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Bryn Freedman: You're a guy 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.
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 be 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
who sits here and tells you,

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"Everything is going to be fine.
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."

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It's true.

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

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And if it does accelerate,
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 are 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 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, they've
always said that and it turns out OK."

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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 go off 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 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 nonpartisan
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 czar
at a technology company

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and a video game designer

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and a heartland conservative

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and a Wall Street investor

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and a socialist magazine editor --

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

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to try 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 real change,

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but soon enough that we weren't talking
about teleportation 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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You can try to imagine
alternate possible futures,

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which is what we did.

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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
actually turn out to be the same,

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no matter what happens.

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

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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 and said,

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

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They said, "That's nice, 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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and is eliminating two jobs
at every Walmart right now."

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

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And so 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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And 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,
trying to make it work

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in a very different environment
from New York or San Francisco

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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 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 --

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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.
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 is understand

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what it is about work
that gives people dignity,

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so 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 when many people hear it --
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
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, 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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Then they'd get to the end
of their thought and say something like,

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"People need their fruits
and vegetables in the morning,

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

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

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He was making plenty of money.

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At one point we just asked,

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

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

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My aunt wants me."

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So there was this concept there
of being needed.

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

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

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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.

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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,

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and we don't pay eldercare 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. 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:

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

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

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they look at what all of us do
for a living and 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 included

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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)