What will future jobs look like?
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0:00 - 0:03The writer George Eliot cautioned us that,
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0:03 - 0:05among all forms of mistake,
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0:05 - 0:08prophesy is the most gratuitous.
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0:08 - 0:10The person that we would all acknowledge
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0:10 - 0:14as her 20th-century counterpart, Yogi Berra, agreed.
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0:14 - 0:16He said, "It's tough to make predictions,
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0:16 - 0:18especially about the future."
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0:18 - 0:20I'm going to ignore their cautions
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0:20 - 0:22and make one very specific forecast.
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0:22 - 0:25In the world that we are creating very quickly,
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0:25 - 0:27we're going to see more and more things
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0:27 - 0:28that look like science fiction,
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0:28 - 0:31and fewer and fewer things that look like jobs.
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0:31 - 0:34Our cars are very quickly going to start driving themselves,
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0:34 - 0:37which means we're going to need fewer truck drivers.
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0:37 - 0:39We're going to hook Siri up to Watson
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0:39 - 0:42and use that to automate a lot of the work
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0:42 - 0:44that's currently done by customer service reps
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0:44 - 0:47and troubleshooters and diagnosers,
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0:47 - 0:49and we're already taking R2D2,
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0:49 - 0:52painting him orange, and putting him to work
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0:52 - 0:55carrying shelves around warehouses,
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0:55 - 0:57which means we need a lot fewer people
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0:57 - 0:59to be walking up and down those aisles.
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0:59 - 1:03Now, for about 200 years,
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1:03 - 1:05people have been saying exactly what I'm telling you --
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1:05 - 1:08the age of technological unemployment is at hand —
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1:08 - 1:10starting with the Luddites smashing looms in Britain
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1:10 - 1:12just about two centuries ago,
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1:12 - 1:14and they have been wrong.
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1:14 - 1:17Our economies in the developed world have coasted along
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1:17 - 1:19on something pretty close to full employment.
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1:19 - 1:21Which brings up a critical question:
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1:21 - 1:24Why is this time different, if it really is?
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1:24 - 1:27The reason it's different is that, just in the past few years,
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1:27 - 1:29our machines have started demonstrating skills
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1:29 - 1:31they have never, ever had before:
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1:31 - 1:35understanding, speaking, hearing, seeing,
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1:35 - 1:39answering, writing, and they're still acquiring new skills.
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1:39 - 1:41For example, mobile humanoid robots
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1:41 - 1:43are still incredibly primitive,
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1:43 - 1:45but the research arm of the Defense Department
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1:45 - 1:47just launched a competition
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1:47 - 1:49to have them do things like this,
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1:49 - 1:51and if the track record is any guide,
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1:51 - 1:53this competition is going to be successful.
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1:53 - 1:57So when I look around, I think the day is not too far off at all
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1:57 - 1:59when we're going to have androids
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1:59 - 2:02doing a lot of the work that we are doing right now.
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2:02 - 2:05And we're creating a world where there is going to be
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2:05 - 2:09more and more technology and fewer and fewer jobs.
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2:09 - 2:11It's a world that Erik Brynjolfsson and I are calling
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2:11 - 2:13"the new machine age."
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2:13 - 2:15The thing to keep in mind is that
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2:15 - 2:18this is absolutely great news.
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2:18 - 2:21This is the best economic news on the planet these days.
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2:21 - 2:24Not that there's a lot of competition, right?
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2:24 - 2:26This is the best economic news we have these days
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2:26 - 2:28for two main reasons.
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2:28 - 2:31The first is, technological progress is what allows us
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2:31 - 2:35to continue this amazing recent run that we're on
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2:35 - 2:37where output goes up over time,
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2:37 - 2:41while at the same time, prices go down,
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2:41 - 2:45and volume and quality just continue to explode.
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2:45 - 2:47Now, some people look at this and talk about
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2:47 - 2:48shallow materialism,
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2:48 - 2:51but that's absolutely the wrong way to look at it.
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2:51 - 2:53This is abundance, which is exactly
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2:53 - 2:56what we want our economic system to provide.
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2:56 - 3:00The second reason that the new machine age
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3:00 - 3:02is such great news is that, once the androids
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3:02 - 3:05start doing jobs, we don't have to do them anymore,
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3:05 - 3:09and we get freed up from drudgery and toil.
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3:09 - 3:11Now, when I talk about this with my friends
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3:11 - 3:14in Cambridge and Silicon Valley, they say,
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3:14 - 3:16"Fantastic. No more drudgery, no more toil.
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3:16 - 3:18This gives us the chance to imagine
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3:18 - 3:20an entirely different kind of society,
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3:20 - 3:23a society where the creators and the discoverers
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3:23 - 3:25and the performers and the innovators
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3:25 - 3:28come together with their patrons and their financiers
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3:28 - 3:31to talk about issues, entertain, enlighten,
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3:31 - 3:33provoke each other."
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3:33 - 3:38It's a society really, that looks a lot like the TED Conference.
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3:38 - 3:40And there's actually a huge amount of truth here.
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3:40 - 3:43We are seeing an amazing flourishing taking place.
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3:43 - 3:45In a world where it is just about as easy
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3:45 - 3:49to generate an object as it is to print a document,
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3:49 - 3:51we have amazing new possibilities.
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3:51 - 3:54The people who used to be craftsmen and hobbyists
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3:54 - 3:56are now makers, and they're responsible
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3:56 - 3:59for massive amounts of innovation.
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3:59 - 4:01And artists who were formerly constrained
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4:01 - 4:04can now do things that were never, ever possible
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4:04 - 4:06for them before.
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4:06 - 4:08So this is a time of great flourishing,
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4:08 - 4:11and the more I look around, the more convinced I become
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4:11 - 4:14that this quote, from the physicist Freeman Dyson,
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4:14 - 4:16is not hyperbole at all.
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4:16 - 4:19This is just a plain statement of the facts.
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4:19 - 4:21We are in the middle of an astonishing period.
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4:21 - 4:22["Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God's gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences." — Freeman Dyson]
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4:22 - 4:25Which brings up another great question:
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4:25 - 4:28What could possibly go wrong in this new machine age?
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4:28 - 4:31Right? Great, hang up, flourish, go home.
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4:31 - 4:34We're going to face two really thorny sets of challenges
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4:34 - 4:36as we head deeper into the future that we're creating.
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4:36 - 4:40The first are economic, and they're really nicely summarized
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4:40 - 4:43in an apocryphal story about a back-and-forth
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4:43 - 4:46between Henry Ford II and Walter Reuther,
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4:46 - 4:48who was the head of the auto workers union.
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4:48 - 4:51They were touring one of the new modern factories,
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4:51 - 4:53and Ford playfully turns to Reuther and says,
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4:53 - 4:56"Hey Walter, how are you going to get these robots
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4:56 - 4:57to pay union dues?"
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4:57 - 4:59And Reuther shoots back, "Hey Henry,
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4:59 - 5:04how are you going to get them to buy cars?"
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5:04 - 5:07Reuther's problem in that anecdote
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5:07 - 5:11is that it is tough to offer your labor to an economy
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5:11 - 5:13that's full of machines,
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5:13 - 5:15and we see this very clearly in the statistics.
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5:15 - 5:17If you look over the past couple decades
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5:17 - 5:21at the returns to capital -- in other words, corporate profits --
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5:21 - 5:23we see them going up,
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5:23 - 5:25and we see that they're now at an all-time high.
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5:25 - 5:27If we look at the returns to labor, in other words
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5:27 - 5:29total wages paid out in the economy,
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5:29 - 5:32we see them at an all-time low
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5:32 - 5:35and heading very quickly in the opposite direction.
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5:35 - 5:37So this is clearly bad news for Reuther.
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5:37 - 5:40It looks like it might be great news for Ford,
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5:40 - 5:42but it's actually not. If you want to sell
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5:42 - 5:46huge volumes of somewhat expensive goods to people,
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5:46 - 5:49you really want a large, stable, prosperous middle class.
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5:49 - 5:52We have had one of those in America
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5:52 - 5:54for just about the entire postwar period.
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5:54 - 5:59But the middle class is clearly under huge threat right now.
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5:59 - 6:00We all know a lot of the statistics,
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6:00 - 6:02but just to repeat one of them,
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6:02 - 6:05median income in America has actually gone down
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6:05 - 6:07over the past 15 years,
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6:07 - 6:09and we're in danger of getting trapped
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6:09 - 6:13in some vicious cycle where inequality and polarization
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6:13 - 6:16continue to go up over time.
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6:16 - 6:18The societal challenges that come along
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6:18 - 6:21with that kind of inequality deserve some attention.
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6:21 - 6:22There are a set of societal challenges
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6:22 - 6:24that I'm actually not that worried about,
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6:24 - 6:27and they're captured by images like this.
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6:27 - 6:28This is not the kind of societal problem
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6:28 - 6:31that I am concerned about.
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6:31 - 6:33There is no shortage of dystopian visions
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6:33 - 6:37about what happens when our machines become self-aware,
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6:37 - 6:40and they decide to rise up and coordinate attacks against us.
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6:40 - 6:41I'm going to start worrying about those
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6:41 - 6:45the day my computer becomes aware of my printer.
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6:45 - 6:48(Laughter) (Applause)
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6:48 - 6:51So this is not the set of challenges we really need to worry about.
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6:51 - 6:54To tell you the kinds of societal challenges
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6:54 - 6:56that are going to come up in the new machine age,
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6:56 - 7:00I want to tell a story about two stereotypical American workers.
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7:00 - 7:02And to make them really stereotypical,
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7:02 - 7:04let's make them both white guys.
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7:04 - 7:08And the first one is a college-educated
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7:08 - 7:11professional, creative type, manager,
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7:11 - 7:14engineer, doctor, lawyer, that kind of worker.
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7:14 - 7:16We're going to call him "Ted."
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7:16 - 7:18He's at the top of the American middle class.
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7:18 - 7:21His counterpart is not college-educated
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7:21 - 7:24and works as a laborer, works as a clerk,
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7:24 - 7:28does low-level white collar or blue collar work in the economy.
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7:28 - 7:30We're going to call that guy "Bill."
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7:30 - 7:32And if you go back about 50 years,
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7:32 - 7:36Bill and Ted were leading remarkably similar lives.
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7:36 - 7:38For example, in 1960 they were both very likely
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7:38 - 7:42to have full-time jobs, working at least 40 hours a week.
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7:42 - 7:45But as the social researcher Charles Murray has documented,
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7:45 - 7:48as we started to automate the economy,
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7:48 - 7:52and 1960 is just about when computers started to be used by businesses,
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7:52 - 7:55as we started to progressively inject technology
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7:55 - 7:58and automation and digital stuff into the economy,
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7:58 - 8:01the fortunes of Bill and Ted diverged a lot.
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8:01 - 8:03Over this time frame, Ted has continued
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8:03 - 8:06to hold a full-time job. Bill hasn't.
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8:06 - 8:10In many cases, Bill has left the economy entirely,
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8:10 - 8:12and Ted very rarely has.
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8:12 - 8:15Over time, Ted's marriage has stayed quite happy.
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8:15 - 8:17Bill's hasn't.
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8:17 - 8:20And Ted's kids have grown up in a two-parent home,
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8:20 - 8:24while Bill's absolutely have not over time.
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8:24 - 8:26Other ways that Bill is dropping out of society?
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8:26 - 8:30He's decreased his voting in presidential elections,
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8:30 - 8:34and he's started to go to prison a lot more often.
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8:34 - 8:38So I cannot tell a happy story about these social trends,
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8:38 - 8:40and they don't show any signs of reversing themselves.
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8:40 - 8:43They're also true no matter which ethnic group
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8:43 - 8:45or demographic group we look at,
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8:45 - 8:47and they're actually getting so severe
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8:47 - 8:49that they're in danger of overwhelming
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8:49 - 8:53even the amazing progress we made with the Civil Rights Movement.
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8:53 - 8:55And what my friends in Silicon Valley
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8:55 - 9:00and Cambridge are overlooking is that they're Ted.
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9:00 - 9:04They're living these amazingly busy, productive lives,
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9:04 - 9:06and they've got all the benefits to show from that,
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9:06 - 9:09while Bill is leading a very different life.
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9:09 - 9:11They're actually both proof of how right Voltaire was
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9:11 - 9:13when he talked about the benefits of work,
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9:13 - 9:17and the fact that it saves us from not one but three great evils.
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9:17 - 9:18["Work saves a man from three great evils: boredom, vice and need." — Voltaire]
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9:18 - 9:21So with these challenges, what do we do about them?
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9:21 - 9:24The economic playbook is surprisingly clear,
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9:24 - 9:27surprisingly straightforward, in the short term especially.
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9:27 - 9:30The robots are not going to take all of our jobs in the next year or two,
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9:30 - 9:34so the classic Econ 101 playbook is going to work just fine:
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9:34 - 9:36Encourage entrepreneurship,
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9:36 - 9:38double down on infrastructure,
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9:38 - 9:40and make sure we're turning out people
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9:40 - 9:44from our educational system with the appropriate skills.
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9:44 - 9:47But over the longer term, if we are moving into an economy
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9:47 - 9:50that's heavy on technology and light on labor,
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9:50 - 9:52and we are, then we have to consider
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9:52 - 9:54some more radical interventions,
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9:54 - 9:57for example, something like a guaranteed minimum income.
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9:57 - 10:01Now, that's probably making some folk in this room uncomfortable,
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10:01 - 10:05because that idea is associated with the extreme left wing
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10:05 - 10:08and with fairly radical schemes for redistributing wealth.
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10:08 - 10:10I did a little bit of research on this notion,
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10:10 - 10:12and it might calm some folk down to know that
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10:12 - 10:15the idea of a net guaranteed minimum income
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10:15 - 10:18has been championed by those frothing-at-the-mouth socialists
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10:18 - 10:24Friedrich Hayek, Richard Nixon and Milton Friedman.
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10:24 - 10:25And if you find yourself worried
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10:25 - 10:29that something like a guaranteed income
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10:29 - 10:31is going to stifle our drive to succeed
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10:31 - 10:33and make us kind of complacent,
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10:33 - 10:36you might be interested to know that social mobility,
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10:36 - 10:38one of the things we really pride ourselves on in the United States,
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10:38 - 10:42is now lower than it is in the northern European countries
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10:42 - 10:45that have these very generous social safety nets.
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10:45 - 10:48So the economic playbook is actually pretty straightforward.
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10:48 - 10:51The societal one is a lot more challenging.
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10:51 - 10:53I don't know what the playbook is
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10:53 - 10:57for getting Bill to engage and stay engaged throughout life.
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10:57 - 10:59I do know that education is a huge part of it.
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10:59 - 11:01I witnessed this firsthand.
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11:01 - 11:05I was a Montessori kid for the first few years of my education,
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11:05 - 11:06and what that education taught me
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11:06 - 11:08is that the world is an interesting place
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11:08 - 11:11and my job is to go explore it.
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11:11 - 11:13The school stopped in third grade,
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11:13 - 11:15so then I entered the public school system,
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11:15 - 11:19and it felt like I had been sent to the Gulag.
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11:19 - 11:22With the benefit of hindsight, I now know the job
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11:22 - 11:24was to prepare me for life as a clerk or a laborer,
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11:24 - 11:27but at the time it felt like the job was to kind of
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11:27 - 11:31bore me into some submission with what was going on around me.
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11:31 - 11:32We have to do better than this.
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11:32 - 11:36We cannot keep turning out Bills.
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11:36 - 11:38So we see some green shoots that things are getting better.
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11:38 - 11:41We see technology deeply impacting education
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11:41 - 11:43and engaging people, from our youngest learners
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11:43 - 11:45up to our oldest ones.
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11:45 - 11:48We see very prominent business voices telling us
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11:48 - 11:51we need to rethink some of the things that we've been holding dear for a while.
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11:51 - 11:53And we see very serious and sustained
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11:53 - 11:56and data-driven efforts to understand
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11:56 - 11:59how to intervene in some of the most troubled communities that we have.
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11:59 - 12:02So the green shoots are out there.
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12:02 - 12:03I don't want to pretend for a minute
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12:03 - 12:05that what we have is going to be enough.
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12:05 - 12:07We're facing very tough challenges.
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12:07 - 12:10To give just one example, there are about five million Americans
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12:10 - 12:13who have been unemployed for at least six months.
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12:13 - 12:14We're not going to fix things for them
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12:14 - 12:17by sending them back to Montessori.
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12:17 - 12:19And my biggest worry is that we're creating a world
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12:19 - 12:22where we're going to have glittering technologies
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12:22 - 12:24embedded in kind of a shabby society
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12:24 - 12:27and supported by an economy that generates inequality
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12:27 - 12:29instead of opportunity.
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12:29 - 12:31But I actually don't think that's what we're going to do.
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12:31 - 12:33I think we're going to do something a lot better
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12:33 - 12:35for one very straightforward reason:
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12:35 - 12:37The facts are getting out there.
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12:37 - 12:39The realities of this new machine age
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12:39 - 12:42and the change in the economy are becoming more widely known.
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12:42 - 12:45If we wanted to accelerate that process, we could do things
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12:45 - 12:48like have our best economists and policymakers
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12:48 - 12:50play "Jeopardy!" against Watson.
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12:50 - 12:54We could send Congress on an autonomous car road trip.
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12:54 - 12:56And if we do enough of these kinds of things,
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12:56 - 12:59the awareness is going to sink in that things are going to be different.
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12:59 - 13:01And then we're off to the races,
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13:01 - 13:03because I don't believe for a second
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13:03 - 13:06that we have forgotten how to solve tough challenges
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13:06 - 13:11or that we have become too apathetic or hard-hearted to even try.
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13:11 - 13:13I started my talk with quotes from wordsmiths
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13:13 - 13:16who were separated by an ocean and a century.
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13:16 - 13:18Let me end it with words from politicians
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13:18 - 13:20who were similarly distant.
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13:20 - 13:23Winston Churchill came to my home of MIT in 1949,
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13:23 - 13:25and he said, "If we are to bring the broad masses
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13:25 - 13:29of the people in every land to the table of abundance,
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13:29 - 13:32it can only be by the tireless improvement
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13:32 - 13:35of all of our means of technical production."
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13:35 - 13:37Abraham Lincoln realized there was one other ingredient.
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13:37 - 13:40He said, "I am a firm believer in the people.
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13:40 - 13:43If given the truth, they can be depended upon
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13:43 - 13:45to meet any national crisis.
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13:45 - 13:48The great point is to give them the plain facts."
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13:48 - 13:51So the optimistic note, great point that I want to leave you with
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13:51 - 13:54is that the plain facts of the machine age are becoming clear,
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13:54 - 13:57and I have every confidence that we're going to use them
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13:57 - 13:59to chart a good course into the challenging,
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13:59 - 14:02abundant economy that we're creating.
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14:02 - 14:04Thank you very much.
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14:04 - 14:08(Applause)
- Title:
- What will future jobs look like?
- Speaker:
- Andrew McAfee
- Description:
-
Economist Andrew McAfee suggests that, yes, probably, droids will take our jobs -- or at least the kinds of jobs we know now. In this far-seeing talk, he thinks through what future jobs might look like, and how to educate coming generations to hold them.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 14:15
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