We should federally tax Tokens at the Provider level.
Not a lot. Less than 50c per million tokens.
It will accomplish 4 things (at least )
1. It will push the big AI players to optimize tokenization, caching , routing and localization
Which will
2. Reduce energy usage. Saving them in energy costs more than what they paid in tax and reducing strain created by the growth in energy consumption
Which will
3. Generate maybe 10 billion dollars a year to start, but over the next ten years could grow 30x to 100x
Which will
4. Create a source of funding to pay down the federal debt or deploy, in response to the things AI brings that we don’t expect or don’t like
At some point the models will pass it on to customers. Of course. That’s ok. Customers will have the ability to choose between providers. Or to do everything using open source models locally.
Thoughts ?