1
00:00:00,151 --> 00:00:01,476
Bryn Freedman: You're a guy

2
00:00:01,500 --> 00:00:06,087
whose company funds
these AI programs and invests.

3
00:00:06,111 --> 00:00:11,156
So why should we trust you
to not have a bias

4
00:00:11,180 --> 00:00:14,356
and tell us something really useful
for the rest of us

5
00:00:14,380 --> 00:00:16,601
about the future of work?

6
00:00:17,046 --> 00:00:18,537
Roy Bahat: Yes, I am.

7
00:00:18,561 --> 00:00:21,549
And when you wake up in the morning
and you read the newspaper

8
00:00:21,573 --> 00:00:25,022
and it says, "The robots are coming,
they may take all our jobs,"

9
00:00:25,046 --> 00:00:27,577
as a start-up investor,
focused on the future of work,

10
00:00:27,601 --> 00:00:29,918
our fund was the first one to say

11
00:00:29,942 --> 00:00:32,252
artificial intelligence
should be a focus for us.

12
00:00:32,276 --> 00:00:34,529
So I woke up one morning
and read that and said,

13
00:00:34,553 --> 00:00:36,426
"Oh, my gosh, they're talking about me.

14
00:00:36,450 --> 00:00:38,000
That's me who's doing that."

15
00:00:38,839 --> 00:00:40,863
And then I thought, wait a minute.

16
00:00:40,887 --> 00:00:43,299
If things continue,

17
00:00:43,323 --> 00:00:48,577
then maybe not only will the start-ups
in which we invest struggle,

18
00:00:48,601 --> 00:00:51,162
because there won't people to have jobs

19
00:00:51,186 --> 00:00:54,048
to pay for the things
that they make and buy them,

20
00:00:54,072 --> 00:00:56,989
but our economy and society
might struggle, too.

21
00:00:57,013 --> 00:00:58,918
And look, I should be the guy

22
00:00:58,942 --> 00:01:01,871
who sits here and tells you,
"Everything is going to be fine."

23
00:01:01,895 --> 00:01:03,498
It's all going to work out great.

24
00:01:03,522 --> 00:01:05,617
Hey, when they introduced the ATM machine,

25
00:01:05,641 --> 00:01:08,489
years later there's more
tellers in banks, it's true.

26
00:01:08,513 --> 00:01:10,474
And yet, when I looked at it, I thought,

27
00:01:10,498 --> 00:01:13,093
"This is going to accelerate,
and if it does accelerate

28
00:01:13,117 --> 00:01:15,133
there's a chance the center doesn't hold."

29
00:01:15,157 --> 00:01:17,602
But I figured somebody must know
the answer to this,

30
00:01:17,626 --> 00:01:19,164
there's so many ideas out there.

31
00:01:19,188 --> 00:01:22,696
And I read all the books
and I went to the conferences,

32
00:01:22,720 --> 00:01:26,434
and at one point we counted
more than 100 efforts

33
00:01:26,458 --> 00:01:28,363
to study the future of work.

34
00:01:28,387 --> 00:01:31,244
And it was a frustrating experience,

35
00:01:31,268 --> 00:01:35,283
because I'd hear the same back-and-forth
over and over again:

36
00:01:35,307 --> 00:01:37,085
"The robots are coming,"

37
00:01:37,109 --> 00:01:38,712
and then somebody else would say,

38
00:01:38,736 --> 00:01:40,086
"Oh, don't worry about that,

39
00:01:40,110 --> 00:01:42,300
they've always said that
and it turns out OK."

40
00:01:42,324 --> 00:01:43,928
And then somebody else would say,

41
00:01:43,952 --> 00:01:46,624
"Well, it's really about the meaning
of your job anyway."

42
00:01:46,648 --> 00:01:49,592
And then everybody would shrug
and [unclear] and have a drink.

43
00:01:49,616 --> 00:01:52,676
And it felt like there was this
Kabuki theater of this discussion

44
00:01:52,700 --> 00:01:54,588
where nobody was talking to each other.

45
00:01:54,612 --> 00:01:55,834
And many of the people

46
00:01:55,858 --> 00:01:58,287
that I knew and worked with
in the technology world

47
00:01:58,311 --> 00:01:59,985
were not speaking to policy makers,

48
00:02:00,009 --> 00:02:02,077
the policy makers
were not speaking to them,

49
00:02:02,101 --> 00:02:05,809
and so we partnered with a non-partisan
think tank NGO called New America

50
00:02:05,833 --> 00:02:07,166
to study this issue.

51
00:02:07,190 --> 00:02:09,538
And we brought together a group of people

52
00:02:09,562 --> 00:02:12,992
including an AI tzar
at a technology company,

53
00:02:13,016 --> 00:02:16,395
and a video game designer,
and a heartland conservative,

54
00:02:16,419 --> 00:02:19,617
and a Wall Street investor,
and a socialist magazine editor,

55
00:02:19,641 --> 00:02:22,506
literally, all in the same room,
it was occasionally awkward,

56
00:02:22,530 --> 00:02:25,244
and tried to figure out
what is it that will happen here.

57
00:02:25,268 --> 00:02:28,088
The question we asked was simple.

58
00:02:28,704 --> 00:02:32,117
It was, what is the effect of technology
on work going to be?

59
00:02:32,141 --> 00:02:33,768
And we looked out 10 to 20 years,

60
00:02:33,792 --> 00:02:37,323
because we wanted to look out far enough
that there could be a real change,

61
00:02:37,347 --> 00:02:40,196
but soon enough that we weren't
talking about teleportation

62
00:02:40,220 --> 00:02:41,387
or anything like that.

63
00:02:41,411 --> 00:02:42,935
And we recognized,

64
00:02:42,959 --> 00:02:45,744
and I think every year
we're reminded of this in the world,

65
00:02:45,768 --> 00:02:47,975
that predicting what's
going to happen is hard,

66
00:02:47,999 --> 00:02:50,855
so instead of predicting,
there are other things you can do.

67
00:02:50,879 --> 00:02:53,720
Which is, you can try to imagine
alternate possible futures,

68
00:02:53,744 --> 00:02:56,633
which is what we did,
we did a scenario-planning exercise,

69
00:02:56,657 --> 00:02:59,723
and we imagined cases
where no job is safe.

70
00:02:59,747 --> 00:03:02,850
We imagined cases where every job is safe.

71
00:03:02,874 --> 00:03:06,913
And we imagined every
distinct possibility we could.

72
00:03:06,937 --> 00:03:10,220
And the result, which really surprised us,

73
00:03:10,244 --> 00:03:13,942
was when you think through those futures
and you think what should we do,

74
00:03:13,966 --> 00:03:15,688
the answers about what we should do

75
00:03:15,712 --> 00:03:19,098
actually turn out to be the same
no matter what happens.

76
00:03:19,425 --> 00:03:22,973
And the irony of looking out
10 to 20 years into the future

77
00:03:22,997 --> 00:03:25,600
is you realize that the things
we want to act on

78
00:03:25,624 --> 00:03:27,585
are actually already happening right now.

79
00:03:27,609 --> 00:03:30,395
The automation is right now,
the future is right now.

80
00:03:30,419 --> 00:03:33,014
BF: So what does that mean,
and what does that tell us,

81
00:03:33,038 --> 00:03:35,702
if the future is now, what is it
that we should be doing

82
00:03:35,726 --> 00:03:37,630
and what should we be thinking about?

83
00:03:37,654 --> 00:03:39,734
RB: We have to understand
the problem first.

84
00:03:39,758 --> 00:03:43,797
And so the data are that as the economy
becomes more productive,

85
00:03:43,821 --> 00:03:45,966
and individual workers
become more productive,

86
00:03:45,990 --> 00:03:47,252
their wages haven't risen.

87
00:03:47,276 --> 00:03:50,466
If you look at the proportion
of prime working-age men,

88
00:03:50,490 --> 00:03:51,982
in the United States at least,

89
00:03:52,006 --> 00:03:55,755
who work now versus in 1960,

90
00:03:55,779 --> 00:03:58,247
we have three times
as many men not working,

91
00:03:58,271 --> 00:03:59,752
and then you hear the stories.

92
00:03:59,776 --> 00:04:01,808
I sat down with a group
of Walmart workers

93
00:04:01,832 --> 00:04:04,188
and I said, "What do you think
about this cashier,

94
00:04:04,212 --> 00:04:06,069
this futuristic self-check out thing?"

95
00:04:06,093 --> 00:04:07,252
They said, "That's nice,

96
00:04:07,276 --> 00:04:09,292
but have you heard
about the cash recycler,

97
00:04:09,316 --> 00:04:11,688
that's a machine that's being
installed right now,

98
00:04:11,712 --> 00:04:14,291
it's eliminating two jobs
at every Walmart right now."

99
00:04:14,315 --> 00:04:16,555
And we thought we didn't
understand the problem,

100
00:04:16,579 --> 00:04:20,459
and we looked at the voices
that were the ones that were excluded.

101
00:04:20,483 --> 00:04:23,125
Which is, all of the people
affected by this change.

102
00:04:23,149 --> 00:04:24,736
And we decided to listen to them,

103
00:04:24,760 --> 00:04:26,744
sort of, automation and its discontents.

104
00:04:26,768 --> 00:04:29,014
I've spent the last
couple of years doing that.

105
00:04:29,038 --> 00:04:31,467
I've been to Flint, Michigan,
and Youngstown, Ohio,

106
00:04:31,491 --> 00:04:32,871
talking about entrepreneurs,

107
00:04:32,895 --> 00:04:35,427
trying to make it work
in a very different environment

108
00:04:35,451 --> 00:04:38,069
from New York or San Francisco
or London or Tokyo.

109
00:04:38,735 --> 00:04:40,117
I've been to prisons twice,

110
00:04:40,141 --> 00:04:42,714
to talk to inmates about
their jobs after they leave.

111
00:04:43,077 --> 00:04:46,824
I've sat down with truck drivers
to ask them about the self-driving truck,

112
00:04:46,848 --> 00:04:49,302
with people who, in addition
to their full-time job,

113
00:04:49,326 --> 00:04:51,110
care for an aging relative,

114
00:04:51,134 --> 00:04:52,698
and when you talk to people,

115
00:04:52,722 --> 00:04:55,602
there were two themes
that came out loud and clear.

116
00:04:56,285 --> 00:05:01,129
The first one was that people
are less looking for more money

117
00:05:01,153 --> 00:05:04,431
or get out of the fear
of the robot taking their job,

118
00:05:04,455 --> 00:05:06,351
and they just want something stable.

119
00:05:06,375 --> 00:05:07,915
They want something predictable.

120
00:05:07,939 --> 00:05:11,614
So if you survey people and ask them
what they want out of work,

121
00:05:11,638 --> 00:05:15,118
for everybody who makes
less than 150,000 dollars a year,

122
00:05:15,142 --> 00:05:18,498
they'll take a more stable
and secure income, on average,

123
00:05:18,522 --> 00:05:20,387
over earning more money.

124
00:05:20,411 --> 00:05:22,625
And if you think about the fact that

125
00:05:22,649 --> 00:05:26,037
not only for all of the people
across the earth who don't earn a living,

126
00:05:26,061 --> 00:05:27,252
but for those who do,

127
00:05:27,276 --> 00:05:30,236
the vast majority earn a different
amount from month to month

128
00:05:30,260 --> 00:05:31,474
and have an instability,

129
00:05:31,498 --> 00:05:32,895
all of a sudden you realize,

130
00:05:32,919 --> 00:05:35,466
"Wait a minute, we have
a real problem on our hands."

131
00:05:35,490 --> 00:05:39,164
And the second thing they say,
which took us a longer time to understand,

132
00:05:39,188 --> 00:05:41,522
is that they say they want dignity.

133
00:05:41,894 --> 00:05:47,006
And that concept
of self-worth through work

134
00:05:47,030 --> 00:05:49,641
emerged again and again
and again in our conversations.

135
00:05:49,665 --> 00:05:52,649
BF: So, I certainly
appreciate this answer,

136
00:05:52,673 --> 00:05:54,057
but you can't eat dignity,

137
00:05:54,081 --> 00:05:57,053
you can't clothe your children
with self-esteem.

138
00:05:57,077 --> 00:06:02,418
So, what is that, how do you reconcile
what does dignity mean

139
00:06:02,442 --> 00:06:06,117
and what is the relationship
between dignity and stability?

140
00:06:06,141 --> 00:06:07,394
RB: You can't eat dignity.

141
00:06:07,418 --> 00:06:08,625
You need stability first.

142
00:06:08,649 --> 00:06:09,887
And the good news is,

143
00:06:09,911 --> 00:06:12,666
many of the conversations
that are happening right now,

144
00:06:12,690 --> 00:06:14,252
are about how we solve that.

145
00:06:14,276 --> 00:06:18,141
You know, I'm a proponent
of studying guaranteed income,

146
00:06:18,165 --> 00:06:19,442
as one example.

147
00:06:19,466 --> 00:06:21,754
Conversations about how
health care gets provided

148
00:06:21,778 --> 00:06:23,017
and other benefits.

149
00:06:23,041 --> 00:06:24,818
Those conversations are happening,

150
00:06:24,842 --> 00:06:27,238
and we're at a time
where we must figure that out,

151
00:06:27,262 --> 00:06:28,903
it is the crisis of our era.

152
00:06:28,927 --> 00:06:31,839
And my point of view
after talking to people

153
00:06:31,863 --> 00:06:33,903
is that we may do that,

154
00:06:33,927 --> 00:06:35,506
and it still might not be enough.

155
00:06:35,530 --> 00:06:37,712
Because what we need to do
from the beginning,

156
00:06:37,736 --> 00:06:40,672
is understand what it is about work
that gives people dignity,

157
00:06:40,696 --> 00:06:43,966
so that they can live
the lives that they want to live.

158
00:06:43,990 --> 00:06:48,005
And so that concept of dignity is ...

159
00:06:48,029 --> 00:06:49,966
it's difficult to get your hands around.

160
00:06:49,990 --> 00:06:53,426
Because what many people hear,
and especially, to be honest, rich people,

161
00:06:53,450 --> 00:06:54,651
they hear meaning.

162
00:06:54,675 --> 00:06:56,593
They hear "my work is important to me."

163
00:06:56,617 --> 00:06:58,157
And again, if you survey people,

164
00:06:58,181 --> 00:07:00,355
and you ask them,

165
00:07:00,379 --> 00:07:03,879
"How important is it to you
that your work be important to you?"

166
00:07:03,903 --> 00:07:07,204
only people who make
150,000 dollars a year or more

167
00:07:07,228 --> 00:07:11,282
say that it is important to them
that their work be important.

168
00:07:12,050 --> 00:07:13,275
BF: Meaning, meaningful?

169
00:07:13,744 --> 00:07:16,502
RB: Just defined as,
"Is your work important to you?"

170
00:07:17,976 --> 00:07:19,696
Whatever somebody took that to mean.

171
00:07:19,720 --> 00:07:21,680
And yet, of course dignity is essential,

172
00:07:21,704 --> 00:07:23,466
we talked to truck drivers who said,

173
00:07:23,490 --> 00:07:25,052
"I saw my cousin drive,

174
00:07:25,076 --> 00:07:27,336
and I got on the open road
and it was amazing,

175
00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:30,432
and I started making more money
than people who went to college."

176
00:07:30,456 --> 00:07:32,661
And then they'd get
to the end of their thought

177
00:07:32,685 --> 00:07:33,871
and say something like,

178
00:07:33,895 --> 00:07:36,483
People need their fruits
and vegetables in the morning,

179
00:07:36,507 --> 00:07:38,151
I'm the guy who gets it to them."

180
00:07:38,175 --> 00:07:40,719
And we talked to somebody who,
in addition to his job,

181
00:07:40,743 --> 00:07:41,942
was caring for his aunt.

182
00:07:41,966 --> 00:07:44,877
He was making plenty of money,
and at one point we just asked,

183
00:07:44,901 --> 00:07:48,758
"What is it about caring for your aunt,
can't you pay somebody to do it?"

184
00:07:48,782 --> 00:07:52,204
He said, "My aunt doesn't want
somebody we pay for, she wants me."

185
00:07:52,601 --> 00:07:56,268
And so there was this
concept there of being needed.

186
00:07:56,292 --> 00:07:58,825
And if you study the word
"dignity," it's fascinating,

187
00:07:58,849 --> 00:08:01,341
it's one of the oldest words
in the English language,

188
00:08:01,365 --> 00:08:03,474
it's from antiquity
and it has two meanings:

189
00:08:03,498 --> 00:08:04,672
one is self-worth,

190
00:08:04,696 --> 00:08:08,653
and the other is that something
is suitable, it's fitting.

191
00:08:08,677 --> 00:08:11,535
Meaning that you're part
of something greater than yourself,

192
00:08:11,559 --> 00:08:15,050
and it connects to some broader whole,
in other words, that you're needed.

193
00:08:15,074 --> 00:08:16,947
BF: So how do you answer this question,

194
00:08:16,971 --> 00:08:21,387
this concept that we don't pay teachers,
and elder-care workers

195
00:08:21,411 --> 00:08:24,537
and we don't pay people
who really care for people

196
00:08:24,561 --> 00:08:26,847
and are needed, enough?

197
00:08:26,871 --> 00:08:30,062
RB: Well, the good news is,
people are finally asking the question,

198
00:08:30,086 --> 00:08:32,380
so as AI investors,
we often get phone calls

199
00:08:32,404 --> 00:08:35,134
from foundations or CEOs
and boardrooms saying,

200
00:08:35,158 --> 00:08:36,491
"What do we do about this?"

201
00:08:36,515 --> 00:08:37,823
And they used to be asking,

202
00:08:37,847 --> 00:08:39,957
"What do we do about
introducing automation?"

203
00:08:39,982 --> 00:08:42,679
And now they're asking,
"What do we do about self-worth?"

204
00:08:42,703 --> 00:08:45,125
And they know that the employees
who work for them,

205
00:08:45,149 --> 00:08:47,371
who have a spouse who cares for somebody,

206
00:08:47,395 --> 00:08:50,918
that dignity is essential to their
ability to just do their job.

207
00:08:50,942 --> 00:08:52,744
I think there's two kinds of answers:

208
00:08:52,768 --> 00:08:55,268
there's the money side
of just making your life work.

209
00:08:55,292 --> 00:08:56,442
That's stability.

210
00:08:56,466 --> 00:08:57,617
You need to eat.

211
00:08:57,641 --> 00:08:59,998
And then you think about
our culture more broadly,

212
00:09:00,022 --> 00:09:02,680
and you ask who do we make into heroes?

213
00:09:02,704 --> 00:09:07,164
And, you know, what I want
is to see the magazine cover

214
00:09:07,188 --> 00:09:09,849
that is the person
who is the heroic caregiver.

215
00:09:10,292 --> 00:09:13,022
Or the Netflix series
that dramatizes the person

216
00:09:13,046 --> 00:09:16,283
who makes all of our other lives work
so we can do the things we do.

217
00:09:16,307 --> 00:09:18,156
Let's make heroes out of those people,

218
00:09:18,180 --> 00:09:20,212
that's the Netflix show
that I would binge.

219
00:09:20,236 --> 00:09:22,514
And we've had chroniclers of this before,

220
00:09:22,538 --> 00:09:23,728
Studs Terkel,

221
00:09:23,752 --> 00:09:27,458
the oral history of the working
experience in the United States.

222
00:09:27,482 --> 00:09:30,634
And what we need is the experience
of needing one another

223
00:09:30,658 --> 00:09:32,283
and being connected to each other.

224
00:09:32,307 --> 00:09:35,347
Maybe that's the answer
for how we all fit as a society.

225
00:09:35,371 --> 00:09:38,593
And the thought exercise to me
is if you were to go back 100 years,

226
00:09:38,617 --> 00:09:41,586
and have people, you know,
my grandparents, great-grandparents,

227
00:09:41,610 --> 00:09:43,490
a tailor, worked in a mine,

228
00:09:43,514 --> 00:09:45,585
they look at what all of us
do for a living,

229
00:09:45,609 --> 00:09:47,339
they say, "That's not work."

230
00:09:47,363 --> 00:09:51,132
We sit there and type and talk
and there's no danger of getting hurt.

231
00:09:51,526 --> 00:09:55,017
And my guess is that if you were
to imagine 100 years from now,

232
00:09:55,041 --> 00:09:57,065
we'll still be doing things
for each other.

233
00:09:57,089 --> 00:09:58,549
We'll still need one another.

234
00:09:58,573 --> 00:10:00,514
And we just will think of it as work.

235
00:10:00,538 --> 00:10:02,212
The entire thing I'm trying to say

236
00:10:02,236 --> 00:10:05,109
is that dignity should not
just be about having a job.

237
00:10:05,133 --> 00:10:07,990
Because if you say
you need a job to have dignity,

238
00:10:08,014 --> 00:10:09,458
which many people say,

239
00:10:09,482 --> 00:10:12,299
the second you say that,
you say to all the parents,

240
00:10:12,323 --> 00:10:14,768
and all the teachers
and all the caregivers

241
00:10:14,792 --> 00:10:15,966
that all of a sudden,

242
00:10:15,990 --> 00:10:18,537
because they're not being paid
for what they're doing,

243
00:10:18,561 --> 00:10:20,854
it somehow lacks this
essential human quality.

244
00:10:20,878 --> 00:10:22,982
To me, that's the great
puzzle of our time --

245
00:10:23,006 --> 00:10:26,117
can we figure out how to provide
that stability throughout life,

246
00:10:26,141 --> 00:10:28,674
and then can we figure out
how to create an inclusive,

247
00:10:28,698 --> 00:10:32,965
not just racially, gender,
but multigenerationally inclusive,

248
00:10:32,989 --> 00:10:37,206
I mean, every different human experience

249
00:10:37,230 --> 00:10:41,095
included in this way of understanding
how we can be needed by one another.

250
00:10:41,119 --> 00:10:42,485
BF: Thank you.
RB: Thank you.

251
00:10:42,509 --> 00:10:44,706
BF: Thank you very much
for your participation.

252
00:10:44,730 --> 00:10:45,880
(Applause)