Facing a potential employment crisis triggered by artificial intelligence, Bill Gates has proposed a plan to ensure humans can continue to earn income: taxing robots.

The billionaire and philanthropist said in an interview program that aired on Tuesday local time that even if artificial intelligence causes workers to lose their jobs, how to provide protection for these workers should still be "decided by society."

"You can define a 'labor unit' and stipulate that — whether the work is done by a human or a robot — the same FICA tax as for human workers must be paid," Gates said.

FICA tax refers to the payroll tax in the United States. It works as follows: workers contribute a portion of their wages to pay for benefits such as Social Security and Medicare, while employers must pay a matching amount of the same size.

Gates said that taxing robots that replace human work can both provide citizens with economic security and ensure that the government continues to receive tax revenue.

"Just because economic signals show that using artificial intelligence is cheaper does not mean society has to do so," he said.

Bill Gates had previously warned that artificial intelligence and robotics technology will deal a severe blow to white-collar jobs.

In an article of nearly 6,000 words published in August, he pointed out that office work has already been affected "to a certain extent," and speculated that blue-collar jobs will soon face the same shock.

Although Gates noted that the development of physical robots lags behind artificial intelligence systems, he believes people underestimate how quickly humanoid robots will catch up.

Gates also mentioned in the article that taxing artificial intelligence "tokens" "will slightly slow the pace at which companies abandon human labor, and raise funds for employee retraining and the construction of a more solid social safety net."

Gates first proposed the concept of a "robot tax" in an interview in 2017. Nearly a decade later, the idea still lingers in his mind.

"I still strongly support this proposition," Gates wrote in the article. "Although it cannot completely solve the threat brought by artificial intelligence, it is part of a sensible response."