The world's richest man, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, said in an interview with Quartz this week that robots that steal human jobs should pay taxes. A similar law was recently considered in the European Union but was rejected.

“Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, Social Security tax, all those things,” said Mr Gates. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level,” he said.

More than 50 per cent of jobs currently performed by humans are vulnerable to rebots and could result in significant taxation loses as well as increased unemployment levels throughout the world.

“Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the labour-saving efficiency there. Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax. I don’t think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. It’s OK,” said Mr Gates.