As artificial intelligence and robots take on more work traditionally done by people, Bill Gates says companies replacing human labour should pay an equivalent payroll tax on that automated work.

Speaking with New York Times journalist Ezra Klein in an interview that aired Tuesday, the Microsoft co-founder argued that governments could treat a unit of labour similarly whether it is performed by a person or a machine.

"You define a unit of labour and say, independent of whether that's delivered by a human or robot, you are paying the same FICA tax that a human worker would pay,"........

© The News International