Karl Marx in the Age of AI: A New Way for Bringing Equity, Rewards, and Personalization to Taxpayers and Welfare Beneficiaries

October 25th, 2024

20th edition and 9th in Vol 2 Being Human in the Age of AI series of the Mindvista newsletter. The goal is to explore and present new ways of thinking and ideas for driving personal agency and adoption of AI.

In the recent editions of the Mindvista newsletter,' Being human in the Age of AI 'series we explored new ways of thinking and ideas for driving personal and enterprise agency for adoption of AI.

But AI agency is not only about work and companies. There are societal benefits to be gained in finance, healthcare, education, and environment and in the next set of editions we will explore new ideas and programs in these areas.

Let's start with societal finance and explore the impact of AI for stakeholders on both funding and spending sides of the equation, Tax Payers and Welfare Beneficiaries.

“From each according to their means and to each according to their need.”

Karl Marx, philosopher, author, social theorist, and economist, made this fundamental principled postulation on taxes and benefit. AI offers a real opportunity to implement this vision in a new way that can simultaneously recognize individual contributions of taxpayers while ensuring precise delivery of benefits tailored to individual welfare beneficiary needs.

This can be the guiding principle to assess how we are doing today and how AI can improve impact on tax payers and welfare beneficiaries.

Where are we today?

Historically, paying tax has been seen as an essential part of a social contract, an obligation, for gaining the benefit of living in a civilized society, infrastructure, security and rule of law. But times are changing.

As per UNCTAD, global public debt has increased by 50% to $92 trillion in the last 10 years and the number of countries with high debt has nearly tripled from 22 to 59. OECD countries and developing nations spend 20%+ and 15%+ of GDP respectively on welfare.

Hence, governments globally are increasing taxes to reduce debt/control deficit, support increasing welfare spending. Finance and revenue departments in government across all major economies are taking initiatives (including using AI) for reducing cost of collection, tax evasion and avoidance.

In many countries, the tax collections are ahead of real growth and inflation. This along with increased welfare spending has caused many taxpayers to feel marginalized and seek spending attention in other areas such as infrastructure, security etc. for the taxes paid.

On the welfare side, benefits such as education, healthcare, subsidies are given based on prefixed criteria. They are not personalized to needs of individual households and do not reflect dynamic changes in beneficiary status over time or life events to increase, decrease or off board from benefits whenever exit criteria is met.

There is a new way.

AI for Tax Payers - Equity,Rewards and Incentives

Here are five ways where AI can help in increasing equity and reward for tax payers to bring some cheer and sense of social engagement and future building. The first three increase rewards and incentives and the last two increase equity by providing tax credits to tax payers:

1.Personalized services - AI enhanced or AI driven personalized service for queries on citizen services such as certificates, approvals, enrollments, documentation besides answering queries and explaining assessments relating to filings.

2.Reward - Create a reward criteria such as filings, consistency, growth in tax paid for tiered reward program for priority services. Use a chain of thought reasoning to assess interests, capabilities and design a recognition program with tiered benefits ranging from badges, host/invite for special events and even cultural ambassadorship for citizen to citizen ties to supplement governmental ties.

3.Feedback - Seek feedback on policies and policy making and governance - AI platform to share policies, proposals and review for feedback.

4.Surplus value - Create a mechanism to model to track changes and capture surplus value (for simplicity sake we can detail this difference between revenue/employee and cost/employee) across industries and assign surplus as tax credits in calculations for eligible tax payers.

5. Data Taxation: The development and deployment of AI systems often involve complex global value chains, with different stages of the process, such as research and development, data collection, and algorithm training, processing taking place in different jurisdictions. Use AI to develop a personal data value calculator for platforms. Levy and credit data tax to platforms for distribution between governments and users.

AI for Welfare Beneficiaries - Personalised, Integrated and Dynamic

Here are two ways AI driven or enhanced programs can make a difference for transforming beneficiary experience and program impact:

1. Personalized, integrated and dynamic welfare program: AI can assess the needs of individuals or families with far greater detail than current systems, taking into account health, education, living conditions, life events and future potential needs. This could lead to a smart integrated common benefit welfare system where benefits are not siloed and distributed not according to fixed categories but based on a personalized, continuous and dynamic need analysis to maximize benefits to the most needy (maximin principle) and when they need it most.

2. Welfare Beneficiary Feedback: AI could implement continuous multimodal, multilingual, multichannel feedback mechanisms from direct beneficiaries where the effectiveness of welfare programs is constantly evaluated and adjusted. This would ensure that the welfare system evolves and remains aligned with the actual needs of the population, potentially reducing waste and increasing satisfaction with government programs.

We took one aspect of societal welfare namely taxation and welfare benefits, used Marxian wisdom as a guiding principle and it gives such seven new citizen-facing ideas for strengthening equity, personalization, trust and transparency in taxation and welfare spending.

This is not to say it will be easy. Challenges in using AI for social protection and as reward mechanisms abound. There are few precedents, some accountability and explainability problems, poor data quality and misuse of integrated data. However, exploration of difficult terrain, uncharted waters or space even has not deterred humans in the past and should not do so now. The quantum of impact, citizen connect and a better future is a worthy prize!

Social impact of AI directly concerns officials in government, administration, experts or civil society. It also matters if you are none of them as it impacts the future for ourselves, children, family, friends and appeals to a desire that we leave the world in a better place than the world we came into.

This is call to stakeholders to consider these ideas and a request to all of us as citizens to

1. Stay curious and aware of how AI could reshape societal finance and our role within it.

2. Reflect on how AI-driven systems might impact you personally—whether as a taxpayer or a beneficiary.

3. Make and join the conversation: how can we ensure AI creates a fairer, more equitable future for all

4. Share your thoughts, feedback and the article to your stakeholders connects

As Karl Marx would have said - Futurists of the world unite!

Select quotes

• "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Karl Marx
• "A society is just when it maximizes the minimum level of well-being for its members" John Rawls
• ""Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has" Margaret Mead
• "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." Victor Hugo
• "I can behave humanely with the thing, only if the thing behaves humanely with me." Karl Marx

Thank you for the read and your support. Look forward to your thoughts, feedback and share.

Best wishes

Mindvista Newsletter (for the next gen, professionals, aspiring leaders, and executives)

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This is the 20th edition and nineth in Volume 2 Being Human in the Age of AI looking social impact of using AI.

19th edition and eighth in Volume 2 Being Human in the Age of AI and is about accelerating innovation using AI with a metaphor, imagination and grounding thought process.

The 12th to 18th editions of Being Human in the Age of AI was all about new perspectives to orient, act, manage change, execute for safe while doing no harm to breach security or ethical practices.

The 18th edition was a siren call for ethical AI and five fold path to achieve the same.

The 17th edition presented a framework adapted from Sun Tzu's Art of War for addressing challenges such as data security in the Age of Intelligence with conviction, clarity and wisdom.

The 16th edition proposed a Apprenticeship model for AI Allyship.

15th edition introduced the concept of AI Allyship user-centric approach for an AI-driven enterprise.

14th edition is about changing the Enterprise in the Age of AI from Zeusian Order to Promethean Intelligence and proposed 5 Aids for the journey to move with agency and safety.

The 13th edition was redefining AI not as tool but as language with core skills of application thinking, questioning, reasoning and making judgements.

The 12th edition is about what to think of and do in the Age of AI and

Volume Two has 11 editions relating to personal development, exploring why you work, how you work, how you learn, how you make time to develop and grow, how to build on uniqueness, and how to ask the right questions. The seventh and eighth editions address external factors relating to hierarchy and network, and company and enabling conditions for growth, respectively. The ninth edition is for founders to stand today and lean in for the future. The tenth edition is all thinking different to be the best version of oneself. The 11th edition is about mindful leisure, stepping back during time offs to step ahead.