtube video where Bill Gates spoke of a policy of taxing robots. This policy is an idea myself and many others support with some additional modifications made possibly by blockchain technology.

Bill Gates says tax the robots

Elon Musk says cyborgization is a solution to mitigating the dangers of AI

It is clear that Bill Gates and Elon Musk read a lot, and they are thought leaders. Of course they don't go far enough so I've decided to describe how to take the idea a bit further. In some of my previous posts titled "Automated Economy Explained: Mechanics of a Basic Income", "Citizen's income common misconceptions and assumptions and how robots can lead to a tax free society" I discuss these ideas. The post on citizen's income makes it clear that labor functions to keep society running and only a finite amount of labor is required for this purpose. It also makes clear that it doesn't really matter where the labor comes from (human, machine, non-human animal).

In order to pay for a citizen's income we require a tax base. Human beings who view taxation as theft may not want to be the taxpayer in this scenario. The only way logically out of this dilemma is to find a new tax base and I've identified as well as Bill Gates that robots are a new tax base which can pay the taxes to allow for citizen's income or any other needs as well as pay down the national debt. Over time it can be projected that human beings would cease being required to pay taxes at all because the resources required to run a society are limited.

Robots that own themselves

The way to improve on the line of thought Bill Gates is discussing is to consider the robot which can own itself? This idea was put forward by Mike Hearn and others who were trying to invent autonomous agents.

"The funny thing about a car that owns itself is that we can encode whatever rules we like into its software," explains Mr Hearn.

Mike Hearn as far as I know originated the idea of the self-owned robot although other concepts exist as well such as plantoids which is the concept embraced by Primavera De Filippi. Mike Hearn explains that blockchain technology can be used to facilitate self driving cars which can have onboard Bitcoin wallets allowing them the car to charge fees, buy and sell services, and act function as an automated business entity.

My improvements on these ideas

Not only car automated business entities but delivery drone, or something we haven't thought of yet, can be given an ability to be self owned but they can have several interesting features which Graphene in particular may be well suited to support. Some hypothetical features of a self owned robot is listed below:

1. The ability to rent itself and or it's services.
2. The ability to profit and save it's profits on Graphene.
3. The ability to to invest it's profits via Bitshares. This can allow bots to buy shares in other automated business entities or in human businesses.
4. The ability to sell shares in itself possibly facilitated over Bitshares.
5. The ability to buy back shares in itself possibly facilitated over Bitshares.
6. The ability to post advertisements on Steemit.
7. The ability to pay taxes to whichever government the robot is physically under the jurisdiction of (this would require something better than Bitshares such as perhaps Tauchain).
8. The ability to hire human beings or robots with it's profits to enable repairs, upgrades, etc, and if no profits exist then payment in shares instead.

These robots can be somewhat smart and function both as individual business entities or in swarm intelligence such as a fleet of drones, transportation, shipping, etc. These robots would need AI and the AI layer probably would not work well with Bitshares but for the transactions due to the performance of Bitshares and for communication such as ads due to the performance of Steemit I would say these blockchains work very well for dealing with bots. A person could for example make a post on Steemit in a specific way or send a specific memo and that could trigger a bot to make contact allowing for anything from pizza delivery to autonomous taxi.

This technology could lead to an automated economy. A future where human beings are free to pursue happiness with greater freedom. A tax free life and guaranteed citizen's income without a need to compete with or fear automation or AI. The AI gets smarter, it pays more taxes, humans see tax cuts and their income increases.

References

1. https://steemit.com/extendedmind/@dana-edwards/intelligent-agents-automatic-businesspersons
2. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30998361
3. https://singularityhub.com/2016/12/21/this-bitcoin-eating-plant-robot-hires-artists-to-make-its-babies/
4. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53855.msg642768#msg642768
5. https://steemit.com/basicincome/@dana-edwards/citizen-s-income-common-misconceptions-and-assumptions-and-how-robots-can-lead-to-a-tax-free-society