How do we find dignity at work?

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 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's 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."

And then somebody else would say,

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

And then everybody would shrug
and [unclear] 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 non-partisan
think tank NGO called New America

to study this issue.

And we brought together a group of people

including an AI tzar
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,

and tried 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 a 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.

Which is, 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 I said, "What do you think
about this cashier,

this futuristic self-check out thing?"

They said, "That's nice,

but have you heard
about the cash recycler,

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

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

And we thought we didn't
understand the problem,

and 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.

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 that 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 it is about work
that gives people dignity,

so that 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 what many people hear,
and 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."

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

and say something like,

People need their fruits
and vegetables in the morning,

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

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

was caring for his aunt.

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

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

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

And so there was this
concept there of being needed.

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

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

it's 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 elder-care 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, you know,
my grandparents, great-grandparents,

a tailor, worked in a mine,

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

they 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)