0:00:00.388,0:00:03.968
As it turns out, when tens of millions[br]of people are unemployed

0:00:03.992,0:00:05.526
or underemployed,

0:00:05.550,0:00:08.716
there's a fair amount of interest[br]in what technology might be doing

0:00:08.740,0:00:09.902
to the labor force.

0:00:09.926,0:00:11.815
And as I look at the conversation,

0:00:11.839,0:00:15.519
it strikes me that it's focused[br]on exactly the right topic,

0:00:15.543,0:00:18.368
and at the same time,[br]it's missing the point entirely.

0:00:18.392,0:00:19.933
The topic that it's focused on,

0:00:19.957,0:00:24.440
the question is whether or not all these[br]digital technologies are affecting

0:00:24.464,0:00:26.481
people's ability to earn a living,

0:00:26.505,0:00:28.490
or, to say it a little bit different way,

0:00:28.514,0:00:30.603
are the droids taking our jobs?

0:00:30.627,0:00:32.564
And there's some evidence that they are.

0:00:32.588,0:00:36.633
The Great Recession ended[br]when American GDP resumed

0:00:36.657,0:00:39.524
its kind of slow, steady march upward,

0:00:39.548,0:00:42.818
and some other economic indicators[br]also started to rebound,

0:00:42.842,0:00:45.135
and they got kind of healthy[br]kind of quickly.

0:00:45.159,0:00:47.326
Corporate profits are quite high;

0:00:47.350,0:00:49.246
in fact, if you include bank profits,

0:00:49.270,0:00:51.261
they're higher than they've ever been.

0:00:51.285,0:00:54.772
And business investment[br]in gear -- in equipment

0:00:54.796,0:00:57.640
and hardware and software --[br]is at an all-time high.

0:00:57.664,0:01:00.979
So the businesses are getting[br]out their checkbooks.

0:01:01.003,0:01:03.002
What they're not really doing is hiring.

0:01:03.401,0:01:04.552
So this red line

0:01:04.576,0:01:07.114
is the employment-to-population ratio,

0:01:07.138,0:01:11.267
in other words, the percentage[br]of working-age people in America

0:01:11.291,0:01:12.677
who have work.

0:01:12.701,0:01:15.807
And we see that it cratered[br]during the Great Recession,

0:01:15.831,0:01:18.728
and it hasn't started[br]to bounce back at all.

0:01:18.752,0:01:21.671
But the story is not[br]just a recession story.

0:01:21.695,0:01:23.775
The decade that we've[br]just been through had

0:01:23.799,0:01:27.012
relatively anemic job growth[br]all throughout,

0:01:27.036,0:01:29.659
especially when we compare it[br]to other decades,

0:01:29.683,0:01:32.713
and the 2000s are the only time[br]we have on record

0:01:32.737,0:01:36.269
where there were fewer people working[br]at the end of the decade

0:01:36.293,0:01:37.695
than at the beginning.

0:01:37.719,0:01:39.392
This is not what you want to see.

0:01:39.724,0:01:43.107
When you graph the number[br]of potential employees

0:01:43.131,0:01:45.687
versus the number of jobs in the country,

0:01:45.711,0:01:49.561
you see the gap gets bigger[br]and bigger over time,

0:01:49.585,0:01:52.895
and then, during the Great Recession,[br]it opened up in a huge way.

0:01:52.919,0:01:54.379
I did some quick calculations.

0:01:54.403,0:01:56.835
I took the last 20 years of GDP growth

0:01:56.859,0:02:00.131
and the last 20 years[br]of labor-productivity growth

0:02:00.155,0:02:02.873
and used those in a fairly[br]straightforward way

0:02:02.897,0:02:05.920
to try to project how many jobs[br]the economy was going to need

0:02:05.944,0:02:07.247
to keep growing,

0:02:07.271,0:02:09.396
and this is the line that I came up with.

0:02:09.420,0:02:11.162
Is that good or bad?

0:02:11.186,0:02:13.097
This is the government's projection

0:02:13.121,0:02:16.457
for the working-age[br]population going forward.

0:02:16.481,0:02:21.579
So if these predictions are accurate,[br]that gap is not going to close.

0:02:21.603,0:02:24.629
The problem is, I don't think[br]these projections are accurate.

0:02:24.653,0:02:28.132
In particular, I think my projection[br]is way too optimistic,

0:02:28.156,0:02:29.603
because when I did it,

0:02:29.627,0:02:33.845
I was assuming that the future[br]was kind of going to look like the past,

0:02:33.869,0:02:35.538
with labor productivity growth,

0:02:35.562,0:02:37.433
and that's actually not what I believe.

0:02:37.457,0:02:38.806
Because when I look around,

0:02:38.830,0:02:41.050
I think that we ain't seen nothing yet

0:02:41.074,0:02:44.310
when it comes to technology's[br]impact on the labor force.

0:02:44.702,0:02:48.673
Just in the past couple years,[br]we've seen digital tools

0:02:48.697,0:02:52.930
display skills and abilities[br]that they never, ever had before,

0:02:52.954,0:02:56.464
and that kind of eat deeply[br]into what we human beings

0:02:56.488,0:02:57.770
do for a living.

0:02:57.794,0:02:59.720
Let me give you a couple examples.

0:02:59.744,0:03:00.996
Throughout all of history,

0:03:01.020,0:03:04.570
if you wanted something translated[br]from one language into another,

0:03:04.594,0:03:06.319
you had to involve a human being.

0:03:06.670,0:03:09.798
Now we have multi-language, instantaneous,

0:03:09.822,0:03:14.242
automatic translation services[br]available for free

0:03:14.266,0:03:17.409
via many of our devices,[br]all the way down to smartphones.

0:03:17.433,0:03:19.229
And if any of us have used these,

0:03:19.253,0:03:22.768
we know that they're not perfect,[br]but they're decent.

0:03:23.280,0:03:26.252
Throughout all of history,[br]if you wanted something written,

0:03:26.276,0:03:29.613
a report or an article,[br]you had to involve a person.

0:03:30.158,0:03:31.311
Not anymore.

0:03:31.335,0:03:34.308
This is an article that appeared[br]in Forbes online a while back,

0:03:34.332,0:03:35.508
about Apple's earnings.

0:03:35.532,0:03:37.150
It was written by an algorithm.

0:03:37.720,0:03:40.577
And it's not decent -- it's perfect.

0:03:41.749,0:03:43.778
A lot of people look at this and they say,

0:03:43.802,0:03:46.107
"OK, but those are very[br]specific, narrow tasks,

0:03:46.131,0:03:49.042
and most knowledge workers[br]are actually generalists.

0:03:49.066,0:03:53.258
And what they do is sit on top of a very[br]large body of expertise and knowledge

0:03:53.282,0:03:57.079
and they use that to react on the fly[br]to kind of unpredictable demands,

0:03:57.103,0:03:59.223
and that's very, very hard to automate."

0:03:59.803,0:04:02.708
One of the most impressive[br]knowledge workers in recent memory

0:04:02.732,0:04:04.253
is a guy named Ken Jennings.

0:04:04.277,0:04:09.011
He won the quiz show[br]"Jeopardy!" 74 times in a row.

0:04:09.610,0:04:11.800
Took home three million dollars.

0:04:11.824,0:04:15.595
That's Ken on the right,[br]getting beat three-to-one

0:04:15.619,0:04:19.996
by Watson, the Jeopardy-playing[br]supercomputer from IBM.

0:04:20.642,0:04:24.157
So when we look at what technology can do[br]to general knowledge workers,

0:04:24.181,0:04:27.259
I start to think there might not be[br]something so special

0:04:27.283,0:04:29.051
about this idea of a generalist,

0:04:29.075,0:04:33.405
particularly when we start doing things[br]like hooking Siri up to Watson,

0:04:33.429,0:04:36.698
and having technologies[br]that can understand what we're saying

0:04:36.722,0:04:38.706
and repeat speech back to us.

0:04:38.730,0:04:42.633
Now, Siri is far from perfect,[br]and we can make fun of her flaws,

0:04:42.657,0:04:44.156
but we should also keep in mind

0:04:44.180,0:04:49.544
that if technologies like Siri and Watson[br]improve along a Moore's law trajectory,

0:04:49.568,0:04:51.090
which they will,

0:04:51.114,0:04:54.704
in six years, they're not going to be two[br]times better or four times better,

0:04:54.728,0:04:58.198
they'll be 16 times better[br]than they are right now.

0:04:58.222,0:05:02.068
So I start to think a lot of knowledge[br]work is going to be affected by this.

0:05:02.092,0:05:05.828
And digital technologies are not[br]just impacting knowledge work,

0:05:05.852,0:05:09.591
they're starting to flex their muscles[br]in the physical world as well.

0:05:09.615,0:05:13.340
I had the chance a little while back[br]to ride in the Google autonomous car,

0:05:13.364,0:05:15.641
which is as cool as it sounds.

0:05:15.665,0:05:17.853
(Laughter)

0:05:17.877,0:05:22.298
And I will vouch that it handled[br]the stop-and-go traffic on US 101

0:05:22.322,0:05:23.575
very smoothly.

0:05:23.599,0:05:27.250
There are about three and a half million[br]people who drive trucks for a living

0:05:27.274,0:05:28.425
in the United States;

0:05:28.449,0:05:31.517
I think some of them are going[br]to be affected by this technology.

0:05:31.541,0:05:34.641
And right now, humanoid robots[br]are still incredibly primitive.

0:05:34.665,0:05:36.622
They can't do very much.

0:05:36.646,0:05:38.618
But they're getting better quite quickly

0:05:38.642,0:05:42.179
and DARPA, which is the investment arm[br]of the Defense Department,

0:05:42.203,0:05:44.180
is trying to accelerate their trajectory.

0:05:44.204,0:05:48.646
So, in short, yeah, the droids[br]are coming for our jobs.

0:05:49.845,0:05:52.737
In the short term, we can[br]stimulate job growth

0:05:52.761,0:05:54.898
by encouraging entrepreneurship

0:05:54.922,0:05:56.836
and by investing in infrastructure,

0:05:56.860,0:06:00.398
because the robots today[br]still aren't very good at fixing bridges.

0:06:00.422,0:06:02.320
But in the not-too-long-term,

0:06:02.344,0:06:06.246
I think within the lifetimes[br]of most of the people in this room,

0:06:06.270,0:06:09.818
we're going to transition into an economy[br]that is very productive,

0:06:09.842,0:06:12.736
but that just doesn't need[br]a lot of human workers.

0:06:12.760,0:06:15.872
And managing that transition[br]is going to be the greatest challenge

0:06:15.896,0:06:17.434
that our society faces.

0:06:17.458,0:06:19.408
Voltaire summarized why; he said,

0:06:19.432,0:06:24.611
"Work saves us from three great evils:[br]boredom, vice and need."

0:06:25.170,0:06:27.227
But despite this challenge --

0:06:27.251,0:06:30.163
personally, I'm still[br]a huge digital optimist,

0:06:30.187,0:06:32.391
and I am supremely confident

0:06:32.415,0:06:35.003
that the digital technologies[br]that we're developing now

0:06:35.027,0:06:37.677
are going to take us[br]into a Utopian future,

0:06:37.701,0:06:39.413
not a dystopian future.

0:06:39.437,0:06:40.588
And to explain why,

0:06:40.612,0:06:43.191
I want to pose a ridiculously[br]broad question.

0:06:43.215,0:06:44.366
I want to ask:

0:06:44.390,0:06:47.736
what have been the most important[br]developments in human history?

0:06:47.760,0:06:50.721
Now, I want to share some[br]of the answers that I've gotten

0:06:50.745,0:06:52.142
in response to this question.

0:06:52.166,0:06:55.334
It's a wonderful question to ask[br]and start an endless debate about,

0:06:55.358,0:06:57.332
because some people are going to bring up

0:06:57.356,0:07:00.656
systems of philosophy[br]in both the West and the East

0:07:00.680,0:07:03.903
that have changed how a lot[br]of people think about the world.

0:07:03.927,0:07:05.420
And then other people will say,

0:07:05.444,0:07:07.905
"No, actually, the big stories,[br]the big developments

0:07:07.929,0:07:10.512
are the founding[br]of the world's major religions,

0:07:10.536,0:07:13.762
which have changed civilizations[br]and have changed and influenced

0:07:13.786,0:07:16.380
how countless people[br]are living their lives."

0:07:16.404,0:07:18.101
And then some other folk will say,

0:07:18.125,0:07:20.515
"Actually, what changes civilizations,

0:07:20.539,0:07:25.324
what modifies them and what changes[br]people's lives are empires,

0:07:25.348,0:07:27.753
so the great developments in human history

0:07:27.777,0:07:30.539
are stories of conquest and of war."

0:07:30.563,0:07:33.344
And then some cheery soul[br]usually always pipes up and says,

0:07:33.368,0:07:35.050
"Hey, don't forget about plagues!"

0:07:35.074,0:07:38.983
(Laughter)

0:07:39.007,0:07:41.530
There are some optimistic[br]answers to this question,

0:07:41.554,0:07:43.968
so some people will bring up[br]the Age of Exploration

0:07:43.992,0:07:45.537
and the opening up of the world.

0:07:45.561,0:07:49.339
Others will talk about intellectual[br]achievements in disciplines like math

0:07:49.363,0:07:51.857
that have helped us get[br]a better handle on the world,

0:07:51.881,0:07:55.321
and other folk will talk about periods[br]when there was a deep flourishing

0:07:55.345,0:07:56.950
of the arts and sciences.

0:07:56.974,0:07:58.561
So this debate will go on and on.

0:07:58.585,0:08:00.046
It's an endless debate

0:08:00.070,0:08:03.303
and there's no conclusive,[br]single answer to it.

0:08:03.327,0:08:04.844
But if you're a geek like me,

0:08:04.868,0:08:07.549
you say, "Well, what do the data say?"

0:08:07.573,0:08:08.905
And you start to do things

0:08:08.929,0:08:11.613
like graph things[br]that we might be interested in --

0:08:11.637,0:08:14.716
the total worldwide[br]population, for example,

0:08:14.740,0:08:17.105
or some measure of social development

0:08:17.129,0:08:19.617
or the state of advancement of a society.

0:08:19.641,0:08:23.764
And you start to plot the data,[br]because, by this approach,

0:08:23.788,0:08:26.393
the big stories, the big[br]developments in human history,

0:08:26.417,0:08:28.927
are the ones that will bend[br]these curves a lot.

0:08:28.951,0:08:31.171
So when you do this[br]and when you plot the data,

0:08:31.195,0:08:33.887
you pretty quickly come[br]to some weird conclusions.

0:08:33.911,0:08:35.307
You conclude, actually,

0:08:35.331,0:08:37.894
that none of these things[br]have mattered very much.

0:08:37.918,0:08:41.512
(Laughter)

0:08:41.980,0:08:45.333
They haven't done[br]a darn thing to the curves.

0:08:45.357,0:08:50.047
There has been one story,[br]one development in human history

0:08:50.071,0:08:53.280
that bent the curve,[br]bent it just about 90 degrees,

0:08:53.304,0:08:55.439
and it is a technology story.

0:08:55.963,0:08:58.733
The steam engine and the other[br]associated technologies

0:08:58.757,0:09:00.788
of the Industrial Revolution

0:09:00.812,0:09:04.088
changed the world and influenced[br]human history so much,

0:09:04.112,0:09:06.514
that in the words[br]of the historian Ian Morris,

0:09:06.538,0:09:10.329
"... they made mockery out of all[br]that had come before."

0:09:10.353,0:09:13.880
And they did this by infinitely[br]multiplying the power of our muscles,

0:09:13.904,0:09:16.298
overcoming the limitations of our muscles.

0:09:16.322,0:09:18.820
Now, what we're in the middle of now

0:09:18.844,0:09:21.877
is overcoming the limitations[br]of our individual brains

0:09:21.901,0:09:24.812
and infinitely multiplying[br]our mental power.

0:09:24.836,0:09:28.013
How can this not be as big a deal

0:09:28.037,0:09:30.741
as overcoming the limitations[br]of our muscles?

0:09:30.765,0:09:33.625
So at the risk of repeating[br]myself a little bit,

0:09:33.649,0:09:37.402
when I look at what's going on[br]with digital technology these days,

0:09:37.426,0:09:40.536
we are not anywhere near[br]through with this journey.

0:09:40.560,0:09:44.066
And when I look at what is happening[br]to our economies and our societies,

0:09:44.090,0:09:47.179
my single conclusion is that[br]we ain't seen nothing yet.

0:09:47.203,0:09:48.929
The best days are really ahead.

0:09:48.953,0:09:50.954
Let me give you a couple examples.

0:09:50.978,0:09:53.351
Economies don't run on energy.

0:09:53.375,0:09:56.414
They don't run on capital,[br]they don't run on labor.

0:09:56.438,0:09:58.843
Economies run on ideas.

0:09:58.867,0:10:02.208
So the work of innovation,[br]the work of coming up with new ideas,

0:10:02.232,0:10:05.930
is some of the most powerful, most[br]fundamental work that we can do

0:10:05.954,0:10:07.105
in an economy.

0:10:07.129,0:10:10.247
And this is kind of how[br]we used to do innovation.

0:10:10.271,0:10:13.247
We'd find a bunch of fairly[br]similar-looking people ...

0:10:13.271,0:10:16.767
(Laughter)

0:10:16.791,0:10:18.784
We'd take them out of elite institutions,

0:10:18.808,0:10:20.887
we'd put them into other[br]elite institutions

0:10:20.911,0:10:22.497
and we'd wait for the innovation.

0:10:22.521,0:10:23.690
Now --

0:10:23.714,0:10:26.143
(Laughter)

0:10:26.167,0:10:29.655
as a white guy who spent[br]his whole career at MIT and Harvard,

0:10:29.679,0:10:31.705
I've got no problem with this.

0:10:31.729,0:10:34.034
(Laughter)

0:10:35.345,0:10:36.552
But some other people do,

0:10:36.576,0:10:38.361
and they've kind of crashed the party

0:10:38.385,0:10:40.530
and loosened up[br]the dress code of innovation.

0:10:40.554,0:10:41.586
(Laughter)

0:10:41.610,0:10:44.810
So here are the winners of a Topcoder[br]programming challenge,

0:10:44.834,0:10:47.526
and I assure you that nobody cares

0:10:47.550,0:10:51.306
where these kids grew up,[br]where they went to school,

0:10:51.330,0:10:52.830
or what they look like.

0:10:52.854,0:10:56.697
All anyone cares about is the quality[br]of the work, the quality of the ideas.

0:10:56.721,0:10:58.957
And over and over again,[br]we see this happening

0:10:58.981,0:11:01.505
in the technology-facilitated world.

0:11:01.529,0:11:04.026
The work of innovation[br]is becoming more open,

0:11:04.050,0:11:07.699
more inclusive, more transparent[br]and more merit-based,

0:11:07.723,0:11:11.421
and that's going to continue no matter[br]what MIT and Harvard think of it,

0:11:11.445,0:11:14.010
and I couldn't be happier[br]about that development.

0:11:14.349,0:11:16.804
I hear once in a while,[br]"OK, I'll grant you that,

0:11:16.828,0:11:19.847
but technology is still a tool[br]for the rich world,

0:11:19.871,0:11:21.270
and what's not happening,

0:11:21.294,0:11:23.905
these digital tools are not[br]improving the lives

0:11:23.929,0:11:26.078
of people at the bottom of the pyramid."

0:11:26.102,0:11:28.768
And I want to say to that[br]very clearly: nonsense.

0:11:28.792,0:11:32.285
The bottom of the pyramid is benefiting[br]hugely from technology.

0:11:32.309,0:11:35.869
The economist Robert Jensen[br]did this wonderful study a while back

0:11:35.893,0:11:37.826
where he watched, in great detail,

0:11:37.850,0:11:41.468
what happened to the fishing[br]villages of Kerala, India,

0:11:41.492,0:11:44.373
when they got mobile phones[br]for the very first time.

0:11:44.397,0:11:47.206
And when you write for the Quarterly[br]Journal of Economics,

0:11:47.230,0:11:50.112
you have to use very dry[br]and very circumspect language.

0:11:50.136,0:11:51.398
But when I read his paper,

0:11:51.422,0:11:53.629
I kind of feel Jensen[br]is trying to scream at us

0:11:53.653,0:11:55.977
and say, "Look, this was a big deal.

0:11:56.001,0:11:59.652
Prices stabilized, so people[br]could plan their economic lives.

0:11:59.676,0:12:03.350
Waste was not reduced --[br]it was eliminated.

0:12:03.747,0:12:05.988
And the lives of both[br]the buyers and the sellers

0:12:06.012,0:12:08.486
in these villages measurably improved."

0:12:08.813,0:12:12.603
Now, what I don't think[br]is that Jensen got extremely lucky

0:12:12.627,0:12:14.838
and happened to land[br]in the one set of villages

0:12:14.862,0:12:17.171
where technology made things better.

0:12:17.195,0:12:19.842
What happened instead[br]is he very carefully documented

0:12:19.866,0:12:23.945
what happens over and over again[br]when technology comes for the first time

0:12:23.969,0:12:25.906
to an environment and a community:

0:12:25.930,0:12:29.767
the lives of people, the welfares[br]of people, improve dramatically.

0:12:29.791,0:12:31.672
So as I look around at all the evidence

0:12:31.696,0:12:34.133
and I think about the room[br]that we have ahead of us,

0:12:34.157,0:12:35.985
I become a huge digital optimist

0:12:36.009,0:12:40.585
and I start to think that this wonderful[br]statement from the physicist Freeman Dyson

0:12:40.609,0:12:42.347
is actually not hyperbole.

0:12:42.371,0:12:44.880
This is an accurate assessment[br]of what's going on.

0:12:44.904,0:12:47.602
Our technologies are great gifts,

0:12:47.626,0:12:50.673
and we, right now,[br]have the great good fortune

0:12:50.697,0:12:54.427
to be living at a time when[br]digital technology is flourishing,

0:12:54.451,0:12:57.846
when it is broadening and deepening[br]and becoming more profound

0:12:57.870,0:12:59.148
all around the world.

0:12:59.172,0:13:02.447
So, yeah, the droids are taking our jobs,

0:13:02.471,0:13:06.042
but focusing on that fact[br]misses the point entirely.

0:13:06.066,0:13:09.566
The point is that then we[br]are freed up to do other things,

0:13:09.590,0:13:11.877
and what we're going to do,[br]I am very confident,

0:13:11.901,0:13:14.417
what we're going to do is reduce poverty

0:13:14.441,0:13:16.910
and drudgery and misery around the world.

0:13:16.934,0:13:20.939
I'm very confident we're going to learn[br]to live more lightly on the planet,

0:13:20.963,0:13:24.388
and I am extremely confident[br]that what we're going to do

0:13:24.412,0:13:25.787
with our new digital tools

0:13:25.811,0:13:28.803
is going to be so profound[br]and so beneficial

0:13:28.827,0:13:32.311
that it's going to make a mockery[br]out of everything that came before.

0:13:32.335,0:13:33.891
I'm going to leave the last word

0:13:33.915,0:13:36.569
to a guy who had a front-row seat[br]for digital progress,

0:13:36.593,0:13:38.165
our old friend Ken Jennings.

0:13:38.189,0:13:40.432
I'm with him; I'm going to echo his words:

0:13:40.456,0:13:43.372
"I, for one, welcome our new[br]computer overlords."

0:13:43.396,0:13:44.477
(Laughter)

0:13:44.501,0:13:45.985
Thanks very much.

0:13:46.009,0:13:47.167
(Applause)