Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is planning to introduce artificial intelligence legislation that would impose a “robot tax” on large corporations that replace workers with AI or automation.

Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, released a lengthy op-ed this week. In it, he takes a skeptical look at the rise of AI and argues that more should be done to ensure billionaires don’t benefit at the expense of workers. One idea he mentioned is a robot tax.

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Sanders told the Washington Examiner that he plans to introduce legislation to create a robot tax, among other AI-related items.

“Not tomorrow, but we will,” Sanders said.

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The idea has gained traction as AI technology has improved and become integrated into work. While proponents argue establishing a robot tax would help offset the harm caused by laid off workers, critics say creating such a regime would be challenging and is unnecessary.

While the details of Sanders’ robot tax are unclear, it would likely attract some attention from populists on both the Left and the Right who are concerned about how emerging technologies will affect the labor market.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the ranking member of the Banking Committee, said she wants to review the proposal when it comes out.

“I’m concerned about people losing their jobs to AI, to offshoring, and to all the other ways that a handful of billionaires figure out they can rake off all the profits from whatever work gets done,” Warren told the Washington Examiner.

Sen. Josh Hawley, perhaps the most populist Republican in the Senate, said he would also be open to discussions.

“I think we need to consider everything we can to figure out how we protect workers’ rights,” Hawley said. “So I haven’t talked to him about this or seen his proposal, but I’d be open to discussing anything.”

But other Republicans pushed back on the notion of a robot tax.

“I think if it’s called a tax, I’m against it,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told the Washington Examiner. “I haven’t supported a tax since I got elected in 2010.”

Likewise, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said he wants to “simplify and rationalize” the tax code. He also said that concerns about jobs being taken are overblown, noting that the United States labor force has undergone several changes over the years.

“It wasn’t that many decades ago where a high percentage of Americans were farmers, now less than 10% — that’s actually good thing, that’s called productivity,” Johnson said, adding that he is more concerned about not being able to properly control AI. He pointed out fears from some tech developers that AI could wipe out the human race.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told the Washington Examiner that he thinks a robot tax bill would be “dead on arrival.”

But one of Sanders’ biggest stated concerns is the speed of the transition toward AI and related technologies.

“This is happening at an unprecedented speed,” a report released by Sanders and the HELP Committee reads. “The agricultural revolution unfolded over thousands of years. The Industrial Revolution took more than a century. Artificial labor could reshape the economy in less than a decade.”

Will Rinehart, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an AI and tech policy expert, said that robot taxes have been endorsed by prominent figures such as Bill Gates, former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Mark Cuban. The problem in devising such a tax is defining what constitutes a robot.

He said that he expects there will be more talk about similar policies as AI and related technologies proliferate.

Free-market economists are largely against the idea of a robot tax.

Ryan Young, a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, cited the “non-satiation principle” in arguing that a robot tax would be a solution in search of a problem. The principle is that demand is infinite. So, while AI could take a lot of jobs, there will be new jobs created because of new demand.

“Demand is infinite, so it means there will be other opportunities for those workers to pursue because there is always more demand,” he told the Washington Examiner. “There are always more jobs available to fill those demands. It takes ideas and entrepreneurs.”

While Sanders’s robot tax legislation is a long shot, politically it is likely to attract attention, according to Peter Loge, director of the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs.

“I can see the populist appeal, because it taps into fears people have about technology, and it’s something we’ve seen talked about before, specifically with robots, but with automation in general, for more than a century,” Loge told the Washington Examiner.

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But Loge pointed out that automation has been happening for a long time and is not really thought about much by people day to day. Rather, he said, it is another way Sanders can make his arguments about capitalism.

“It’s one more way for Senator Sanders and others to say the problem of capitalism is it’s displacing people,” he said.