WEBVTT

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Bryn Freedman: You're a guy

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whose company funds
these AI programs and invests.

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So why should we trust you
to not have a bias

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and tell us something really useful
for the rest of us

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about the future of work?

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Roy Bahat: Yes, I am.

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

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

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

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our fund was the first one to say

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artificial intelligence
should be a focus for us.

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

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"Oh, my gosh, they're talking about me.

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That's me who's doing that."

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And then I thought, wait a minute.

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If things continue,

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

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because there won't people to have jobs

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

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but our economy and society
might struggle, too.

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And look, I should be the guy

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who sits here and tells you,
"Everything is going to be fine."

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It's all going to work out great.

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Hey, when they introduced the ATM machine,

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years later there's more
tellers in banks, it's true.

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And yet, when I looked at it, I thought,

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"This is going to accelerate,
and if it does accelerate

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there's a chance the center doesn't hold."

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But I figured somebody must know
the answer to this,

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there's so many ideas out there.

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

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and at one point we counted
more than 100 efforts

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to study the future of work.

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And it was a frustrating experience,

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

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"The robots are coming,"

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and then somebody else would say,

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"Oh, don't worry about that,

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they've always said that
and it turns out OK."

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And then somebody else would say,

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

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And then everybody would shrug
and [unclear] and have a drink.

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

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where nobody was talking to each other.

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And many of the people

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that I knew and worked with
in the technology world

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were not speaking to policy makers,

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the policy makers
were not speaking to them,

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and so we partnered with a non-partisan
think tank NGO called New America

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to study this issue.

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And we brought together a group of people

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including an AI tzar
at a technology company,

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and a video game designer,
and a heartland conservative,

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and a Wall Street investor,
and a socialist magazine editor,

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

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and tried to figure out
what is it that will happen here.

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The question we asked was simple.

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It was, what is the effect of technology
on work going to be?

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And we looked out 10 to 20 years,

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

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but soon enough that we weren't
talking about teleportation

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or anything like that.

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And we recognized,

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

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that predicting what's
going to happen is hard,

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

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Which is, you can try to imagine
alternate possible futures,

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which is what we did,
we did a scenario-planning exercise,

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and we imagined cases
where no job is safe.

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We imagined cases where every job is safe.

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And we imagined every
distinct possibility we could.

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And the result, which really surprised us,

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

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the answers about what we should do

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actually turn out to be the same
no matter what happens.

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

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is you realize that the things
we want to act on

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are actually already happening right now.

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

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

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

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and what should we be thinking about?

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RB: We have to understand
the problem first.

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

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and individual workers
become more productive,

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their wages haven't risen.

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

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in the United States at least,

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who work now versus in 1960,

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we have three times
as many men not working,

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and then you hear the stories.

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I sat down with a group
of Walmart workers

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and I said, "What do you think
about this cashier,

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this futuristic self-check out thing?"

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They said, "That's nice,

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but have you heard
about the cash recycler,

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

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it's eliminating two jobs
at every Walmart right now."

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And we thought we didn't
understand the problem,

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and we looked at the voices
that were the ones that were excluded.

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Which is, all of the people
affected by this change.

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And we decided to listen to them,

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sort of, automation and its discontents.

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

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

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talking about entrepreneurs,

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trying to make it work
in a very different environment

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from New York or San Francisco
or London or Tokyo.

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I've been to prisons twice,

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to talk to inmates about
their jobs after they leave.

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

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

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care for an aging relative,

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and when you talk to people,

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there were two themes
that came out loud and clear.

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

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

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and they just want something stable.

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They want something predictable.

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

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

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

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over earning more money.

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And if you think about the fact that

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

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but for those who do,

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the vast majority earn a different
amount from month to month

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and have an instability,

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all of a sudden you realize,

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"Wait a minute, we have
a real problem on our hands."

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

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is that they say they want dignity.

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And that concept
of self-worth through work

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emerged again and again
and again in our conversations.

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BF: So, I certainly
appreciate this answer,

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but you can't eat dignity,

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

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So, what is that, how do you reconcile
what does dignity mean

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and what is the relationship
between dignity and stability?

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RB: You can't eat dignity.

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You need stability first.

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And the good news is,

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many of the conversations
that are happening right now,

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are about how we solve that.

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

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as one example.

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Conversations about how
health care gets provided

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and other benefits.

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Those conversations are happening,

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

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it is the crisis of our era.

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And my point of view
after talking to people

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is that we may do that,

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and it still might not be enough.

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Because what we need to do
from the beginning,

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is understand what it is about work
that gives people dignity,

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

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And so that concept of dignity is ...

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it's difficult to get your hands around.

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Because what many people hear,
and especially, to be honest, rich people,

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they hear meaning.

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They hear "my work is important to me."

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And again, if you survey people,

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and you ask them,

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

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

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

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BF: Meaning, meaningful?

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

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Whatever somebody took that to mean.

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And yet, of course dignity is essential,

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we talked to truck drivers who said,

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"I saw my cousin drive,

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and I got on the open road
and it was amazing,

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

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And then they'd get
to the end of their thought

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and say something like,

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People need their fruits
and vegetables in the morning,

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

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And we talked to somebody who,
in addition to his job,

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was caring for his aunt.

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He was making plenty of money,
and at one point we just asked,

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

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

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And so there was this
concept there of being needed.

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And if you study the word
"dignity," it's fascinating,

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it's one of the oldest words
in the English language,

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it's from antiquity
and it has two meanings:

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one is self-worth,

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

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

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and it connects to some broader whole,
in other words, that you're needed.

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BF: So how do you answer this question,

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this concept that we don't pay teachers,
and elder-care workers

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

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and are needed, enough?

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

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so as AI investors,
we often get phone calls

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from foundations or CEOs
and boardrooms saying,

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"What do we do about this?"

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And they used to be asking,

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"What do we do about
introducing automation?"

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

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And they know that the employees
who work for them,

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who have a spouse who cares for somebody,

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

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I think there's two kinds of answers:

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

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That's stability.

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You need to eat.

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And then you think about
our culture more broadly,

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and you ask who do we make into heroes?

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

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that is the person
who is the heroic caregiver.

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Or the Netflix series
that dramatizes the person

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

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Let's make heroes out of those people,

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that's the Netflix show
that I would binge.

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And we've had chroniclers of this before,

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Studs Terkel,

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

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And what we need is the experience
of needing one another

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and being connected to each other.

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

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And the thought exercise to me
is if you were to go back 100 years,

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and have people, you know,
my grandparents, great-grandparents,

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a tailor, worked in a mine,

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they look at what all of us
do for a living,

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they say, "That's not work."

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

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

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we'll still be doing things
for each other.

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We'll still need one another.

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And we just will think of it as work.

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The entire thing I'm trying to say

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

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

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which many people say,

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

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and all the teachers
and all the caregivers

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that all of a sudden,

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

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it somehow lacks this
essential human quality.

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

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

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

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not just racially, gender,
but multigenerationally inclusive,

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I mean, every different human experience

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

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BF: Thank you.
RB: Thank you.

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BF: Thank you very much
for your participation.

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(Applause)