How do we find dignity at work?

Roy Bahat was worried. His company invests in new technology like AI to make businesses more efficient -- but, he wondered, what was AI doing to the people whose jobs might change, go away or become less fulfilling? The question sent him on a two-year research odyssey to discover what motivates people, and why we work. In this conversation with curator Bryn Freedman, he shares what he learned, including some surprising insights that will shape the conversation about the future of our jobs.

Bryn Freedman: You're a guy whose company
funds these AI programs and invests.

So why should we trust you
to not have a bias

and tell us something really useful
for the rest of us

about the future of work?

Roy Bahat: Yes, I am.

And when you wake up in the morning
and you read the newspaper

and it says, "The robots are coming,
they may take all our jobs,"

as a start-up investor
focused on the future of work,

our fund was the first one to say

artificial intelligence
should be a focus for us.

So I woke up one morning
and read that and said,

"Oh, my gosh, they're talking about me.
That's me who's doing that."

And then I thought: wait a minute.

If things continue,

then maybe not only will the start-ups
in which we invest struggle

because there won't be people to have jobs

to pay for the things
that they make and buy them,

but our economy and society
might struggle, too.

And look, I should be the guy
who sits here and tells you,

"Everything is going to be fine.
It's all going to work out great.

Hey, when they introduced the ATM machine,

years later, there's more
tellers in banks."

It's true.

And yet, when I looked at it, I thought,
"This is going to accelerate.

And if it does accelerate,
there's a chance the center doesn't hold."

But I figured somebody must know
the answer to this;

there are so many ideas out there.

And I read all the books,
and I went to the conferences,

and at one point, we counted more than
100 efforts to study the future of work.

And it was a frustrating experience,

because I'd hear the same back-and-forth
over and over again:

"The robots are coming!"

And then somebody else would say,

"Oh, don't worry about that, they've
always said that and it turns out OK."

Then somebody else would say,

"Well, it's really about the meaning
of your job, anyway."

And then everybody would shrug
and go off and have a drink.

And it felt like there was this
Kabuki theater of this discussion,

where nobody was talking to each other.

And many of the people that I knew
and worked with in the technology world

were not speaking to policy makers;

the policy makers
were not speaking to them.

And so we partnered with a nonpartisan
think tank NGO called New America

to study this issue.

And we brought together a group of people,

including an AI czar
at a technology company

and a video game designer

and a heartland conservative

and a Wall Street investor

and a socialist magazine editor --

literally, all in the same room;
it was occasionally awkward --

to try to figure out
what is it that will happen here.

The question we asked was simple.

It was: What is the effect of technology
on work going to be?

And we looked out 10 to 20 years,

because we wanted to look out far enough
that there could be real change,

but soon enough that we weren't talking
about teleportation or anything like that.

And we recognized --

and I think every year
we're reminded of this in the world --

that predicting what's
going to happen is hard.

So instead of predicting,
there are other things you can do.

You can try to imagine
alternate possible futures,

which is what we did.

We did a scenario-planning exercise,

and we imagined cases
where no job is safe.

We imagined cases where every job is safe.

And we imagined every
distinct possibility we could.

And the result, which really surprised us,

was when you think through those futures
and you think what should we do,

the answers about what we should do
actually turn out to be the same,

no matter what happens.

And the irony of looking out
10 to 20 years into the future is,

you realize that the things
we want to act on

are actually already happening right now.

The automation is right now,
the future is right now.

BF: So what does that mean,
and what does that tell us?

If the future is now, what is it
that we should be doing,

and what should we be thinking about?

RB: We have to understand
the problem first.

And so the data are that as the economy
becomes more productive

and individual workers
become more productive,

their wages haven't risen.

If you look at the proportion
of prime working-age men,

in the United States at least,

who work now versus in 1960,

we have three times
as many men not working.

And then you hear the stories.

I sat down with a group
of Walmart workers and said,

"What do you think about this cashier,
this futuristic self-checkout thing?"

They said, "That's nice, but have
you heard about the cash recycler?

That's a machine that's being
installed right now,

and is eliminating two jobs
at every Walmart right now."

And so we just thought, "Geez. We don't
understand the problem."

And so we looked at the voices
that were the ones that were excluded,

which is all of the people
affected by this change.

And we decided to listen to them,

sort of "automation and its discontents."

And I've spent the last
couple of years doing that.

I've been to Flint, Michigan,
and Youngstown, Ohio,

talking about entrepreneurs,
trying to make it work

in a very different environment
from New York or San Francisco

or London or Tokyo.

I've been to prisons twice

to talk to inmates about
their jobs after they leave.

I've sat down with truck drivers
to ask them about the self-driving truck,

with people who, in addition
to their full-time job,

care for an aging relative.

And when you talk to people,

there were two themes
that came out loud and clear.

The first one was that people
are less looking for more money

or get out of the fear
of the robot taking their job,

and they just want something stable.

They want something predictable.

So if you survey people and ask them
what they want out of work,

for everybody who makes
less than 150,000 dollars a year,

they'll take a more stable
and secure income, on average,

over earning more money.

And if you think about the fact that

not only for all of the people
across the earth who don't earn a living,

but for those who do,

the vast majority earn a different
amount from month to month

and have an instability,

all of a sudden you realize,

"Wait a minute. We have
a real problem on our hands."

And the second thing they say,
which took us a longer time to understand,

is they say they want dignity.

And that concept
of self-worth through work

emerged again and again and again
in our conversations.

BF: So, I certainly
appreciate this answer.

But you can't eat dignity,

you can't clothe your children
with self-esteem.

So, what is that, how do you reconcile --

what does dignity mean,

and what is the relationship
between dignity and stability?

RB: You can't eat dignity.
You need stability first.

And the good news is,

many of the conversations
that are happening right now

are about how we solve that.

You know, I'm a proponent
of studying guaranteed income,

as one example,

conversations about how
health care gets provided

and other benefits.

Those conversations are happening,

and we're at a time
where we must figure that out.

It is the crisis of our era.

And my point of view
after talking to people

is that we may do that,

and it still might not be enough.

Because what we need to do
from the beginning is understand

what is it about work
that gives people dignity,

so they can live the lives
that they want to live.

And so that concept of dignity is ...

it's difficult to get your hands around,

because when many people hear it --
especially, to be honest, rich people --

they hear "meaning."

They hear "My work is important to me."

And again, if you survey people
and you ask them,

"How important is it to you
that your work be important to you?"

only people who make
150,000 dollars a year or more

say that it is important to them
that their work be important.

BF: Meaning, meaningful?

RB: Just defined as,
"Is your work important to you?"

Whatever somebody took that to mean.

And yet, of course dignity is essential.

We talked to truck drivers who said,

"I saw my cousin drive, and I got
on the open road and it was amazing.

And I started making more money
than people who went to college."

Then they'd get to the end
of their thought and say something like,

"People need their fruits
and vegetables in the morning,

and I'm the guy who gets it to them."

We talked to somebody who, in addition
to his job, was caring for his aunt.

He was making plenty of money.

At one point we just asked,

"What is it about caring for your aunt?
Can't you just pay somebody to do it?"

He said, "My aunt doesn't want
somebody we pay for.

My aunt wants me."

So there was this concept there
of being needed.

If you study the word
"dignity," it's fascinating.

It's one of the oldest words
in the English language, from antiquity.

And it has two meanings:

one is self-worth,

and the other is that something
is suitable, it's fitting,

meaning that you're part
of something greater than yourself,

and it connects to some broader whole.

In other words, that you're needed.

BF: So how do you answer this question,

this concept that we don't pay teachers,

and we don't pay eldercare workers,

and we don't pay people
who really care for people

and are needed, enough?

RB: Well, the good news is,
people are finally asking the question.

So as AI investors,
we often get phone calls

from foundations or CEOs
and boardrooms saying,

"What do we do about this?"

And they used to be asking,

"What do we do about
introducing automation?"

And now they're asking,
"What do we do about self-worth?"

And they know that the employees
who work for them

who have a spouse who cares for somebody,

that dignity is essential
to their ability to just do their job.

I think there's two kinds of answers:

there's the money side
of just making your life work.

That's stability. You need to eat.

And then you think about
our culture more broadly,

and you ask: Who do we make into heroes?

And, you know, what I want
is to see the magazine cover

that is the person
who is the heroic caregiver.

Or the Netflix series
that dramatizes the person

who makes all of our other lives work
so we can do the things we do.

Let's make heroes out of those people.

That's the Netflix show
that I would binge.

And we've had chroniclers
of this before --

Studs Terkel,

the oral history of the working
experience in the United States.

And what we need is the experience
of needing one another

and being connected to each other.

Maybe that's the answer
for how we all fit as a society.

And the thought exercise, to me, is:

if you were to go back 100 years
and have people --

my grandparents, great-grandparents,
a tailor, worked in a mine --

they look at what all of us do
for a living and say, "That's not work."

We sit there and type and talk,
and there's no danger of getting hurt.

And my guess is that if you were
to imagine 100 years from now,

we'll still be doing things
for each other.

We'll still need one another.

And we just will think of it as work.

The entire thing I'm trying to say

is that dignity should not
just be about having a job.

Because if you say
you need a job to have dignity,

which many people say,

the second you say that,
you say to all the parents

and all the teachers
and all the caregivers

that all of a sudden,

because they're not being paid
for what they're doing,

it somehow lacks this
essential human quality.

To me, that's the great
puzzle of our time:

Can we figure out how to provide
that stability throughout life,

and then can we figure out
how to create an inclusive,

not just racially, gender,
but multigenerationally inclusive --

I mean, every different
human experience included --

in this way of understanding
how we can be needed by one another.

BF: Thank you.
RB: Thank you.

BF: Thank you very much
for your participation.

(Applause)