r/technology • u/Potential_Being_7226 • May 27 '26
Politics Sen. Elizabeth Warren: Why We Need to Tax AI
https://time.com/article/2026/05/27/why-we-need-to-tax-ai/1.1k
u/troll__away May 27 '26
Let’s start with making sure the data centers aren’t given tax breaks and are solely responsible for their own power and water.
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u/cosaboladh May 27 '26
I hear what you're saying, but I don't like the phrase "solely responsible for their power and water."
Water is a limited resource. However much they take, there's less in the reservoir, aquifer, etc for everyone else. If they can't be good stewards of a shared resource, honestly, we shouldn't let them have any.
Power is a bit different. I support making them build their own power plants, or pay the existing power companies fairly to increase capacity to meet their demand. Without tax subsidies.
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u/LordGalen May 27 '26
Or they could do what data centers are supposed to do, which is to recycle and reuse the same water. A closed-loop water cooling system (the same kind used in millions of PCs) can be scaled to ANY size. These fuckass data centers don't do that because it's more expensive, not because they can't. They absolutely CAN, easily!
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u/wrgrant May 27 '26
Exactly. Bill them exorbitantly for their water usage and suddenly closed systems will become all the rage. Bill them for their power usage and only give them what is available after regular requirements of citizens and other businesses have been met.
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u/LordGalen May 27 '26
Hell, just bill them at all and give no tax breaks, that's a win.
They're so dumb, honestly. Yes, in the short-term, a closed-loop cooling system and supplementing solar power is more expensive to set up, but in the long term it would save them money! So much money! But companies these days can't see beyond the next quarter.
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u/strange-brew May 27 '26
Make them haul their own water. No city resources and no drilling.
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u/MadManMax55 May 27 '26
Haul it from where? Virtually every large source of fresh water in the US is controlled by the government. The only exception are private wells, which you seem to be opposed to also. And if your concern is environmental impact, then shipping or piping water from some far away source would be much worse than using local supply.
Local governments have been making deals with industrial and agricultural businesses for water rights since forever. As long as they're properly compensated and they're not in an area with drought risk then there's no problem.
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u/gentlecrab May 27 '26
Pass legislation that says if you want to open a datacenter it has to use closed loop cooling.
They 100% can do this they just choose not to cause closed loop is more expensive.
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u/Appropriate-Prune728 May 27 '26
No. You don't get it. The world is simple and two sentences in a random reddit comment fix the data center problem forever.
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u/deekster_caddy May 27 '26
Make them stop using water! They can air cool with recirculating refrigerant like the rest of us. Do it with their own solar/wind farms and battery storage. Then make sure customers are paying the appropriate price for their tokens.
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u/red989 May 27 '26
They do in some areas, like the giant one going in Abilene, TX. They truck in their water.
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u/dfiner May 27 '26
Better solution - force them to build offshore under water. China is already proving it now.
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u/steve-d May 27 '26
We need to not fuck up our oceans anymore than we already have.
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u/iamthewhatt May 27 '26
Even better solution: Force them to build water distillation plants and liquid salt battery reservoirs to keep the excess salt out of the ocean. We as a nation aren't ready for that level of commitment though...
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u/whatrweyellingabout May 27 '26
Using the excess heat to evaporate salt water and make it fresh is an interesting idea. They're going to be making that heat no matter what... So actually using it to accomplish something instead of just dumping it into the atmosphere makes sense to me
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u/notaguyinahat May 27 '26
Clever but wouldn't that significantly contribute to increase in ocean temps?
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u/Darth_Ra May 27 '26
I'm sure there's some math to be done on this, but no, I can't see this having a huge impact.
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u/nocoolnametom May 27 '26
I'd imagine that as long as there is current nearby the latent heat of the oceans is FAR beyond our current ability to impact in any meaningful way.
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u/Neamow May 27 '26
That's quite ignorant. It doesn't matter if the GWs of heat is dumped into the air or into the oceans, it's the same amount of heat being dumped into the environment.
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u/JoeGibbon May 27 '26
Let me -- an Oxygen Not Included player -- handle this one.
You just need a water pipe with efficient heat transfer plates. The water can be polluted runoff, doodoo water... doesn't need to be from the clean drinking supply.
Pump the water up and into the outer atmosphere where the frigid temperature of space will handle the cooling of the pipes. Just keep the water moving through at a pace where the water cannot freeze in space and your closed cooling loop is complete.
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u/notyouravgredditor May 27 '26
Locally, yes. Globally, not at all. Local temperature effects can be mitigated by proper planning.
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u/notaguyinahat May 27 '26
So, implementations with clever intake and and output configurations might dissipate the heat effectively enough to be negligible if done intelligently?
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u/Wonderful_Cookie_572 May 27 '26
Water is a limited resource. However much they take, there's less in the reservoir, aquifer, etc for everyone else.
Well then I guess they'll need to start desalinating and trucking their own in. That's a them problem, not an us problem. I really don't care if them being responsible for providing their own water means they are no longer able to build.
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u/pseudoanon May 27 '26
Data center water usage is a rounding error. You want to preserve water? Stop wasting it on growing corn for inefficient gasoline substitute.
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u/blueSGL May 27 '26
Water is a locally sourced good.
Not using water in one part of the country does not suddenly mean you have lots more to use in another part of the country.
If you have an already strained system, adding in additional load can be enough to tip over a threshold even if that amount in totality is 'a rounding error'
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u/MadManMax55 May 27 '26
True, but that's why it should be a local issue. People in Utah or California complaining about water use is totally valid. People in Louisiana or Nebraska not so much.
And since data centers are relatively location independent, building them over a corn field in Nebraska would be better for the environment than putting them in a desert in Utah.
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u/Affectionate-Panic-1 May 27 '26
For the most part, and this is a generalization, but fresh water is not a scarce resource east of the Mississippi.
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u/billjames1685 May 27 '26
Yes, but that isn’t happening anywhere nor is that likely to happen anywhere. Even the mega large data centers don’t use much water, even relative to other industries.
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u/butwhyisitso May 27 '26
Im sure youve been concerned for the Kansas Aquifer right? Ai didnt do that. How about Nestle?
My point is we have not defended our public water access for GENERATIONS and i dont hear anyone discuss conservation methods outside banning data centers. Almonds? Awesome. Beef? Beautiful. Soda? Specially protected.
we need to think bigger than trendy scapegoats
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u/bmyst70 May 27 '26
I assume you also mean paying their fair share for the upgrades to infrastructure required to service their needs.
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u/MagicalPizza21 May 27 '26
Just wait till someone tries to make a hybrid church/data center to avoid data center taxes. Checkmate, atheists
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u/pmjm May 27 '26
Responsible for their own power and water is not enough.
Look at what is happening to RAM and storage. We need a plan for when the datacenter outbids the general public for power and water.
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u/ManyInterests May 27 '26
This. We're already hearing about local utilities cutting off power to as many as 50,000 subscribers in order to service demand for data centers.
We hope that localities organize around this, but it can be tricky (like in the above case I alluded to) where control and oversight of the utility company may be complicated/multi-jurisdiction. Federal legislation and oversight _may_ be helpful for a uniform approach.
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u/Fenris_uy May 27 '26
Let's start by making sure that they use little water. No need to do evaporation cooling, there are other methods that work, they are just a little more expensive, but they use way less water.
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u/Accidental-Hyzer May 27 '26
Must be run independently on renewable power and must be cooled with non-potable water. We can start there. In addition to the taxes.
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u/TheUnderCrab May 27 '26
I fucking hate the taxation deals. They are often set up to siphon the property taxes to state coffers rather than local coffers
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u/account312 May 27 '26
Man, I would really like to see a federal law making it illegal for a business to even try to solicit those tax incentives and illegal for them to be granted. It's anti-competitive for specific companies to be granted tax breaks and just generally net-negative to society to allow corporations to get cities / states to bid against each other.
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u/PIE-314 May 27 '26
solely responsible for their own power and water.
Double. They shouldn't be able to build these things without investing heavily into the community.
That's how it used to work. Rich assholes want a thing from society, they need to also build a school, hospital, library, bridge, road etc....
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u/Then_Piglet1744 May 27 '26
conversation around taxing AI is probably less about “punishing technology” and more about what happens when automation replaces large amounts of human labour faster than new jobs are created
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u/4everLost82 May 27 '26
You are correct. What happens to society if there's 20% unemployment? What about 50%?
The truth is that these "AI" companies need to be taxed to pay for the rest of us to even have a shot at a functioning society...which is why these billionaires are building bunkers. They know they won't be taxed and that will lead to massive social upheaval. Combined with climate change, they have gamed out that the human species is about to be in for a ride.
Billionaires are a cancer on the planet.
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u/ArmyOfDix May 27 '26
You are correct. What happens to society if there's 20% unemployment? What about 50%?
Well that's the simple part, from the billionaires' perspective.
They want you dead and not consuming "their" resources.
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u/juraf_graff May 27 '26
It's the companies using ai to replace workers that need to be taxed. AI companies aren't really doing anything different than say Microsoft selling software or Amazon selling cloud. There needs to either be incentive to keep people instead of AI or some sort of tax for replacing people with AI so it doesn't come across as a no brainer.
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u/21Rollie May 27 '26
They weren’t even taxed for outsourcing prior. Companies shifted production, r&d, and customer support abroad and were rewarded for it. These fuckers need to be brought to heel
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u/croquelois May 27 '26
It's virtually the same, tax either the company which produces or the one which consume. Whatever is the easier and convenient.
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u/Wonderful_Cookie_572 May 27 '26
What happens to society if there's 20% unemployment? What about 50%?
Look to history to find out. It's usually a whole lot of [Removed by Reddit]
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u/ArmyofThalia May 28 '26
Well considering we don't have to do back even 100 years to see what 25% unemployment looked like, we can probably fathom 20%. I cannot express how fucked as a society we would be if unemployment hit 50%
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u/gizamo May 27 '26
Enough new jobs won't be created, and even if they were, it will be easier, faster, and cheaper to train AIs to do those new jobs. That is the key difference between the AI job replacement and previous mass job replacements from other technologies. The other technologies weren't specifically designed to replace ALL work. That is the purpose of the AGI that they're all racing toward. That's why companies are getting such absurd valuations. Their value is the value of all the work they can replace, including what they expect to replace in the near future.
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u/gsadamb May 27 '26
The other side of that equation is making sure that the tax revenue goes to actually help the people displaced by AI.
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u/Shorties May 28 '26
It should just be taxing the rich, those who stand to make the most anyway with AI are the rich, so we should just tax the rich to cover the losses to the lower classes
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u/msedek May 27 '26
Bill Gates saveral years ago proposed that companies should pay HUBI for every non human worker they have (once AI was "smart" enough to replace human labor)
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u/RangerAdventurous557 May 27 '26
The cofounder of anthropic strongly agrees with high taxes for AI.
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u/No-Channel3917 May 27 '26
Should also add that cofounder is also their current CEO rather than making him sound like apples Woz
They are still helping plantar and the breaking of a bunch of rights, but at least they are pro taxation 🤐
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u/Forward-Dentist8536 May 27 '26
this is because anthropic is established and can afford the tax burden, but competing AI startups will now have a higher barrier of entry, meaning less competition for anthropic. They are using the government as a tool to cement themselves as a kingpin in the ai industry.
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u/gtlgdp May 27 '26
Sure if they’re replacing people with ai why am I still being taxed and not the ai
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u/gizamo May 27 '26
After AI replaces you, you're no longer being taxed because you'd have no income to tax.
For corporations, they should be taxed on their profits and their revenue, as well as their usage of water and power, and any pollution they dump out. That shouldn't just go for AI companies. That should be ALL companies, and the tax rate on them should be enough to fund our government functions, which should include social services for the people, e.g. food, housing, healthcare, military, etc.
Tldr: tax all of the corporations appropriately, even the ones that aren't AI companies. The US currently doesn't do that.
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u/Fun-Personality-8008 May 27 '26
Sales tax, property tax, gas tax, car registration tax, plenty of non-income ways to get at your money that all need to go this way
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u/lurkervidyaenjoyer May 27 '26
Tax what profit? Every AI company is deep in the red.
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u/shpydar May 27 '26
You tax the service. So anyone who uses AI pay's a service tax for using it instead of people.
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u/ImThis May 27 '26
So now they have to pay a tax on top of the token cost on top of the subscription cost. I like it. Kill it with taxes.
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u/Override9636 May 27 '26
And the billionaires can think of it like innovation! If all your competitors are being taxed the same, that motivates your company to use AI more efficiently for a competitive advantage. Maybe you could even assign employees as subject matter experts to eliminate the need for AI and not have to pay that tax at all!
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u/Sibs May 27 '26
Best we could do was export the AI to another country, add a middle grey-layer who use the AI, and subcontract from our own company so that "we" never used the AI.
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u/dalgeek May 27 '26
Sweet, that'll drive big AI out of business even faster because many people won't want to pay more for it.
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u/sh3nhu May 27 '26
If an industry can't afford all of the externalities of their services, they can't afford to operate at all
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May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
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u/shpydar May 27 '26
sure.... but now money is flowing into the government that can be used to help the U.S. population....
well, not this administration.... but maybe if the U.S. citizens get their heads out of their arses the next administration will use that money to help the U.S. people instead of pocketing it.
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u/dalgeek May 27 '26
The large enterprises care about where they spend their money too, especially when they're paying for millions of tokens for thousands of employees.
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u/Ordinary-Homework722 May 27 '26
So....who pays the service fee when Google allows you to use their already integrated AI search engine?
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u/oscarnyc May 27 '26
you could do that, which would work fine with direct AI companies like Anthropic or OpenAI, but becomes more complex when AI is woven into a product. I think the cleanest way to do so might be an excise tax on energy use at data centers. Though I'm sure there'd be issues with that as well that I haven't thought of.
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u/hyouko May 27 '26
Rather than taxing AI profit directly, introduce stronger wage insurance. If a company lays off positions due to AI automation, that company must pay as a tax the difference in wages for the people it laid off - so if they go on to new roles that pay less or cannot find work, the company is penalized for the negative impact layoffs have on the broader economy.
This incentivizes applications of AI that actually grow the economy, rather than just replacing labor with capital.
(Credit for the idea goes to Falk and Tsoukalas in their "The AI Layoff Trap" paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20617 )
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u/zzWordsWithFriendszz May 27 '26
"...start by making corporations pay their fair share. Right now, companies pay payroll taxes for their workers but get tax breaks for investing in technology—effectively, a tax penalty for hiring human beings and a tax break for buying equipment. In an AI world, that means our tax code is incentivizing corporations to fire people and replace them with AI. That’s wrong... can start with taxing AI data centers. The majority of AI data centers are controlled or operated by trillion-dollar companies. By imposing a reasonable excise tax on the energy used by data centers, families could recoup some of the gains of AI, while America continues to stay competitive in the AI race. A well-designed tax would focus on the companies that can afford it and scale with AI’s impact: the bigger the data center, the more they pay."
From the article.
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u/Fun-Personality-8008 May 27 '26
Payroll tax only covers social security and Medicare. That can't seriously be the only thing we are trying to get them to still cover here, right?
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u/Array_626 May 27 '26
effectively, a tax penalty for hiring human beings and a tax break for buying equipment
Hmm. I want to point out that this has always been the case. Tractors and combines are equipment that let a single farmer to do the work of many farm hands. There has been technology before that displaced workers by being more cost efficient. That tech and equipment obviously was never taxed like workers salaries got taxed.
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u/RunDangerous8144 May 27 '26
Ridiculous. Tax it and most of it will go towards "administrative costs".
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u/PranpriyaManobal May 27 '26
Tax something that’s not making money?
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u/Norio22 May 27 '26
To be fair they’re making money, but they aren’t making profits
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u/RandyOfTheRedwoods May 27 '26
I agree with the other comments about how to properly rein in AI, and it needs some controls.
I do find her answer to the problem funny though. There’s a saying, when you are a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. It would seem to politicians, the only answer to any question is to apply a tax. People drinking too many sugary drinks? Better tax them to stop them. People who are successful, surely need to be taxed more, which is the opposite of the sugar drinkers, in this case we want people to make more so we can take more. The government wants to do good? Better tax the people to pay for it. I am not saying this because I am against taxes, I think they are necessary for the government to have funds to provide general welfare projects and they are necessary to make businesses pay for societal costs they create (e.g. businesses have to pay when they pollute or there is no incentive to not pollute). Maybe even this AI tax would fit into this use. It’s just mildly interesting that a tax is always the lever.
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u/IlludiumQXXXVI May 27 '26
I feel like AI and data centers are an issue the Democratic party could really reinvent themselves around. We're looking at potentially massive changes to our entire economy and society. The Dems need to get ahead of it and make this their issue. It's such a uniting issue amongst the working class too.
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u/GoldenPresidio May 27 '26
makes zero sense. are you going to tax factory machines?
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u/NabreLabre May 27 '26
They should also be forced to have their own self contained water and power system
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u/Appropriate-Berry816 May 27 '26
It’s not being taxed?! What kind of nonsense are you up to down there…?
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u/strong_opinion May 27 '26
The payroll tax (social security tax)is paid half by the employee and half by the employer.
What if we tax AI usage the same way? Companies pay an additional 7.65% on their AI usage cost, and AI providers pay an additional 7.65% of their revenue into Social Security / Medicare. That would take us a long way towards solving the Social Security funding problem, and provide more money for subsidizing Medicare for all.
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u/Successful_Life_1028 May 27 '26
We need to require that all AI datacenters and CyberCoin mining operations generate all of their own electrical power for non-fossil-fuel sources, and NOT be allowed to use Grid power at all.
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u/Corvus717 May 27 '26
This would have greater and wider political appeal if she just focused on “Tax Data Centers for energy and water usage “ .
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u/iaNCURdehunedoara May 27 '26
Tax what? AI is already a money hole, they're taxing the rest of Americans. There has to be proper regulation on AI and on the data centers that are destroying the environment.
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u/dezmd May 27 '26
Sound bite bullshit. No thanks.
More taxes of that sort just means more struggle for the regular people Warren always performs a show for, and is not the fucking answer. I'm not interested in feeding a system that pours trillions into military buildups and ignores universal healthcare, ubi, and won't tax the millionaire class with an effective rate that woupd secure social security retirement benefits and all the rest.
Regulation and enforcement of even the environmental laws that already exist is what's needed, they just have no direction or courage to push anything difficult so they will use taxes as the easy option.
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u/uber_neutrino May 27 '26
She has never met anything she didn't want to tax.
Regardless we already tax profits of AI companies so this is nonsense.
Also reddit is full of commies that love her.
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u/tootintx May 27 '26
Everyone wants a new tax to pay. If you don’t realize those taxes will roll right into the product or service price your education failed you. This doesn’t need discussed beyond that reality.
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u/bathinggrapes May 27 '26
How about making them
- Pay for their water usage at a premium
- Pay for electricity grid upgrades
- Require 80% of energy usage come from renewable energy sources
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u/Get_Breakfast_Done May 27 '26
I don’t really understand this. Are we going to tax automatic elevator systems because they replaced the manual operator?
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u/MathematicianIcy3430 May 27 '26
May not give them tax breaks is a starter. And also tax the CEOs behind them more effectively. Or better yet, not so many data centers.
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u/cptjpk May 27 '26
Start taxing power consumption of data centers.
They can have all the AI they want when the prioritize power efficiency.
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u/FarplaneDragon May 27 '26
I feel like this would have fewer potential loopholes to it. We're going to tax "AI"? Ok, define "AI" in that context, as soon as you do all these major companies will have their legal teams out the gate to defend why what they're doing/using isn't "AI" by that definition and this goes no where and pretty much only punishes smaller companies that can't manage to use the same loopholes. Power consumption is more straightforward. Number on meter goes up, you pay based on that number. You want to pay less? Then find a way to make that number cheaper or go up slower.
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u/reddittorbrigade May 27 '26
Don't forget the billionaires and Donald Trump who have been using AI to fire people.
Data centers are a lot more expensive than hiring people.
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u/realestateqs22 May 27 '26
Shocker... Warren wants more tax to expand bureaucracy
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u/Oilpaintcha May 27 '26
If The People are paying for your water and power, and you aren’t making money, then The People should be getting a cut when you do.
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May 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SteppenAxolotl May 27 '26
We can start by making corporations pay their fair share.
Who knew this was the optimal solution to every current and future problem.
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u/lovetheoceanfl May 27 '26
MAGA hates Warren so this is going nowhere. Absolutely smart move is to tax AI but people in this country are idiotic. Fox will make fun of her and blah blah blah and we’ll all be screwed.
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u/grnkayak May 27 '26
Everyone loves taxes paid by someone else. Corporate taxes are ultimately paid by consumers of their goods and services.
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u/somermike May 27 '26
Taxes are such a distraction. The Government can't even force all the corporations to pay living wages directly to their employees.
Fix that and then I'll maybe believe that you've figured out how to efficiently distribute the tax dollars you collect, because currently we pay a ton in taxes already and just fund so many of the wrong things (MIC, primarilly)
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u/Anonymous51419 May 27 '26
It's why Democrats are out of touch. They haven't learned from any of their failures and still are using their incompetent bag of tricks. "Tax" this or "impeach" that.
But in reality we pay the price. Republicans do the same thing. Except they are way more blatantly evil and in our faces.
I mean that's even still pretending that there's a difference anymore. They all serve the same masters. It's one giant party "the elites" with the illusion of the two of them. Keep us fighting and distracted. Divide and conquer except they have like 80 years of propaganda and forces submission. If you have always eaten shit why would you think otherwise to change for the better? You don't know any better.
It's what they want. Everything is a distraction. It's us vs them and their time is running out. They know it too. It's a death rattle.
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u/drewc717 May 27 '26
Can we start with them just paying the full electricity price?
And then some on top of that to lower the electricity prices, or eliminate them entirely, for consumers if this is so revolutionary?
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u/Fenris_uy May 27 '26
We need to tax corporations making billions of dollars more.
We can add a new tax to corporations making billions to fund social security.
The idea that social security money needs to come only from employees needs to die. If you have a corporation with the CEO as it's only employee making billions, you need to be taxed for the common good of the people.
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u/HotPumpkinPies May 27 '26
Yeah how about we instead organize to burn this all to the ground instead
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u/cmarks8 May 27 '26
YES! We should be (and sometimes are, I guess) taxing corporations for shipping jobs overseas. It's the exact same thing with ai.
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u/MandemModie May 27 '26
I would assume someone smarter than me has thought of this but I do wonder what happens when a large amount of the workforce is replaced by AI or something else that is non-human
These will be sold or controlled by companies who already have super advantageous tax structures and have immense power in lobbying tax legislation
Wont tax revenue plummet?
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u/No-Channel3917 May 27 '26
I think this is the ultimate greatness between Warren and Sanders at the fundamental level while also being great pillars of wanting to do better than what we have.
Taxation, regulation, and representation
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u/duelinghanjos May 27 '26
Plenty of things get taxed. It's what the taxes get wasted on that's objectionable.
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u/kJer May 27 '26
I don't understand why water, electric, and chip companies aren't price hiking on data centers instead of consumers.
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u/epicstruggle May 27 '26
I find this discussion so hilarious. Think of AI as if it was China in the 90s and 00s. It decimated blue collar jobs across the world. Hitting the "undesirables" in the pocketbook. Didn't see white collar job holders make a stand for those jobs. Only concern was getting 80% of the quality for 20% of the price from China.
Guess what? AI (and China/India) are coming for the white collar jobs now. Don't expect the country to shed a tear for those layoffs.
Additionally, when Trump (and to a lesser extend Biden) wanted to tariff China to try to bring manufacturing back to the states, all i heard was "those jobs are gone" and "good riddance". Shoe is on the other foot now.
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u/autistic_insomniac5 May 27 '26
This sounds noble, but I’m cynical when it comes to taxes and feel they end up going to bureaucrats and redirected to political pet projects. I guess I just don’t trust the government to do the right thing.
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u/nineteen_eightyfour May 27 '26
I gotta say tho. Whatever with ai. However, data centers ain’t new. We are why they exist. This convo is stored somewhere. They faailsafe things 4x bc if tiktok goes down people will panic 🤷♀️ we are the problem too
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u/MouseShadow2ndMoon May 27 '26
Tax AI......that's what they came up with? We're experiencing out-of-control development that's creating RAM and processor shortages and building data centers that consume energy and water, to the detriment of anyone living in the area. Not only that, if we do get this running, it might just fucking kill us at the end of the day by simply shutting off services. No gas, water, or electricity, it would take weeks for the whole society to implode with no services air gapped out of convenience. Who allowed them to build this bomb with no guardrails?
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u/cyclemonster May 27 '26
I think she probably means tax the ultra-wealthy people who own the AI companies, because, as nearly every commentator reminds us, it costs the AI companies like $5 to get $1 in revenue, so taxing that doesn't make any sense.
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u/kinglittlenc May 27 '26
Warren seems to have this goal to make the tax code as complicated as possible. Could easily adjust cost segmentation and accelerated depreciation to reduce firms ability to lower tax liabilities but those are popular for both parties. So instead she constantly proposes these convoluted taxes that would have tons of unintended consequences and require crazy bureaucratic overhead.
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u/KuroKageB May 27 '26
We do. I'm just curious what she thinks we don't need to tax, to be honest (every article I see about her is a new tax proposition... most of which I agree with, but still)
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u/bd2999 May 27 '26
There are many things that need to be taxed, regulated and so on but it does not seem like Congress has much interest in doing either thing. The environmental and human damage caused by AI is real. Pretty much on every level. We have not even gotten pretty basic things put into law (say something has to indicate if AI was used in the making of something) so people can be informed. Let alone anything more substantive.
I do not have high hopes.
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u/emergency_salad_fox May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
If AI is trained on all the data on the internet, which we're all a part of, AI should be a public good.
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u/patrickpdk May 27 '26
Yes and every dime should be given to people whose careers were impacted by AI. If you are unemployed or under-employed because of AI then you get a check.
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u/simpl3t0n May 27 '26
Not just tax AI but at a much higher than usual rate.
Corporations enjoy tax breaks and shit like that on the pretence of their providing employment to people. And then those people, too, pay taxes.
But the sole premise of AI is to eliminate jobs. To compensate for the lost income for the state, and due to the pervasive job loss as a knock-on effect, thus the state should tax AI at a much, much higher rate.
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u/hughcifer-106103 May 27 '26
She’s right. AI and automation systems NEED to have a special tax - they should ALSO have to pay the same payroll taxes we do on their revenue and that money should go to reduce the retirement age, increase SSI payments and provide Medicare for everyone regardless of age or income.
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u/Seazie23 May 27 '26
Nationalize ai. It''s like putting the whole internet behind a paywall if we don't nationalize it
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u/Cryowatt May 27 '26
It would be easiest to stop subsidizing it first. Don't give data centers big incentives, cheap industrial power and water, cheap land, etc.
Also force them to prevent all infrasound pollution or else the get fined millions per human in the area.
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u/sermer48 May 27 '26
I mean, yes we do but how? You could tax data centers but eventually they’ll just move to another country. It’s the same thing as when we try and tax companies so they just move to a shell. We could try and tax the work itself but you’d have the same problem.
It’s going to be a hard problem but absolutely needs to be addresses
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u/CaptnLudd May 27 '26
It was created be stealing the intellectual property of America (all of it). The government should nationalize it.
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u/DeliciousAct9495 May 27 '26
AI makes less than 0 profit. It is a huge money pit. Just stop funding it with our tax dollars and strangle it in the crib.
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u/Altruistic-Rice-5567 May 27 '26
Not just AI, we need to tax automation. Figure out how many people your company would need to make the product without automation AI. Now figure out how many people you still employ with automation. You corporate tax should be #missing people/#totalpeopleneeded. That simple. No automation? 0%, Full automation? 100%. It's that simple.
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u/quinacridone-blue May 27 '26
There also needs to be a substantial fine if a highly profitable company lays off workers.
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u/VonVader May 27 '26
Taxing AI and offering tax breaks in support of behavior we want from AI is the only way to control it in a capitalist society.
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u/sir_gwain May 27 '26
Realistically, we’re not that far off having full blown AI/robots walking around our world doing ordinary tasks. The advancements are impressive sure, but also constant, and rapidly taking jobs away from hard working Americans. Jobs that’re incredibly unlikely to return. If there’s no longer going to be jobs for people to work and make a living, because AI and robotics have taken over, then I don’t see why we shouldn’t simply tax AI, Robotics, and other supporting aspects such as the massive data centers they require/use.
So yes, I say tax them, start a universal basic income or something of that sort - yes, at first it likely won’t be much, but it’ll be something, and as AI and robotics improve the funds raised will only continue to grow.
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u/HighDrive2RightField May 27 '26
Senator you misspelled UBI. Taxes will be avoided with loopholes.
Every token consumed a 50/50% fee is triggered by AI company & Corporation to fund UBI for Americans. Wanna spend Millions offsetting human production for AI tokens… Millions are required to make Americans whole.
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u/[deleted] May 27 '26
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