This essay kind of rubs me the wrong way. Starting from the very beginning.

During my entire life I’ve only had two jobs. In the first one, I played a role in developing software to empower people through my work at Microsoft.

Yikes. We all know powerful people have an incentive to whitewash their pasts but there is whitewashing and then there is whatever that is.

I have to mention this because we can't forget that Microsoft's and Bill Gates's history regarding fear uncertainty doubt as well as embrace extend extinguish. "Forgive but don't forget" as the old saying goes.

During the 2000's Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer described the GPL as akin to a virus. He begged European governements not to adopt open source software and to adopt Microsoft software instead.

Indeed throughout its history Microsoft, along with Gates and Balmer, have consistently fought against implementation of open standards and open source software. They have consistently pushed towards their own proprietary solutions.

Given all of this, along with the laughable whitewashing attempt even at the very beginning of his essay, I feel like what Bill Gates has written here is consistent with his previous behavior in regards to all of this. I suspect all this talk of regulation is an attempt to squash open source AI and open weights AI and to ensure Big Tech such as Microsoft continues to be in control of the future of tech and the future of AI.

Even his talk of taxing AI tokens and robots would ultimately benefit Microsoft and other Big tech companies and hurt open source.

I will repeat what I said earlier. In life it is important to "forgive but never forget." Many have forgiven Bill Gates for all he did in the 90's. Many haven't. But nobody should forget and everyone should take his words with a grain of salt.

▲

keeda 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Even his talk of taxing AI tokens and robots would ultimately benefit Microsoft and other Big tech companies and hurt open source.

I'm curious, how? He proposes taxing bots in lieu of taxing humans, because they will be doing most of the work... but we already tax humans, and it hasn't hurt open source.

▲

ViktorRay 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Because it will make it more expensive for people or groups of people to run open source models to do work on their own hardware. You would be taxing people or groups of people to run a program on the computers they own. This is contrary to the principles of the free and open source software movements.

	▲	keeda 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is what he says: > I believe we should tax AI tokens and robots. Right now, if you’re an employer and you hire someone, you pay payroll taxes on their earnings. But if you buy a robot, you can usually write it off right away as a business expense. The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines. A tax would slow the rush away from human labor a little and raise money for retraining and a stronger safety net. It would need to be targeted so it does not slow down the purely beneficial uses of AI, like making medicine and education cheaper. Note the part about it being targeted. Clearly this is in the context of moderating the displacement of human labor by employers rather than a flat "TAX ALL THE TOKENS!" approach.

▲

hammock 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is there an essay from a tech leader than HASN’T rubbed anyone the wrong way, in some time? Eric Schmidt, Dario Amodei, Palmer Luckey, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, etc etc they all seem one or the other of out of touch or unlikable or unable to connect with rapport to the general public these days

▲

luisgvv 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

...and this is only his professional life ;)

	▲	ActionHank 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I heard he likes to work with professionals in his private life too.