VICE (2013) s07e00 Episode Script
Special Report: The Future Of Work
1 We're riding in the back of an autonomous truck.
It's about to take a left turn into oncoming traffic.
So, if their sensors (AI VOICE SPEAKS) ANDAVOLU: It's accelerating on its own.
It's breaking on its own.
It's steering on its own.
Trucking in the United States is, like, a $700-billion-a-year industry, and it employs 1.
8 million people.
Thus far, it's been pretty immune to the changes of globalization and technology, but that's about to change with technology like this.
(AI VOICE SPEAKING) ANDAVOLU: There's an operator here, there's a safety engineer here, 'cause they're still experimenting.
It's still kind of in development.
(AI VOICE SPEAKS) ANDAVOLU: Have you put your hand on the wheel at any point? (OPERATOR SPEAKS) ANDAVOLU: This is like a pretty complex traffic situation.
There are cars merging.
There are cars passing us.
This truck is changing lanes to go around slow traffic, anticipating when people are stopping.
And honestly, I just, like, kind of can't believe it.
It's It's driving itself, and it's doing a pretty good job.
(AI VOICE SPEAKS) OPERATOR: Here we go, making our right turn into our driveway.
CHUCK PRICE: We recognize that this is a highly disruptive technology, on the order of 10 million people, and displacing rapidly that many people - would have a dramatic societal impact.
- Mm-hmm.
We certainly don't want to see that.
We're not targeting that.
We're focused on relieving a shortage.
But what we're hoping is that there will be a natural evolution into the jobs of the future, just as there has been in every other technological change.
- What do you tell a trucker? - We try not to tell truckers things.
We try to listen.
(SIZZLING) (PATRONS CHATTERING) This is Chuck.
- Hello, Chuck.
- Chuck runs a company that is developing and is gonna produce self-driving trucks, that are autonomous, that do it themselves.
- You guys are truck drivers.
- DON SCHRADER: Yes, sir.
How do you feel about it? If the truck doesn't have a driver in it, is somebody at headquarters sitting behind a monitor? SCHRADER: No, there's a driver in there.
No.
In the future, when there isn't, you know, once it's fully tested - Oh.
- and we don't need to have a driver in it.
- Oh, driver assist? - No, it's not driver assist.
It is purely self-driving.
So, like a GPS basically? You're going from point A to point B? There's GPS in it.
There's a lot of tech, - but GPS is a part of it.
- Okay.
ANDAVOLU: He took me into one of his trucks today.
We did a 90-minute run up and down on I-10.
Traffic was merging in.
It was changing lanes.
- It was braking, it was accelerating.
It was like - SCHRADER: Really? So, does it do really good when the cars cut you off? A car cut us off! And you know what? It didn't slam on the brakes.
The truck just kind of kept rolling.
SCHRADER: How is your equipment handling the high winds? - We're actually surprisingly good in high winds.
- Really? How much weight in the trailer? We've gone empty and loaded.
- Empty and loaded? - Yes, sir.
We have very complex control algorithms, and now we hold it with such precision that it is perfectly straight.
Yeah.
It's tough.
ANDAVOLU: You seem pretty impressed.
Actually, yeah, I am.
I wasn't all for it, but, I mean, it's I gotta, I gotta see this.
PRICE: That's laser.
That's lidar.
It's a laser, like a laser radar.
ANDAVOLU: What do you love about driving a truck? Oh, gosh.
(CHUCKLES) I love to drive.
For me, it's a privilege.
It's a privilege to get out there, get behind the wheel of 80,000 pounds, drive that thing down the road, knowing, hey, you know what? - I can do this, you can't do it.
- No, I can't.
SCHRADER: And I know I'm providing the US.
I'm providing the world with whatever I got in the back of my freight.
- I deliver your clothes, your food that you're eating.
- Mm-hmm.
A lot of people don't see that.
And it's a good feeling as a driver, as a human being.
SCHRADER: You really gotta have faith to rely on, is this gonna kill me or Yep, and we'll have to do a lot of testing - to prove that.
- Wow.
All right.
That's definitely different.
Over the next year, we're building a fleet of 200 trucks, and we're gonna be operating them day and night, just to validate it, to prove it.
We have to prove to you.
We have to prove to the regulators, to the states.
We have to prove to ourselves.
SCHRADER: When you asked me what would I do if I didn't drive? I can't honestly answer that 'cause I really don't know what I would do.
I'd I'd be scared.
(BEEPING) (ENGINE RUMBLING) ANDAVOLU: It's one of the first questions that every kid gets asked.
What do you wanna be when you grow up? Previous generations grew up confident that no matter the answer, they'd be something.
That's actually not so certain anymore.
Automation already affects most jobs, but the pace of change and the sheer capabilities of artificial intelligence are revolutionizing our relationship to work, something economists are paying close attention to.
Technologies are tools.
They don't decide what we do.
We decide what we do with those tools.
If we have more powerful tools, by definition, we have more power to change the world than we ever had before.
ANDREW MCAFEE: It took about 600 years for global average incomes - to increase by 50%.
- Wow.
MCAFEE: Here we are, from 1988 to now, almost 50% or more increases across the board of humanity.
This is because of economic freedom and because of technological progress.
It just expands the possibilities, and therefore, expands our income so much more quickly than we've ever seen before.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: The problem is that as the economic pie's gotten bigger, not everyone has shared.
Wages at the bottom today are the same, - adjusted for inflation, as they were 60 years ago.
- Mm-hmm.
So, all that growth didn't go down to the people at the bottom.
ANDAVOLU: The future of work has even caught the attention of experts like Richard Haass, and the Council on Foreign Relations, who've authored a report on the threats it poses to geopolitical stability.
Millions of jobs are beginning to disappear.
You've got now a whole new generation, whether it's artificial intelligence, robotics or autonomous or driverless vehicles that are coming along, that will displace millions of workers in this country, in the United States, but also around the world.
And then suddenly, these technologies come along, and they destroy our existing relationships.
The stakes for us as individuals are enormous, and unless we can replace all that, what's gonna come of us? Now, you drop a few drops of blood in the shark tank - KRISHNA: Which is AI.
- which is AI, - and machine learning.
- Machine learning.
GOOLSBEE: And we're gonna shut down factories, we're gonna replace truck drivers.
What if everything in the country's owned by three people who are the ones who invented the robots - Jeff Bezos.
Mark Zuckerberg.
- and we're all begging them for a crumb.
What can I eat today? Please, will you hand me something? You can see why people get upset.
Even thinking about it, your blood is gonna boil.
The discontent that is evident in the Brexit vote in 2016, the vote for Trump in 2016.
What is very clear, there's a lot of discontent.
A lot of people have not been doing very well.
It isn't clear how long we have before the political system comes under enormous stresses.
We as a society have not even begun to have a sustained or comprehensive national conversation.
And what worries me is by the time we really get around to dealing with this, it's gonna be too late.
(BEEPS) (SIZZLING) (INDISTINCT CHATTER) ANDAVOLU: Over 3.
5 million people work in fast food.
It's one of the easiest jobs to get, and a good first step on the ladder up to a job with better pay and less grease.
But at Southern California's Caliburger, Gianna Toboni found out even this first step is in jeopardy.
Our vision is that we want to take the restaurant industry, and more broadly the retail industry, and make it operate more like the Internet.
We wanna automate as much as we can, and allow merchants that operate brick-and-mortar businesses to see their customers in the same way that Amazon sees their customers.
- There you go.
So, you're done.
- That was 10 seconds, probably.
(SIZZLING) MILLER: This was our first robot to work on the grill.
The entire fleet of robots that we deploy learns from the training that takes place here in Pasadena.
So, unlike humans, we teach one robot and you perfect it, and then you can deploy that software to all the robots in the field.
What are the advantages of automating a business like this? For a restaurant chain, consistency is critical to success.
Right? Critical to scale.
These restaurants will be safer when you automate them.
Humans touching the food less.
Labor costs is a big issue right now, right? It's not just rising minimum wage, but it's turnover.
They come in, they get trained, and then they leave to go drive an Uber or do something else.
I notice you still have some employees back here.
- It's not just Flippy running the whole show.
- That's right.
Yeah.
MILLER: So, we currently think about this as a cobotic working arrangement, where we have the robot automating certain tasks that humans don't necessarily like to do.
But we still need people in the kitchen managing the robotic systems and working side-by-side with the robot to do things that it's not possible to automate at this point in time.
TOBONI: Natalie, how do you like working here? I really like it.
It's something different.
It takes a little bit of getting used to, - but I really do like it.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
Cool.
(WHIRRING) (WHIRRING) ANDAVOLU: "Cobotics" is a new word, but the idea has been around forever: Let's integrate new tools into old tasks and do them faster.
(BEEPING, WHIRRING) At Amazon's robotic-enabled fulfillment centers, thousands of newly developed AI-powered cobots are rebuilding how man and machine work together.
We actually started introducing robotics in around 2012.
- So just, like, seven years ago? - Yep.
BRADY: Since then, we have created almost 300,000 jobs.
- Just in fulfillment centers like this? - In fulfillment centers across the Amazon workforce.
We have this first example - of human-machine collaboration.
- Uh-huh.
These are mobile shelves that are drive units - of the little orange robots that you see below? - ANDAVOLU: Yeah.
BRADY: You can move those at will, any shelf, at any time.
And at the right time, like magic, that universal station, it's gonna say, - "Hey, I think that object is right here.
" - ANDAVOLU: Wow.
BRADY: Now, she is gonna do a pick operations, that's scanned, and if it passes that bar, it's the right object.
- Look at them go! These shelves are crazy! - BRADY: It's awesome.
ANDAVOLU: But it's interesting.
So, who is sort of Who's working for who here? 'Cause, like, the robots are coming to her.
She's taking the stuff out and putting it in, but then she has to say to the robot, "Oh yeah, it's actually it.
" - Is it on her time, or is it on the robot's time? - (LAUGHING): I love it.
It's I love that question, it's great.
It is a symphony of humans and machines working together.
You put them both together in order to create a better system.
Is there a day where there's gonna be a robot who can pick and look through things just as good as she can? And is that a day that you're planning for? Are you already planning for it? BRADY: Humans are amazing at problem-solving.
Humans are amazing at generalization.
Humans have high value, high judgment, right? Why would we ever want to separate that away from our machines? We actually want to make that more cohesive.
- What's cool is that Amazon is growing big time, right? - Yeah.
And it's creating a lot of jobs.
It's one of the biggest job creators in the world.
So, with automation working hand in hand with people, is it making jobs better? I think it is making it better.
First of all, our associates, they choose to come and work - in our fulfillment centers.
- They choose to be here, yeah.
And we're really proud of the wage benefit that we are offering our associates.
- It's a $15 minimum - Uh-huh.
that we instituted this year.
We're really proud of that.
They are the reason that we're so successful inside our fulfillment centers.
ANDAVOLU: This is Jav.
He's 23 and at the very beginning of his career.
He dropped out of college for financial reasons, then left a job at an elementary school to become an Amazon associate because it paid better.
He still works there, which is why he asked us not to use his last name.
When I heard we was working with robots, - I thought the idea was cool.
- Uh-huh.
It's something I only imagined coming out of a sci-fi movie.
But, um, I guess for the most part, I dislike the stowing process.
Stowing, so what's that exactly? Just imagine just standing there, just all day (LAUGHS), - for those 10 hours.
- Yeah.
You know, you feel like you have to move fast.
You have to do right by the robots, you know? Do the robots work for you, or do you work for the robots? Wow, that's a good question.
I feel like I work for the robots.
(LAUGHS) At Amazon, data seems to be like this huge thing.
Like, do they track your data as a human? They track everyone.
(CHUCKLES) How many products are you actually moving in a single day? I think the highest I've ever stowed was - 2,300 units.
Yeah.
- Wow.
You feel like the robots you're working with.
(LAUGHS) Oh! ANDAVOLU: Something you wanna keep doing for a while? You wanna stick around with it? - What, Amazon? No.
- Yeah.
(LAUGHTER) - That was quick, right? - (LAUGHING) (PANTING) What agency do you have when you step into that building? What am I gonna eat for lunch? (LAUGHS) But it's funny 'cause it's like, I'm hearing from people at Amazon that human creativity and problem-solving is still something that they value.
- You heard that from someone? - I did.
I don't know.
I haven't been put in a position where I can like, you know, be creative.
I'm pretty sure a lot of people haven't.
I know that one day, I would like to get a career that I don't feel like I need a vacation from.
It's the whole thing of being useful, you know, like, that's part of being a human.
We all have to feel useful for something, you know? - ANDAVOLU: Do you feel replaceable? - JAV: Yeah, of course.
I know that if I get fired, there'll be another person in my place - ASAP, so - (INDISTINCT BUS ANNOUNCEMENT) ANDAVOLU: Do you think they're gonna try to automate you out of your job? JAV: Yeah, 'cause they wouldn't have to worry about people being injured on the job, you know? So, if they could replace us with robots, I think it could be done.
(WHIRRING) ANDAVOLU: From 2015 to 2017, Amazon held competitions where college teams designed robots to do more or less what Jav does all day: single out objects, grab them, then stow them in a specific place.
See how I can collapse the hand, so I can get it into where it is? A robotic hand, just I haven't seen anything with that sort of dexterity.
ANDAVOLU: That's Tye Brady, the same Amazon exec we met earlier.
Sure, he hasn't seen a robot perform that task yet, but that's exactly why it's the holy grail for making robots as physically versatile as humans.
- Can I Will it hurt my hand? - LILLIAN CHIN: No.
- (WHIRS) - ANDAVOLU (STAMMERS): Hi.
Yeah, that's not bad.
Yeah, that's actually kind of gentle.
So, we've spent, I don't know, however many hundreds of PhDs and decades trying to make robots smarter at grasping.
We're starting to get there with - artificial intelligence and neural networks - Uh-huh.
but even still, it's still very early - in terms of our ability to grasp.
- Right.
Right? And the Amazon picking challenge is a perfect example.
A bunch of minds working on it for a long time, and we still haven't figured out how to just pick things from a bin.
And that's a multi-billion dollar, potentially trillion dollar value proposition.
What's so hard about it? Computers are smart, right? What we think is hard is very different from what computers think is hard.
So, we think that being a chess grandmaster is a hard challenge, but the computer can just go through all the possibilities.
Whereas this, there's infinite possibilities to grab that apple.
What happens when we crack the grasping problem? - A lot fewer Amazon employees.
- (LAUGHING) (WHIRRING) ANDAVOLU: This March, MIT and Harvard debuted a new concept of the grabber, saying Amazon's just the kind of company that could use it.
Amazon already sucks up nearly 50% of America's e-commerce transactions, and makes a dollar for every 20 spent by American shoppers.
There's a reason it's valued at nearly a trillion dollars.
But Amazon and its tech peers, like Apple, Google, and Facebook, employ far fewer people than the richest companies of previous eras.
So, even if robots aren't helping you find the right size at a brick-and-mortar Gap quite yet, that doesn't mean they aren't eroding the future of retail work.
- GOOLSBEE: I spent most of my childhood in Southern California.
- Mm-hmm.
The Whitwood Mall and La Puente Mall were the the center of social life.
ANDAVOLU: Austin Goolsbee is a professor of economics and was the chair of economic advisors under President Obama.
- Retail was, kind of, often an entry-level job - Mm-hmm.
with probably 16 million, 15 million people - in the United States working retail.
- Yeah.
And this technology, - if you wanna think of it as that - Yeah, it's interesting.
replaced a different kind of retail.
Mm-hmm.
So, could you see a mall like this an example of kind of creative destruction? I mean, you can see the destruction.
How could you make a living doing that? You know, the Hat World.
Hat World.
Well, there's two.
There's Hat World and Hat Station! - You know, they're competing against each other.
- Yeah.
And now, - it almost seems quaint.
- Mm-hmm.
From the '80s and the '90s, and into the 2000s, if you had, say, a college degree, the technology has been great.
- Mm-hmm.
- And it's allowed you to increase your income a lot.
- That's right, yeah.
- If you're the financial guy, the number of deals you can do has expanded exponentially as the computing power has gone up.
Those same technologies have come at the expense - of expensive physical labor.
- Mm-hmm.
That's the first thing they tried to replace.
ANDAVOLU: One virtue of technology is that it's impersonal.
It's an equal opportunity disruptor.
So, even as automation and AI hit lower-wage jobs, they're coming for higher-wage jobs too.
And the people at this MIT conference are pretty excited about it.
(APPLAUSE) ERIC SCHMIDT: The biggest, I think, focus for a while is gonna be AI acceleration.
Basically, can we use machine learning and AI in fields that have not had it so far? What do we have to do? Let's fund them, let's hire the people, and so forth, to bring those tools and techniques to science.
MCAFEE: Most of us walk around with this implicit rule of thumb in our heads about how we should divide up all the work that needs to get done between human beings and machines.
It says, look, the machines are better than us at arithmetic.
They're better at transaction processing.
They're better at record keeping.
They're better at all this low-level detail stuff than we are.
Awesome.
Give all that work to the machines.
Let the human beings do the judgment jobs, the communication jobs, the pattern-matching jobs.
When I think about the progress that we're seeing with AI and machine learning right now, that progress is calling into question that rule of thumb in a really profound way.
- Right.
- Because what we're seeing over and over is that the computers are better at pattern matching than we are, even the expert human beings, and actually they've got better judgment.
ANDAVOLU: Judgment calls are basically all we do at the office every day.
We take the facts at hand, run them through past experiences, give them a gut check, and then execute.
And these days, we're offloading judgment calls to computers all the time.
Whether it's to take the subway, take the streets, or take the highway, or what to binge-watch next.
And what's behind these decision-making tools is a technology called machine learning.
Some machine learning relies on programmers presetting the rules of the game, like chess.
NEWSWOMAN: As world champion Garry Kasparov walked away from the match, never looking back at the computer that just beat him.
Others utilize what's called neural networks to figure out the rules for themselves, like a baby.
This is called deep learning.
However it's done, programmers use other recent innovations, like natural language processing, image recognition and speech recognition to take the messy world as we know it, and shove it into the machine.
And the machine can process more data, more dimensions of data, more outcomes from the past, more everything, and could even go from helping making judgments in real time to making predictions about the future.
With vast amounts of data available in the legal, medical, and financial world, and the tools to shove them all into the computer, the machines are coming.
Gianna visited a tech company called LawGeex to see whether their new machine-learning software could put lawyers on the chopping block.
We've built an AI engine that was trained after reviewing many, many, many different contracts.
- How many? Wow.
- Tens of thousands, even more.
We decided to focus on automating the review and approval of contracts.
So, simplifying and making that process faster.
The actual analysis that happens on the back end takes a couple of seconds.
The work is actually going through the report that the system generates, and then fixing whatever issue that is found.
So, the system has flagged all of these items for you.
- BECHOR: Exactly.
- TOBONI: Okay.
Some of them are marked red, meaning that they don't match my policy, and some of them are marked green, meaning that they do match my policy.
It gives me all of the guidelines about what the problem means, and also what I need to do in order to fix it, but then I fix the problem.
So, didn't spell-check start doing this in the '90s? - Okay, that's - (BOTH LAUGH) - Like, how is this different? - Yeah.
The way LawGeex works is very, very different.
It actually looks at the text, understands the meaning behind the text.
- Oh, wow.
- Very similar to how a human lawyer would review it, right? The only difference is that with the AI system, it never forgets, it doesn't get tired, and it doesn't need to drink coffee.
- Hey.
Gianna.
- Tunji.
- Nice to meet you.
- How's it going? - You ready for this? - Yeah, I think so.
- Let's do this.
- All right.
I feel like John Henry.
(LAUGHS) So, Tunji, you're going up against this AI system with Noory to spot legal issues in two NDAs.
We're rating you guys on both speed and accuracy.
And because this isn't a commercial for LawGeex, I need you to try your hardest - to beat this computer.
- I'm on it.
All righty.
On your marks, get set, go! (CLICKING) (QUIETLY): So, we snuck a little phrase into this contract.
It says, "In case of any breach by the recipient of any obligations under this agreement, the recipient will pay Vice News a penalty of $15,000 per event.
" So, we're gonna see if Tunji and the AI system can find it.
Poor Tunji's just still working away over here.
So far, it's taken him more than double the time that it took the computer.
And meanwhile, Noory and I just got a coffee.
He's having a meeting right now.
Pretty clear just how much time this technology saves.
Done.
TOBONI: Okay, guys.
- The results are in.
- TUNJI: Okay.
LAWGEEX: 95% on the first NDA.
Tunji, 85%.
Second NDA, 95% for the computer, 83% for Tunji.
You don't seem disappointed.
I wasn't disappointed when the iPhone came out and I could do more things with this new piece of technology.
So, this is exciting to me.
So, Noory, did the computer catch the phrase we put in there about Vice News? Yeah, the computer caught it, and I was able to strike it out.
Tunji, did you catch it? I straight up missed it.
I didn't see it at all.
We take cash, check, whatever you have.
(LAUGHS) Just kidding.
So, McKinsey says that 22% of a lawyer's job, 35% of a paralegal's job, can now, today, be automated.
So then, what happens? These jobs don't go away? People just take longer lunch breaks or take on more clients or what? We're kidding ourselves if we think that things are not going to change.
But similar to pilots with the autopilot, it's not like we don't need pilots anymore.
- Could this technology pass a bar? - No.
Okay, so we still need lawyers to be signing off on these legal documents, even if they're not doing the nitty-gritty of them.
Absolutely.
Defining the policy, serving escalation points, handling negotiation, and then also handling more complex contract categories.
- Mm-hmm.
- You have a new generation of lawyers that are much more tech-savvy.
The ones that can actually leverage technology are the ones that manage to prosper.
ANDAVOLU: Unlike the law, medicine has always been intertwined with technology.
But it's relationship with robotics isn't just graceful, it's miraculous.
TOBONI: What is the most groundbreaking thing about how far we've come with robotic surgery? So, robotic surgery allows us to really treat tissue in a more delicate way (WHIRRING) allow us to be much more efficient in suturing, decreasing bleeding.
We are improving outcomes, shortening hospital stay, and that's why we're using more and more now.
So, the robot is enabling surgeons, and by enabling surgeons is giving access to more patients to minimal invasive surgery.
HORGAN: Okay, we're good to go.
TOBONI: That's great, right? 'Cause one of the huge problems in our health care system is that not enough patients are getting seen when they need to be seen.
Not only that, not every patient get the same care.
You may have great surgeons in one area, but not in other areas with the same experience.
The robot is flattening that.
- We're ready? - MAN: Ready.
HORGAN: I think that the biggest groundbreaking part is the fact that I am operating on a console, and the system is on the patient.
We have all the degrees of articulation you would have in your hand inside the abdomen.
That's revolutionary.
MAN: Geez.
That's close.
HORGAN: Okay! I'm gonna go out and have my espresso.
TOBONI: The way robotic surgery is evolving, do you see any jobs, like the job of a technician or a physician's assistant going away? No, but what we have seen is the opposite is them being much more involved.
Okay, stapler.
ASSISTANT: Loading up the seam guard.
HORGAN: You need a nurse that knows how to move it around.
You need a scrub tech that knows how to load the instruments, how to clean the camera, and how to move the arm, - how to undock.
- TOBONI: Right.
HORGAN: I like it a lot there.
What do you think? - ASSISTANT: Yeah, looks good.
- HORGAN: Only good? - ASSISTANT: Perfect.
Unbelievable.
- HORGAN: Eh? HORGAN: Look at that.
TOBONI: How do you think automation will evolve in this area? The anatomy changes from patient to patient, but with machine learning, the system will be able to recognize different tissues.
- Mm.
- And I'm sure that in the next year, we'll see the system telling you that's cancer, - that's not cancer.
- Wow.
And that's where the benefits are gonna be.
ANDAVOLU: Finance has been cashing in on the benefits of machine learning for years, hiring so many programmers that it's virtually indistinguishable from tech.
Michael Moynihan visited Goldman Sachs to see how they're leveraging AI's predictive capabilities to make more money.
How has your job changed, and how has this industry changed? Over time, there's been a lot of automation.
I think it lends itself naturally to trading, right? If I'm trading Google, if I have to make a decision whether I'm going to buy it or sell it at a certain price, there are hundreds of variables that go into that decision.
And you can code an algorithm to assess all those variables, and when you swing that bat 1,000 times, it's going to do it more efficiently than a human would.
- (BELL RINGING) - So, when you look on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, there aren't a lot of traders down there anymore.
MOYNIHAN: If I went down there today, what would I see? LEVINE: You wouldn't see a lot of people.
You might see them clustered.
MOYNIHAN: Little tiny clusters of people? LEVINE: It'll be a cluster.
MOYNIHAN: So, to be in this industry now, do you need to understand lines of code and what they do and how to produce it? SINEAD STRAIN: I'd say more and more, yes.
If we look at this firm, the number of engineers, technologists that we have here, we're probably the largest division within the firm.
So, you have a math background? Yeah, math and computer science.
- But yours is economics and computer science? - Yes.
MOYNIHAN: But you learned this on the fly? JAMESON SCHRIBER: Yeah, in school or here.
More likely, most of the things were picked up here.
Can I see like, you know, an algorithm, give me some sense of code? PHILLIPS: I'll show you a really simple example.
So, in this case, I'm gonna run a volatility function, essentially an algorithm, and this is showing me now, on a 22-day rolling day basis, what's the volatility level of the S&P 500.
Essentially, we would write code to do that.
So, in this library, this is the volatility function.
It's actually fairly simple.
- But, we - Wait, I'm sorry.
That's fairly simple? This is all documentation.
This is actually a fairly simple algorithm.
It's essentially the code that's generating what you're seeing.
Looks terribly complicated to me.
People like you guys still need to exist to create these things, right? I mean, are they self-sustaining? Or can you write yourself out of a job? - I think we're Yeah.
- I think that would be hard.
MOYNIHAN: Formerly a tech CEO, Marty Chavez is now global co-head of Goldman's securities division.
It strikes me, obviously, that this is an industry that has been on the forefront of using AI, computers, to you know, make big decisions and make a lot of money.
What has that done to the kind of, you know, the job market within even within this company.
It's creating new jobs that couldn't have existed before.
Whole new businesses now exist for us and out in the world that wouldn't have been possible without the technologies that have arisen over the past few years, whether they're machine learning, cloud services, open-source, right? All of those activities go into, for instance, our new consumer lending and deposit taking activity.
You know the counterargument to this, don't you? These are jobs that are being created for smart people, - educated people, rich people.
- Mm-hmm.
Other people out there, who are being made redundant by robots, don't have the skills.
- It's only for a rarefied few.
- Mm.
How do you respond to that? Technological change is disruptive, and there's a lot of pain, and it's something that we must concern ourselves with.
What do you do during the disruption, which has been continuous since the agricultural and industrial Revolutions, and I expect it will continue and will accelerate in all likelihood.
And so, sitting back and complaining about it, sitting back and doing nothing about it, don't seem to be options.
At the same time, I don't think the answer is - to stop the progression of technology.
- Mm.
Haven't seen that work.
(BRAKES SCREECHING) (PA ANNOUNCEMENT): This is a Queens-bound M local train.
The next stop is Myrtle Avenue.
It's worth noting at this point that even if AI tools are better at making decisions, high-level judgment jobs aren't about to be automated away any time soon.
And let's be clear, the people who are most excited about AI's creative potential aren't the ones getting replaced.
So the question becomes, as this disruption accelerates, how do you benefit from it if you're not already rich, or white, or male, or have a spot at the top? Let's put it this way.
It's a lot easier for all of us to get directions, but it's becoming increasingly hard for most people to find their way to a stable career.
And there are not a lot of people whining about it.
There are a lot of people who are racing to catch up.
We visited a class at Per Scholas, a non-profit that skills up people in New York and other cities around the country for free.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER) (CHATTER CONTINUING) STUDENT: I have had just about every terrible job you can imagine.
Fast food, grocery store, stock clerk.
I was a supervisor at a retail store while I was in college.
I was a mechanic.
I worked in the industry for over 10 years.
Then I went to substitute teaching.
Then I went into solar, doing sales.
And then I was a writer, and then I became an English teacher.
Reservation sales agent.
Customer service, marketing.
Now I am here at Per Scholas.
- I should do that in CodePen, right? - Yeah.
The job market is really shifting towards a gig economy.
What do you have that you can work for yourself, or work for someone else? A year ago, I would've told you that I was gonna go to grad school and get a PhD and all that good stuff.
But the reality is when I graduated, and I was looking for jobs, one of the main things that kept popping up was software engineer, coding, tech.
Do you think you would've made the move if this place wasn't free? No.
(LAUGHS) Because just graduated college, so, you know, Sally Mae is still knocking on my door.
- They're knocking on my door right now.
- (KNOCKING ON DOOR) - Is that them? - You see? - (LAUGHTER) - I just said their name, and here they are.
When I put the comma, right? And I put the P, does that mean parent and P? - I'm a mom of three.
- Mm-hmm.
So, my last job, I was working at a busy call center, and I was in a place where I felt you know, undervalued.
Robots was gonna come and take my job, and I would've been without a job, and what would I've been able to pass onto my children? "Hi, how are you doing?" With this, I can give them a skill.
They can be in a better place in the next 10, 20 years, opposed to how long it took for me to figure this out.
Do you think you're at a disadvantage as far as the job market itself? You look at the tech industry, and it's like, other than south Asians, east Asians, it's like, there are not a lot of people of color.
Yeah, I wanted to touch on that.
This is actually why I decided to specifically go into coding because this is one where, at the end of the day, it's just how good your applications are, your codes are.
Growing up, I used to think this was just magic, or like it's done by all the smart kids in California, you know? So, I wanna prove that it can be done by some kid in Queens who just wanted to do it.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER) KELLY RICHARDSON: The perfect world is that we have enough investment that we could grow to meet - both the size of the demand and the size of the supply.
- Mm-hmm.
RICHARDSON: We have more employer partners willing to hire than we have graduates for.
We have more students or applicants - applying to Per Scholas than we have spots for.
- Right.
The constraint to our growth is resources.
The domestic investment in workforce retraining - is so small, and - Mm.
the impact automation is going to have - is not going to be equitable.
- Mm-hmm.
That it's largely people of color, largely women who are in the current low-wage occupations that are gonna be displaced.
There really should be some critical thinking and some action that legislators are taking to invest in programs like this.
For decades, the federal government has repeatedly taken action to fund reskilling.
I am proud today to sign into law the Job Training Partnership Act, a program that looks to the future instead of the past.
Giving all Americans the tools they need to learn for a lifetime is critical to our ability to continue to grow.
So, the bill I'm about to sign will give communities more certainty to invest in job training programs for the long run.
ANDAVOLU: But in today's dollars, that funding has fallen for years.
President Trump campaigned on bringing jobs back to American workers.
A Trump administration will stop the jobs from leaving America.
ANDAVOLU: And he signed an executive order enacting, what he calls, the White House's Pledge to America's Workers, installing his advisor and daughter, Ivanka Trump, to lead the charge.
It's one of my favorite words, reskilling.
Reskilling.
We're calling upon government and the private sector to equip our students and workers with the skills they need to thrive in the modern economy.
(INDISTINCT PA ANNOUNCEMENT) (HORN BEEPS) ANDAVOLU: The Trump administration's strategy on reskilling America's workforce is a lot like its strategy for other big problems America is facing.
Rather than increasing public investment, they prefer to see private industry fill the void.
For the past nine months, the Trump administration has been twisting the arms of CEOs to promise funding for worker education and training.
And so far, more than 200 companies have signed on, with Toyota being the latest.
IVANKA: Toyota signed our pledge to America's workers for 100,000 enhanced career opportunities, apprenticeship, um - new jobs - New development.
New development, workforce training.
I think James was a little bit inspired.
He's just increased that commitment to 200,000, - which is unbelievably exciting.
- (CHEERING) BEVIN: The American worker is great, but the Kentucky worker - is greater still.
- (CHEERING) (APPLAUSE) Does government have a role? Absolutely.
But is it to define what the workforce looks like? No.
If the state were to develop a program for Toyota's workers of the future, it would be a failure.
I'm telling you, straight up.
Toyota knows what Toyota needs.
But the risk, perhaps, is a reliance on a company that isn't owned by you and me, like the government is.
It's owned by shareholders.
Is there a problem with having a private response to a public problem? Who has more of a vested interest in getting this right? The government or the private company? The private company does.
It is in the best interest of Toyota or any other company to train the best quality people, pay them as much as possible, give them the standard of living and the quality of life that makes them wanna come and retire 20, 30, 40 years later from the very same company.
It's in the company's interest until it isn't.
And the thing about a company is, like, we don't elect their executives, but we elect our government officials.
But the idea that we're gonna rely on government and "elected people," to come up with rules for training people for jobs that you will volitionally want to buy the products of is crazy.
ANDAVOLU: Under the pledge, they're promising 200,000 new opportunities.
They're promising to reskill and retrain 200,000 people.
They have the capacity to do that.
What happens if they break the promise? Again, they're gonna do their Can you mandate the government does it? If they don't do it, it's not like we're gonna not reelect their CEO.
They don't do it, they might have some bad publicity You think it won't affect their CEO? Here's what happens.
If they don't do it, if they're not making these investments, there's not a chance that they survive.
(APPLAUSE) (INDISTINCT CHATTER) ANDAVOLU: This is Landon and Tim, two buddies who work together at the Toyota factory.
Tim's just retired, but Landon sees himself working at Toyota for decades.
It must be kind of nice to at least know that at a high level, they're thinking about your jobs, the things that you guys do, the opportunities that you guys have.
Does it strike you that way? TIM SMITH: With Ivanka, I just looked and said okay, it's PR.
Do people want to be reskilled? If their job depended on it, and they know it's coming, I would say sure.
Yes.
It would be depending on your personal circumstances, that could be very hard because if you work, you know, a full shift and you have a family, you may only have an hour or two of free time a day, are you supposed to go drive to a training facility and spend a few hours a day there before you go do your shift, - you work your shift? - Mm-hmm.
I don't think very many people would do that.
Do you guys like your job, or do you like working there? (CHUCKLES) - You go, Timmy.
- (LAUGHING) - I actually love my job.
- Yeah.
Um, you know, because I've always loved working on cars, so my job was pretty much up my alley.
- There are parts of my job that I like.
- Mm-hmm.
It's, you know, you're creating something.
There's no way it could exist without someone putting it together.
(LAUGHING) - Exactly.
- And so - Yeah, I have a wife and two daughters.
- Right.
- I wanna spend as much time with them as I can.
- Mm-hmm.
They're young and they're not gonna stay young for long, and I hate missing the time I miss with them at work already.
I just wanna spend as much time as I can with them.
I wanna retire.
That's the that's the goal.
ANDAVOLU: For people in the workforce today, reskilling boils down to doing more work just to keep up.
To Andrew Yang, a former job creation specialist, and now a long-shot presidential candidate, the spotlight on reskilling hides a larger imbalance between the goals of workers and the goals of their employers.
We are so brainwashed by the market that otherwise intelligent, well-meaning people will legitimately say, "We should retrain the coal miners to be coders.
" - Yep.
- YANG: We are trained to think that we have no value unless the market says that there's a need for what we do.
And so, if coal miners now have zero value, then the thought process is, "Oh, we have to turn them into something that does have value.
What has value? Coders!" And then, 12 years from now, - AI's gonna be able to do basic coding anyway.
- Sure.
So, this is a race we will not win.
The goal posts are gonna move the whole time on us.
What the solutions? What are you proposing? We start issuing a dividend to all American adults, starting at age 18, where everyone gets $1,000 a month.
So, basically a universal basic income.
- Yes.
We've rebranded it the Freedom Dividend - Okay.
because it tests much better with conservatives with the word freedom in it.
(LAUGHING) And it's not a basic income, it's a dividend.
Which is to say the economy is at a surplus, so everyone deserves a piece of the pie.
Yeah, no.
All of us are owners and shareholders of the richest society in the history of the world that can easily afford a dividend of $1,000 per adult.
People need meaning, structure, purpose, fulfillment.
And that is the generational challenge that faces us.
It's not like the Freedom Dividend, giving everyone $1,000 a month, solves that challenge.
It does not.
- But what it does is it - Buys us time? It buys us time and also channels resources into the pursuit of meeting that challenge.
It ends up supercharging our ability to address what we should be doing.
ANDAVOLU: Universal basic income, once a marginal political fantasy, has been embraced by more than a few rabid capitalists in recent years.
We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure that everyone has a cushion to try new ideas.
It's free money for everybody.
Enough to pay for your basic needs: food, shelter, education.
I don't think we're gonna have a choice.
It will come about one day.
- And I think - Out of necessity? Out of necessity, and and I think that cities should experiment.
ANDAVOLU: Michael Moynihan went to one city that already is.
- MOYNIHAN: Mayor.
- Good morning.
Michael Moynihan.
How are you? MOYNIHAN: Stockton's mayor won election at just 26 years old, taking office five years after the city declared bankruptcy.
So, you grew up here? - Born and raised.
- Born and raised? - This is home.
- And you left for a brief period to go to Stanford? Left for four years, I came right back.
MOYNIHAN: With funding from Silicon Valley, he's launched a pilot program that's giving 125 residents $500 a month for 18 months.
Why do Silicon Valley guys like this so much? Can't speak for all of them, but I think a lot of them see how detrimental it would be to society if there's a mass number of people who are automated without any way to make a means for themselves, without any way to provide for themselves.
I mean, is it people in tech kind of paying indulgences, and saying, "Hey, we're kind of screwing this up.
We feel bad about it.
Here's some money"? I know some people are talking about robot taxes and things of that sort, and I I'm in very much agreement with that.
That they have a responsibility to society.
It's voluntary now, but it might be at the point of a gun later.
Yeah, voluntary to start and pilot, but absolutely I think to scale it, it's not gonna be about generosity.
It's gonna be a matter of policy.
MOYNIHAN: The criticism that most people get for UBI type experiments is that, all right, you're just giving people money, a handout, etc.
That's a start, but what's the long-term goal for jobs in Stockton? The hypothesis we're working on is that folks have their basic needs met, and then create the workforce of the future.
Primarily starting with the kids in our schools now, but also with the adults, to give them opportunities for retraining, reskilling, but also supporting people in their entrepreneurial pursuits.
Folks with a lot of potential but historically folks who haven't been seen as important enough for investment or important enough for government to really partner with, so that's what makes people excited about the work we're doing in Stockton.
So yeah, this is the downtown marina.
Watch your step.
MOYNIHAN: There was basically nothing here when you were a kid, when you were five, six years old.
TUBBS: I never really came out here till I came back for city council.
- Yeah.
- This wasn't part of my Stockton, but I think for me, this spot's so important 'cause it represents real potential.
- There's not many cities that have this.
- Yeah.
When we talk about the future of work, we're talking about how do we ensure that those left behind today aren't further left behind tomorrow, and that's my biggest fear.
The folks who are making the least now are the most likely to be automated out of jobs and making anything.
So for me, a basic income isn't even about the future of work.
It's about getting our foundation set in the present, so that when the future work happens, we have a firm foundation on which we can pivot and figure out what we can do with and for people.
ANDAVOLU: What's attractive about UBI is its simplicity.
But that's also what makes it vulnerable to critique.
DARON ACEMOGLU: I don't think these Utopian ideas of universal basic income, robots do all the production and then everybody stays at home with a decent income and plays video games.
I think that's a very dystopic future, and it won't work, and I think it will lead to a huge amount of discontent.
We really have no option but create jobs for the future.
Politicians have to start engaging these issues to figure out what's politically feasible.
It's gonna trigger fundamental debates about things like a universal basic income that everybody ought to get money and the question is, okay, where's that money gonna come from? ANDAVOLU: According to a progressive think tank's analysis, a UBI program giving every American $10,000 a year would cost the government more than $3 trillion annually.
The entire 2018 federal budget was just over $4 trillion.
Universal basic income isn't the only policy being floated to shore up the workforce's shaky financial foundation, whether it's using federal funds to guarantee jobs for anyone who wants one, giving tax breaks to companies to create more jobs, or strong-arming companies to keep their factories open.
What all these policies and strategies tell us is that the broad consensus is that right now PROTESTERS: We say fight back! ANDAVOLU: things aren't working.
BRYNJOLFSSON: We've designed a system where, as the technology creates more wealth, some people, bizarrely, are made worse off.
We have to update and reinvent our system so that this explosion of wealth and productivity benefits not just the few, but the many.
HAASS: This challenge of new technology is not taking place in a vacuum.
This country's already divided.
It's divided geographically.
It's divided culturally, politically.
We've gotta be prepared for the fact that it could actually take the social differences we already have, and make it worse.
There's gotta be a sense of urgency here.
A higher level of disconnection, alienation, more declines in social capital, more groups of people left behind, more geographic areas left behind.
- PROTESTER: What do we want? - ALL: Justice! - PROTESTER: When do we want it? - ALL: Now! MCAFEE: This is not a recipe for a stable, prosperous, happy society.
My worry is not that the robots will take all the jobs.
My worry is that more people will be left behind and will feel left behind by what's going on.
STIGLITZ: If we continue in the way we've run our economy for the last 40 years, it will be disastrous.
So, when you talk about the future of work, we're kind of talking about the future of the whole system? That's right.
I mean, you cannot have a prosperous economy without prosperous workers.
Voltaire said that work saves us from three great evils.
Boredom, vice, and need.
HAASS: So much of our identities are tied up with our jobs.
People ask you how you doing, who you are, what you do, and that's essential to our sense of self.
If we have millions, or tens of millions, of chronically, long-term unemployed, what's gonna become of those people? It's not simply a question of how are they going to support themselves.
What are they gonna do? (HORN HONKS) (ENGINE RUMBLING) (DRILL WHIRRING) This is your NOx sensor drift.
- One box.
- Conversion efficiency.
Yep.
One box gone.
(RATTLING) You know, someone might say robots are coming.
Might as well hang up the keys now.
Does that go through your head? It's gonna happen.
- It's gonna happen, I mean - What's gonna happen? With these vehicles driving by themselves.
Change is good.
Some change ain't good, you know? I mean, that's gonna be a lot of people out of work, and ANDAVOLU: What do you think you're gonna do? There's gonna be a crash.
I think there's gonna be a lot of outrage.
- Riots more or less, you know what I mean? - Sure.
'Cause they're gonna fight to try to keep their job.
I mean, would I do it? Yeah, I would do it.
It's gonna be a chain reaction.
In reality, you gotta look at the economy and what is it gonna do to the economy.
What is it gonna do to the American people? Not just the industry, I mean to to the world.
What's gonna happen you got the whole world pissed off? (HAMMERING, CLATTER) But me, I wanna die in a truck.
- Really? (LAUGHS) - I'm gonna die in a truck, brother.
I've told all my friends, I've told my family.
- That's when I retire is when I die in a truck.
- Yeah.
I mean, I been doing it for too long.
It's in the blood.
It's about to take a left turn into oncoming traffic.
So, if their sensors (AI VOICE SPEAKS) ANDAVOLU: It's accelerating on its own.
It's breaking on its own.
It's steering on its own.
Trucking in the United States is, like, a $700-billion-a-year industry, and it employs 1.
8 million people.
Thus far, it's been pretty immune to the changes of globalization and technology, but that's about to change with technology like this.
(AI VOICE SPEAKING) ANDAVOLU: There's an operator here, there's a safety engineer here, 'cause they're still experimenting.
It's still kind of in development.
(AI VOICE SPEAKS) ANDAVOLU: Have you put your hand on the wheel at any point? (OPERATOR SPEAKS) ANDAVOLU: This is like a pretty complex traffic situation.
There are cars merging.
There are cars passing us.
This truck is changing lanes to go around slow traffic, anticipating when people are stopping.
And honestly, I just, like, kind of can't believe it.
It's It's driving itself, and it's doing a pretty good job.
(AI VOICE SPEAKS) OPERATOR: Here we go, making our right turn into our driveway.
CHUCK PRICE: We recognize that this is a highly disruptive technology, on the order of 10 million people, and displacing rapidly that many people - would have a dramatic societal impact.
- Mm-hmm.
We certainly don't want to see that.
We're not targeting that.
We're focused on relieving a shortage.
But what we're hoping is that there will be a natural evolution into the jobs of the future, just as there has been in every other technological change.
- What do you tell a trucker? - We try not to tell truckers things.
We try to listen.
(SIZZLING) (PATRONS CHATTERING) This is Chuck.
- Hello, Chuck.
- Chuck runs a company that is developing and is gonna produce self-driving trucks, that are autonomous, that do it themselves.
- You guys are truck drivers.
- DON SCHRADER: Yes, sir.
How do you feel about it? If the truck doesn't have a driver in it, is somebody at headquarters sitting behind a monitor? SCHRADER: No, there's a driver in there.
No.
In the future, when there isn't, you know, once it's fully tested - Oh.
- and we don't need to have a driver in it.
- Oh, driver assist? - No, it's not driver assist.
It is purely self-driving.
So, like a GPS basically? You're going from point A to point B? There's GPS in it.
There's a lot of tech, - but GPS is a part of it.
- Okay.
ANDAVOLU: He took me into one of his trucks today.
We did a 90-minute run up and down on I-10.
Traffic was merging in.
It was changing lanes.
- It was braking, it was accelerating.
It was like - SCHRADER: Really? So, does it do really good when the cars cut you off? A car cut us off! And you know what? It didn't slam on the brakes.
The truck just kind of kept rolling.
SCHRADER: How is your equipment handling the high winds? - We're actually surprisingly good in high winds.
- Really? How much weight in the trailer? We've gone empty and loaded.
- Empty and loaded? - Yes, sir.
We have very complex control algorithms, and now we hold it with such precision that it is perfectly straight.
Yeah.
It's tough.
ANDAVOLU: You seem pretty impressed.
Actually, yeah, I am.
I wasn't all for it, but, I mean, it's I gotta, I gotta see this.
PRICE: That's laser.
That's lidar.
It's a laser, like a laser radar.
ANDAVOLU: What do you love about driving a truck? Oh, gosh.
(CHUCKLES) I love to drive.
For me, it's a privilege.
It's a privilege to get out there, get behind the wheel of 80,000 pounds, drive that thing down the road, knowing, hey, you know what? - I can do this, you can't do it.
- No, I can't.
SCHRADER: And I know I'm providing the US.
I'm providing the world with whatever I got in the back of my freight.
- I deliver your clothes, your food that you're eating.
- Mm-hmm.
A lot of people don't see that.
And it's a good feeling as a driver, as a human being.
SCHRADER: You really gotta have faith to rely on, is this gonna kill me or Yep, and we'll have to do a lot of testing - to prove that.
- Wow.
All right.
That's definitely different.
Over the next year, we're building a fleet of 200 trucks, and we're gonna be operating them day and night, just to validate it, to prove it.
We have to prove to you.
We have to prove to the regulators, to the states.
We have to prove to ourselves.
SCHRADER: When you asked me what would I do if I didn't drive? I can't honestly answer that 'cause I really don't know what I would do.
I'd I'd be scared.
(BEEPING) (ENGINE RUMBLING) ANDAVOLU: It's one of the first questions that every kid gets asked.
What do you wanna be when you grow up? Previous generations grew up confident that no matter the answer, they'd be something.
That's actually not so certain anymore.
Automation already affects most jobs, but the pace of change and the sheer capabilities of artificial intelligence are revolutionizing our relationship to work, something economists are paying close attention to.
Technologies are tools.
They don't decide what we do.
We decide what we do with those tools.
If we have more powerful tools, by definition, we have more power to change the world than we ever had before.
ANDREW MCAFEE: It took about 600 years for global average incomes - to increase by 50%.
- Wow.
MCAFEE: Here we are, from 1988 to now, almost 50% or more increases across the board of humanity.
This is because of economic freedom and because of technological progress.
It just expands the possibilities, and therefore, expands our income so much more quickly than we've ever seen before.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: The problem is that as the economic pie's gotten bigger, not everyone has shared.
Wages at the bottom today are the same, - adjusted for inflation, as they were 60 years ago.
- Mm-hmm.
So, all that growth didn't go down to the people at the bottom.
ANDAVOLU: The future of work has even caught the attention of experts like Richard Haass, and the Council on Foreign Relations, who've authored a report on the threats it poses to geopolitical stability.
Millions of jobs are beginning to disappear.
You've got now a whole new generation, whether it's artificial intelligence, robotics or autonomous or driverless vehicles that are coming along, that will displace millions of workers in this country, in the United States, but also around the world.
And then suddenly, these technologies come along, and they destroy our existing relationships.
The stakes for us as individuals are enormous, and unless we can replace all that, what's gonna come of us? Now, you drop a few drops of blood in the shark tank - KRISHNA: Which is AI.
- which is AI, - and machine learning.
- Machine learning.
GOOLSBEE: And we're gonna shut down factories, we're gonna replace truck drivers.
What if everything in the country's owned by three people who are the ones who invented the robots - Jeff Bezos.
Mark Zuckerberg.
- and we're all begging them for a crumb.
What can I eat today? Please, will you hand me something? You can see why people get upset.
Even thinking about it, your blood is gonna boil.
The discontent that is evident in the Brexit vote in 2016, the vote for Trump in 2016.
What is very clear, there's a lot of discontent.
A lot of people have not been doing very well.
It isn't clear how long we have before the political system comes under enormous stresses.
We as a society have not even begun to have a sustained or comprehensive national conversation.
And what worries me is by the time we really get around to dealing with this, it's gonna be too late.
(BEEPS) (SIZZLING) (INDISTINCT CHATTER) ANDAVOLU: Over 3.
5 million people work in fast food.
It's one of the easiest jobs to get, and a good first step on the ladder up to a job with better pay and less grease.
But at Southern California's Caliburger, Gianna Toboni found out even this first step is in jeopardy.
Our vision is that we want to take the restaurant industry, and more broadly the retail industry, and make it operate more like the Internet.
We wanna automate as much as we can, and allow merchants that operate brick-and-mortar businesses to see their customers in the same way that Amazon sees their customers.
- There you go.
So, you're done.
- That was 10 seconds, probably.
(SIZZLING) MILLER: This was our first robot to work on the grill.
The entire fleet of robots that we deploy learns from the training that takes place here in Pasadena.
So, unlike humans, we teach one robot and you perfect it, and then you can deploy that software to all the robots in the field.
What are the advantages of automating a business like this? For a restaurant chain, consistency is critical to success.
Right? Critical to scale.
These restaurants will be safer when you automate them.
Humans touching the food less.
Labor costs is a big issue right now, right? It's not just rising minimum wage, but it's turnover.
They come in, they get trained, and then they leave to go drive an Uber or do something else.
I notice you still have some employees back here.
- It's not just Flippy running the whole show.
- That's right.
Yeah.
MILLER: So, we currently think about this as a cobotic working arrangement, where we have the robot automating certain tasks that humans don't necessarily like to do.
But we still need people in the kitchen managing the robotic systems and working side-by-side with the robot to do things that it's not possible to automate at this point in time.
TOBONI: Natalie, how do you like working here? I really like it.
It's something different.
It takes a little bit of getting used to, - but I really do like it.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
Cool.
(WHIRRING) (WHIRRING) ANDAVOLU: "Cobotics" is a new word, but the idea has been around forever: Let's integrate new tools into old tasks and do them faster.
(BEEPING, WHIRRING) At Amazon's robotic-enabled fulfillment centers, thousands of newly developed AI-powered cobots are rebuilding how man and machine work together.
We actually started introducing robotics in around 2012.
- So just, like, seven years ago? - Yep.
BRADY: Since then, we have created almost 300,000 jobs.
- Just in fulfillment centers like this? - In fulfillment centers across the Amazon workforce.
We have this first example - of human-machine collaboration.
- Uh-huh.
These are mobile shelves that are drive units - of the little orange robots that you see below? - ANDAVOLU: Yeah.
BRADY: You can move those at will, any shelf, at any time.
And at the right time, like magic, that universal station, it's gonna say, - "Hey, I think that object is right here.
" - ANDAVOLU: Wow.
BRADY: Now, she is gonna do a pick operations, that's scanned, and if it passes that bar, it's the right object.
- Look at them go! These shelves are crazy! - BRADY: It's awesome.
ANDAVOLU: But it's interesting.
So, who is sort of Who's working for who here? 'Cause, like, the robots are coming to her.
She's taking the stuff out and putting it in, but then she has to say to the robot, "Oh yeah, it's actually it.
" - Is it on her time, or is it on the robot's time? - (LAUGHING): I love it.
It's I love that question, it's great.
It is a symphony of humans and machines working together.
You put them both together in order to create a better system.
Is there a day where there's gonna be a robot who can pick and look through things just as good as she can? And is that a day that you're planning for? Are you already planning for it? BRADY: Humans are amazing at problem-solving.
Humans are amazing at generalization.
Humans have high value, high judgment, right? Why would we ever want to separate that away from our machines? We actually want to make that more cohesive.
- What's cool is that Amazon is growing big time, right? - Yeah.
And it's creating a lot of jobs.
It's one of the biggest job creators in the world.
So, with automation working hand in hand with people, is it making jobs better? I think it is making it better.
First of all, our associates, they choose to come and work - in our fulfillment centers.
- They choose to be here, yeah.
And we're really proud of the wage benefit that we are offering our associates.
- It's a $15 minimum - Uh-huh.
that we instituted this year.
We're really proud of that.
They are the reason that we're so successful inside our fulfillment centers.
ANDAVOLU: This is Jav.
He's 23 and at the very beginning of his career.
He dropped out of college for financial reasons, then left a job at an elementary school to become an Amazon associate because it paid better.
He still works there, which is why he asked us not to use his last name.
When I heard we was working with robots, - I thought the idea was cool.
- Uh-huh.
It's something I only imagined coming out of a sci-fi movie.
But, um, I guess for the most part, I dislike the stowing process.
Stowing, so what's that exactly? Just imagine just standing there, just all day (LAUGHS), - for those 10 hours.
- Yeah.
You know, you feel like you have to move fast.
You have to do right by the robots, you know? Do the robots work for you, or do you work for the robots? Wow, that's a good question.
I feel like I work for the robots.
(LAUGHS) At Amazon, data seems to be like this huge thing.
Like, do they track your data as a human? They track everyone.
(CHUCKLES) How many products are you actually moving in a single day? I think the highest I've ever stowed was - 2,300 units.
Yeah.
- Wow.
You feel like the robots you're working with.
(LAUGHS) Oh! ANDAVOLU: Something you wanna keep doing for a while? You wanna stick around with it? - What, Amazon? No.
- Yeah.
(LAUGHTER) - That was quick, right? - (LAUGHING) (PANTING) What agency do you have when you step into that building? What am I gonna eat for lunch? (LAUGHS) But it's funny 'cause it's like, I'm hearing from people at Amazon that human creativity and problem-solving is still something that they value.
- You heard that from someone? - I did.
I don't know.
I haven't been put in a position where I can like, you know, be creative.
I'm pretty sure a lot of people haven't.
I know that one day, I would like to get a career that I don't feel like I need a vacation from.
It's the whole thing of being useful, you know, like, that's part of being a human.
We all have to feel useful for something, you know? - ANDAVOLU: Do you feel replaceable? - JAV: Yeah, of course.
I know that if I get fired, there'll be another person in my place - ASAP, so - (INDISTINCT BUS ANNOUNCEMENT) ANDAVOLU: Do you think they're gonna try to automate you out of your job? JAV: Yeah, 'cause they wouldn't have to worry about people being injured on the job, you know? So, if they could replace us with robots, I think it could be done.
(WHIRRING) ANDAVOLU: From 2015 to 2017, Amazon held competitions where college teams designed robots to do more or less what Jav does all day: single out objects, grab them, then stow them in a specific place.
See how I can collapse the hand, so I can get it into where it is? A robotic hand, just I haven't seen anything with that sort of dexterity.
ANDAVOLU: That's Tye Brady, the same Amazon exec we met earlier.
Sure, he hasn't seen a robot perform that task yet, but that's exactly why it's the holy grail for making robots as physically versatile as humans.
- Can I Will it hurt my hand? - LILLIAN CHIN: No.
- (WHIRS) - ANDAVOLU (STAMMERS): Hi.
Yeah, that's not bad.
Yeah, that's actually kind of gentle.
So, we've spent, I don't know, however many hundreds of PhDs and decades trying to make robots smarter at grasping.
We're starting to get there with - artificial intelligence and neural networks - Uh-huh.
but even still, it's still very early - in terms of our ability to grasp.
- Right.
Right? And the Amazon picking challenge is a perfect example.
A bunch of minds working on it for a long time, and we still haven't figured out how to just pick things from a bin.
And that's a multi-billion dollar, potentially trillion dollar value proposition.
What's so hard about it? Computers are smart, right? What we think is hard is very different from what computers think is hard.
So, we think that being a chess grandmaster is a hard challenge, but the computer can just go through all the possibilities.
Whereas this, there's infinite possibilities to grab that apple.
What happens when we crack the grasping problem? - A lot fewer Amazon employees.
- (LAUGHING) (WHIRRING) ANDAVOLU: This March, MIT and Harvard debuted a new concept of the grabber, saying Amazon's just the kind of company that could use it.
Amazon already sucks up nearly 50% of America's e-commerce transactions, and makes a dollar for every 20 spent by American shoppers.
There's a reason it's valued at nearly a trillion dollars.
But Amazon and its tech peers, like Apple, Google, and Facebook, employ far fewer people than the richest companies of previous eras.
So, even if robots aren't helping you find the right size at a brick-and-mortar Gap quite yet, that doesn't mean they aren't eroding the future of retail work.
- GOOLSBEE: I spent most of my childhood in Southern California.
- Mm-hmm.
The Whitwood Mall and La Puente Mall were the the center of social life.
ANDAVOLU: Austin Goolsbee is a professor of economics and was the chair of economic advisors under President Obama.
- Retail was, kind of, often an entry-level job - Mm-hmm.
with probably 16 million, 15 million people - in the United States working retail.
- Yeah.
And this technology, - if you wanna think of it as that - Yeah, it's interesting.
replaced a different kind of retail.
Mm-hmm.
So, could you see a mall like this an example of kind of creative destruction? I mean, you can see the destruction.
How could you make a living doing that? You know, the Hat World.
Hat World.
Well, there's two.
There's Hat World and Hat Station! - You know, they're competing against each other.
- Yeah.
And now, - it almost seems quaint.
- Mm-hmm.
From the '80s and the '90s, and into the 2000s, if you had, say, a college degree, the technology has been great.
- Mm-hmm.
- And it's allowed you to increase your income a lot.
- That's right, yeah.
- If you're the financial guy, the number of deals you can do has expanded exponentially as the computing power has gone up.
Those same technologies have come at the expense - of expensive physical labor.
- Mm-hmm.
That's the first thing they tried to replace.
ANDAVOLU: One virtue of technology is that it's impersonal.
It's an equal opportunity disruptor.
So, even as automation and AI hit lower-wage jobs, they're coming for higher-wage jobs too.
And the people at this MIT conference are pretty excited about it.
(APPLAUSE) ERIC SCHMIDT: The biggest, I think, focus for a while is gonna be AI acceleration.
Basically, can we use machine learning and AI in fields that have not had it so far? What do we have to do? Let's fund them, let's hire the people, and so forth, to bring those tools and techniques to science.
MCAFEE: Most of us walk around with this implicit rule of thumb in our heads about how we should divide up all the work that needs to get done between human beings and machines.
It says, look, the machines are better than us at arithmetic.
They're better at transaction processing.
They're better at record keeping.
They're better at all this low-level detail stuff than we are.
Awesome.
Give all that work to the machines.
Let the human beings do the judgment jobs, the communication jobs, the pattern-matching jobs.
When I think about the progress that we're seeing with AI and machine learning right now, that progress is calling into question that rule of thumb in a really profound way.
- Right.
- Because what we're seeing over and over is that the computers are better at pattern matching than we are, even the expert human beings, and actually they've got better judgment.
ANDAVOLU: Judgment calls are basically all we do at the office every day.
We take the facts at hand, run them through past experiences, give them a gut check, and then execute.
And these days, we're offloading judgment calls to computers all the time.
Whether it's to take the subway, take the streets, or take the highway, or what to binge-watch next.
And what's behind these decision-making tools is a technology called machine learning.
Some machine learning relies on programmers presetting the rules of the game, like chess.
NEWSWOMAN: As world champion Garry Kasparov walked away from the match, never looking back at the computer that just beat him.
Others utilize what's called neural networks to figure out the rules for themselves, like a baby.
This is called deep learning.
However it's done, programmers use other recent innovations, like natural language processing, image recognition and speech recognition to take the messy world as we know it, and shove it into the machine.
And the machine can process more data, more dimensions of data, more outcomes from the past, more everything, and could even go from helping making judgments in real time to making predictions about the future.
With vast amounts of data available in the legal, medical, and financial world, and the tools to shove them all into the computer, the machines are coming.
Gianna visited a tech company called LawGeex to see whether their new machine-learning software could put lawyers on the chopping block.
We've built an AI engine that was trained after reviewing many, many, many different contracts.
- How many? Wow.
- Tens of thousands, even more.
We decided to focus on automating the review and approval of contracts.
So, simplifying and making that process faster.
The actual analysis that happens on the back end takes a couple of seconds.
The work is actually going through the report that the system generates, and then fixing whatever issue that is found.
So, the system has flagged all of these items for you.
- BECHOR: Exactly.
- TOBONI: Okay.
Some of them are marked red, meaning that they don't match my policy, and some of them are marked green, meaning that they do match my policy.
It gives me all of the guidelines about what the problem means, and also what I need to do in order to fix it, but then I fix the problem.
So, didn't spell-check start doing this in the '90s? - Okay, that's - (BOTH LAUGH) - Like, how is this different? - Yeah.
The way LawGeex works is very, very different.
It actually looks at the text, understands the meaning behind the text.
- Oh, wow.
- Very similar to how a human lawyer would review it, right? The only difference is that with the AI system, it never forgets, it doesn't get tired, and it doesn't need to drink coffee.
- Hey.
Gianna.
- Tunji.
- Nice to meet you.
- How's it going? - You ready for this? - Yeah, I think so.
- Let's do this.
- All right.
I feel like John Henry.
(LAUGHS) So, Tunji, you're going up against this AI system with Noory to spot legal issues in two NDAs.
We're rating you guys on both speed and accuracy.
And because this isn't a commercial for LawGeex, I need you to try your hardest - to beat this computer.
- I'm on it.
All righty.
On your marks, get set, go! (CLICKING) (QUIETLY): So, we snuck a little phrase into this contract.
It says, "In case of any breach by the recipient of any obligations under this agreement, the recipient will pay Vice News a penalty of $15,000 per event.
" So, we're gonna see if Tunji and the AI system can find it.
Poor Tunji's just still working away over here.
So far, it's taken him more than double the time that it took the computer.
And meanwhile, Noory and I just got a coffee.
He's having a meeting right now.
Pretty clear just how much time this technology saves.
Done.
TOBONI: Okay, guys.
- The results are in.
- TUNJI: Okay.
LAWGEEX: 95% on the first NDA.
Tunji, 85%.
Second NDA, 95% for the computer, 83% for Tunji.
You don't seem disappointed.
I wasn't disappointed when the iPhone came out and I could do more things with this new piece of technology.
So, this is exciting to me.
So, Noory, did the computer catch the phrase we put in there about Vice News? Yeah, the computer caught it, and I was able to strike it out.
Tunji, did you catch it? I straight up missed it.
I didn't see it at all.
We take cash, check, whatever you have.
(LAUGHS) Just kidding.
So, McKinsey says that 22% of a lawyer's job, 35% of a paralegal's job, can now, today, be automated.
So then, what happens? These jobs don't go away? People just take longer lunch breaks or take on more clients or what? We're kidding ourselves if we think that things are not going to change.
But similar to pilots with the autopilot, it's not like we don't need pilots anymore.
- Could this technology pass a bar? - No.
Okay, so we still need lawyers to be signing off on these legal documents, even if they're not doing the nitty-gritty of them.
Absolutely.
Defining the policy, serving escalation points, handling negotiation, and then also handling more complex contract categories.
- Mm-hmm.
- You have a new generation of lawyers that are much more tech-savvy.
The ones that can actually leverage technology are the ones that manage to prosper.
ANDAVOLU: Unlike the law, medicine has always been intertwined with technology.
But it's relationship with robotics isn't just graceful, it's miraculous.
TOBONI: What is the most groundbreaking thing about how far we've come with robotic surgery? So, robotic surgery allows us to really treat tissue in a more delicate way (WHIRRING) allow us to be much more efficient in suturing, decreasing bleeding.
We are improving outcomes, shortening hospital stay, and that's why we're using more and more now.
So, the robot is enabling surgeons, and by enabling surgeons is giving access to more patients to minimal invasive surgery.
HORGAN: Okay, we're good to go.
TOBONI: That's great, right? 'Cause one of the huge problems in our health care system is that not enough patients are getting seen when they need to be seen.
Not only that, not every patient get the same care.
You may have great surgeons in one area, but not in other areas with the same experience.
The robot is flattening that.
- We're ready? - MAN: Ready.
HORGAN: I think that the biggest groundbreaking part is the fact that I am operating on a console, and the system is on the patient.
We have all the degrees of articulation you would have in your hand inside the abdomen.
That's revolutionary.
MAN: Geez.
That's close.
HORGAN: Okay! I'm gonna go out and have my espresso.
TOBONI: The way robotic surgery is evolving, do you see any jobs, like the job of a technician or a physician's assistant going away? No, but what we have seen is the opposite is them being much more involved.
Okay, stapler.
ASSISTANT: Loading up the seam guard.
HORGAN: You need a nurse that knows how to move it around.
You need a scrub tech that knows how to load the instruments, how to clean the camera, and how to move the arm, - how to undock.
- TOBONI: Right.
HORGAN: I like it a lot there.
What do you think? - ASSISTANT: Yeah, looks good.
- HORGAN: Only good? - ASSISTANT: Perfect.
Unbelievable.
- HORGAN: Eh? HORGAN: Look at that.
TOBONI: How do you think automation will evolve in this area? The anatomy changes from patient to patient, but with machine learning, the system will be able to recognize different tissues.
- Mm.
- And I'm sure that in the next year, we'll see the system telling you that's cancer, - that's not cancer.
- Wow.
And that's where the benefits are gonna be.
ANDAVOLU: Finance has been cashing in on the benefits of machine learning for years, hiring so many programmers that it's virtually indistinguishable from tech.
Michael Moynihan visited Goldman Sachs to see how they're leveraging AI's predictive capabilities to make more money.
How has your job changed, and how has this industry changed? Over time, there's been a lot of automation.
I think it lends itself naturally to trading, right? If I'm trading Google, if I have to make a decision whether I'm going to buy it or sell it at a certain price, there are hundreds of variables that go into that decision.
And you can code an algorithm to assess all those variables, and when you swing that bat 1,000 times, it's going to do it more efficiently than a human would.
- (BELL RINGING) - So, when you look on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, there aren't a lot of traders down there anymore.
MOYNIHAN: If I went down there today, what would I see? LEVINE: You wouldn't see a lot of people.
You might see them clustered.
MOYNIHAN: Little tiny clusters of people? LEVINE: It'll be a cluster.
MOYNIHAN: So, to be in this industry now, do you need to understand lines of code and what they do and how to produce it? SINEAD STRAIN: I'd say more and more, yes.
If we look at this firm, the number of engineers, technologists that we have here, we're probably the largest division within the firm.
So, you have a math background? Yeah, math and computer science.
- But yours is economics and computer science? - Yes.
MOYNIHAN: But you learned this on the fly? JAMESON SCHRIBER: Yeah, in school or here.
More likely, most of the things were picked up here.
Can I see like, you know, an algorithm, give me some sense of code? PHILLIPS: I'll show you a really simple example.
So, in this case, I'm gonna run a volatility function, essentially an algorithm, and this is showing me now, on a 22-day rolling day basis, what's the volatility level of the S&P 500.
Essentially, we would write code to do that.
So, in this library, this is the volatility function.
It's actually fairly simple.
- But, we - Wait, I'm sorry.
That's fairly simple? This is all documentation.
This is actually a fairly simple algorithm.
It's essentially the code that's generating what you're seeing.
Looks terribly complicated to me.
People like you guys still need to exist to create these things, right? I mean, are they self-sustaining? Or can you write yourself out of a job? - I think we're Yeah.
- I think that would be hard.
MOYNIHAN: Formerly a tech CEO, Marty Chavez is now global co-head of Goldman's securities division.
It strikes me, obviously, that this is an industry that has been on the forefront of using AI, computers, to you know, make big decisions and make a lot of money.
What has that done to the kind of, you know, the job market within even within this company.
It's creating new jobs that couldn't have existed before.
Whole new businesses now exist for us and out in the world that wouldn't have been possible without the technologies that have arisen over the past few years, whether they're machine learning, cloud services, open-source, right? All of those activities go into, for instance, our new consumer lending and deposit taking activity.
You know the counterargument to this, don't you? These are jobs that are being created for smart people, - educated people, rich people.
- Mm-hmm.
Other people out there, who are being made redundant by robots, don't have the skills.
- It's only for a rarefied few.
- Mm.
How do you respond to that? Technological change is disruptive, and there's a lot of pain, and it's something that we must concern ourselves with.
What do you do during the disruption, which has been continuous since the agricultural and industrial Revolutions, and I expect it will continue and will accelerate in all likelihood.
And so, sitting back and complaining about it, sitting back and doing nothing about it, don't seem to be options.
At the same time, I don't think the answer is - to stop the progression of technology.
- Mm.
Haven't seen that work.
(BRAKES SCREECHING) (PA ANNOUNCEMENT): This is a Queens-bound M local train.
The next stop is Myrtle Avenue.
It's worth noting at this point that even if AI tools are better at making decisions, high-level judgment jobs aren't about to be automated away any time soon.
And let's be clear, the people who are most excited about AI's creative potential aren't the ones getting replaced.
So the question becomes, as this disruption accelerates, how do you benefit from it if you're not already rich, or white, or male, or have a spot at the top? Let's put it this way.
It's a lot easier for all of us to get directions, but it's becoming increasingly hard for most people to find their way to a stable career.
And there are not a lot of people whining about it.
There are a lot of people who are racing to catch up.
We visited a class at Per Scholas, a non-profit that skills up people in New York and other cities around the country for free.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER) (CHATTER CONTINUING) STUDENT: I have had just about every terrible job you can imagine.
Fast food, grocery store, stock clerk.
I was a supervisor at a retail store while I was in college.
I was a mechanic.
I worked in the industry for over 10 years.
Then I went to substitute teaching.
Then I went into solar, doing sales.
And then I was a writer, and then I became an English teacher.
Reservation sales agent.
Customer service, marketing.
Now I am here at Per Scholas.
- I should do that in CodePen, right? - Yeah.
The job market is really shifting towards a gig economy.
What do you have that you can work for yourself, or work for someone else? A year ago, I would've told you that I was gonna go to grad school and get a PhD and all that good stuff.
But the reality is when I graduated, and I was looking for jobs, one of the main things that kept popping up was software engineer, coding, tech.
Do you think you would've made the move if this place wasn't free? No.
(LAUGHS) Because just graduated college, so, you know, Sally Mae is still knocking on my door.
- They're knocking on my door right now.
- (KNOCKING ON DOOR) - Is that them? - You see? - (LAUGHTER) - I just said their name, and here they are.
When I put the comma, right? And I put the P, does that mean parent and P? - I'm a mom of three.
- Mm-hmm.
So, my last job, I was working at a busy call center, and I was in a place where I felt you know, undervalued.
Robots was gonna come and take my job, and I would've been without a job, and what would I've been able to pass onto my children? "Hi, how are you doing?" With this, I can give them a skill.
They can be in a better place in the next 10, 20 years, opposed to how long it took for me to figure this out.
Do you think you're at a disadvantage as far as the job market itself? You look at the tech industry, and it's like, other than south Asians, east Asians, it's like, there are not a lot of people of color.
Yeah, I wanted to touch on that.
This is actually why I decided to specifically go into coding because this is one where, at the end of the day, it's just how good your applications are, your codes are.
Growing up, I used to think this was just magic, or like it's done by all the smart kids in California, you know? So, I wanna prove that it can be done by some kid in Queens who just wanted to do it.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER) KELLY RICHARDSON: The perfect world is that we have enough investment that we could grow to meet - both the size of the demand and the size of the supply.
- Mm-hmm.
RICHARDSON: We have more employer partners willing to hire than we have graduates for.
We have more students or applicants - applying to Per Scholas than we have spots for.
- Right.
The constraint to our growth is resources.
The domestic investment in workforce retraining - is so small, and - Mm.
the impact automation is going to have - is not going to be equitable.
- Mm-hmm.
That it's largely people of color, largely women who are in the current low-wage occupations that are gonna be displaced.
There really should be some critical thinking and some action that legislators are taking to invest in programs like this.
For decades, the federal government has repeatedly taken action to fund reskilling.
I am proud today to sign into law the Job Training Partnership Act, a program that looks to the future instead of the past.
Giving all Americans the tools they need to learn for a lifetime is critical to our ability to continue to grow.
So, the bill I'm about to sign will give communities more certainty to invest in job training programs for the long run.
ANDAVOLU: But in today's dollars, that funding has fallen for years.
President Trump campaigned on bringing jobs back to American workers.
A Trump administration will stop the jobs from leaving America.
ANDAVOLU: And he signed an executive order enacting, what he calls, the White House's Pledge to America's Workers, installing his advisor and daughter, Ivanka Trump, to lead the charge.
It's one of my favorite words, reskilling.
Reskilling.
We're calling upon government and the private sector to equip our students and workers with the skills they need to thrive in the modern economy.
(INDISTINCT PA ANNOUNCEMENT) (HORN BEEPS) ANDAVOLU: The Trump administration's strategy on reskilling America's workforce is a lot like its strategy for other big problems America is facing.
Rather than increasing public investment, they prefer to see private industry fill the void.
For the past nine months, the Trump administration has been twisting the arms of CEOs to promise funding for worker education and training.
And so far, more than 200 companies have signed on, with Toyota being the latest.
IVANKA: Toyota signed our pledge to America's workers for 100,000 enhanced career opportunities, apprenticeship, um - new jobs - New development.
New development, workforce training.
I think James was a little bit inspired.
He's just increased that commitment to 200,000, - which is unbelievably exciting.
- (CHEERING) BEVIN: The American worker is great, but the Kentucky worker - is greater still.
- (CHEERING) (APPLAUSE) Does government have a role? Absolutely.
But is it to define what the workforce looks like? No.
If the state were to develop a program for Toyota's workers of the future, it would be a failure.
I'm telling you, straight up.
Toyota knows what Toyota needs.
But the risk, perhaps, is a reliance on a company that isn't owned by you and me, like the government is.
It's owned by shareholders.
Is there a problem with having a private response to a public problem? Who has more of a vested interest in getting this right? The government or the private company? The private company does.
It is in the best interest of Toyota or any other company to train the best quality people, pay them as much as possible, give them the standard of living and the quality of life that makes them wanna come and retire 20, 30, 40 years later from the very same company.
It's in the company's interest until it isn't.
And the thing about a company is, like, we don't elect their executives, but we elect our government officials.
But the idea that we're gonna rely on government and "elected people," to come up with rules for training people for jobs that you will volitionally want to buy the products of is crazy.
ANDAVOLU: Under the pledge, they're promising 200,000 new opportunities.
They're promising to reskill and retrain 200,000 people.
They have the capacity to do that.
What happens if they break the promise? Again, they're gonna do their Can you mandate the government does it? If they don't do it, it's not like we're gonna not reelect their CEO.
They don't do it, they might have some bad publicity You think it won't affect their CEO? Here's what happens.
If they don't do it, if they're not making these investments, there's not a chance that they survive.
(APPLAUSE) (INDISTINCT CHATTER) ANDAVOLU: This is Landon and Tim, two buddies who work together at the Toyota factory.
Tim's just retired, but Landon sees himself working at Toyota for decades.
It must be kind of nice to at least know that at a high level, they're thinking about your jobs, the things that you guys do, the opportunities that you guys have.
Does it strike you that way? TIM SMITH: With Ivanka, I just looked and said okay, it's PR.
Do people want to be reskilled? If their job depended on it, and they know it's coming, I would say sure.
Yes.
It would be depending on your personal circumstances, that could be very hard because if you work, you know, a full shift and you have a family, you may only have an hour or two of free time a day, are you supposed to go drive to a training facility and spend a few hours a day there before you go do your shift, - you work your shift? - Mm-hmm.
I don't think very many people would do that.
Do you guys like your job, or do you like working there? (CHUCKLES) - You go, Timmy.
- (LAUGHING) - I actually love my job.
- Yeah.
Um, you know, because I've always loved working on cars, so my job was pretty much up my alley.
- There are parts of my job that I like.
- Mm-hmm.
It's, you know, you're creating something.
There's no way it could exist without someone putting it together.
(LAUGHING) - Exactly.
- And so - Yeah, I have a wife and two daughters.
- Right.
- I wanna spend as much time with them as I can.
- Mm-hmm.
They're young and they're not gonna stay young for long, and I hate missing the time I miss with them at work already.
I just wanna spend as much time as I can with them.
I wanna retire.
That's the that's the goal.
ANDAVOLU: For people in the workforce today, reskilling boils down to doing more work just to keep up.
To Andrew Yang, a former job creation specialist, and now a long-shot presidential candidate, the spotlight on reskilling hides a larger imbalance between the goals of workers and the goals of their employers.
We are so brainwashed by the market that otherwise intelligent, well-meaning people will legitimately say, "We should retrain the coal miners to be coders.
" - Yep.
- YANG: We are trained to think that we have no value unless the market says that there's a need for what we do.
And so, if coal miners now have zero value, then the thought process is, "Oh, we have to turn them into something that does have value.
What has value? Coders!" And then, 12 years from now, - AI's gonna be able to do basic coding anyway.
- Sure.
So, this is a race we will not win.
The goal posts are gonna move the whole time on us.
What the solutions? What are you proposing? We start issuing a dividend to all American adults, starting at age 18, where everyone gets $1,000 a month.
So, basically a universal basic income.
- Yes.
We've rebranded it the Freedom Dividend - Okay.
because it tests much better with conservatives with the word freedom in it.
(LAUGHING) And it's not a basic income, it's a dividend.
Which is to say the economy is at a surplus, so everyone deserves a piece of the pie.
Yeah, no.
All of us are owners and shareholders of the richest society in the history of the world that can easily afford a dividend of $1,000 per adult.
People need meaning, structure, purpose, fulfillment.
And that is the generational challenge that faces us.
It's not like the Freedom Dividend, giving everyone $1,000 a month, solves that challenge.
It does not.
- But what it does is it - Buys us time? It buys us time and also channels resources into the pursuit of meeting that challenge.
It ends up supercharging our ability to address what we should be doing.
ANDAVOLU: Universal basic income, once a marginal political fantasy, has been embraced by more than a few rabid capitalists in recent years.
We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure that everyone has a cushion to try new ideas.
It's free money for everybody.
Enough to pay for your basic needs: food, shelter, education.
I don't think we're gonna have a choice.
It will come about one day.
- And I think - Out of necessity? Out of necessity, and and I think that cities should experiment.
ANDAVOLU: Michael Moynihan went to one city that already is.
- MOYNIHAN: Mayor.
- Good morning.
Michael Moynihan.
How are you? MOYNIHAN: Stockton's mayor won election at just 26 years old, taking office five years after the city declared bankruptcy.
So, you grew up here? - Born and raised.
- Born and raised? - This is home.
- And you left for a brief period to go to Stanford? Left for four years, I came right back.
MOYNIHAN: With funding from Silicon Valley, he's launched a pilot program that's giving 125 residents $500 a month for 18 months.
Why do Silicon Valley guys like this so much? Can't speak for all of them, but I think a lot of them see how detrimental it would be to society if there's a mass number of people who are automated without any way to make a means for themselves, without any way to provide for themselves.
I mean, is it people in tech kind of paying indulgences, and saying, "Hey, we're kind of screwing this up.
We feel bad about it.
Here's some money"? I know some people are talking about robot taxes and things of that sort, and I I'm in very much agreement with that.
That they have a responsibility to society.
It's voluntary now, but it might be at the point of a gun later.
Yeah, voluntary to start and pilot, but absolutely I think to scale it, it's not gonna be about generosity.
It's gonna be a matter of policy.
MOYNIHAN: The criticism that most people get for UBI type experiments is that, all right, you're just giving people money, a handout, etc.
That's a start, but what's the long-term goal for jobs in Stockton? The hypothesis we're working on is that folks have their basic needs met, and then create the workforce of the future.
Primarily starting with the kids in our schools now, but also with the adults, to give them opportunities for retraining, reskilling, but also supporting people in their entrepreneurial pursuits.
Folks with a lot of potential but historically folks who haven't been seen as important enough for investment or important enough for government to really partner with, so that's what makes people excited about the work we're doing in Stockton.
So yeah, this is the downtown marina.
Watch your step.
MOYNIHAN: There was basically nothing here when you were a kid, when you were five, six years old.
TUBBS: I never really came out here till I came back for city council.
- Yeah.
- This wasn't part of my Stockton, but I think for me, this spot's so important 'cause it represents real potential.
- There's not many cities that have this.
- Yeah.
When we talk about the future of work, we're talking about how do we ensure that those left behind today aren't further left behind tomorrow, and that's my biggest fear.
The folks who are making the least now are the most likely to be automated out of jobs and making anything.
So for me, a basic income isn't even about the future of work.
It's about getting our foundation set in the present, so that when the future work happens, we have a firm foundation on which we can pivot and figure out what we can do with and for people.
ANDAVOLU: What's attractive about UBI is its simplicity.
But that's also what makes it vulnerable to critique.
DARON ACEMOGLU: I don't think these Utopian ideas of universal basic income, robots do all the production and then everybody stays at home with a decent income and plays video games.
I think that's a very dystopic future, and it won't work, and I think it will lead to a huge amount of discontent.
We really have no option but create jobs for the future.
Politicians have to start engaging these issues to figure out what's politically feasible.
It's gonna trigger fundamental debates about things like a universal basic income that everybody ought to get money and the question is, okay, where's that money gonna come from? ANDAVOLU: According to a progressive think tank's analysis, a UBI program giving every American $10,000 a year would cost the government more than $3 trillion annually.
The entire 2018 federal budget was just over $4 trillion.
Universal basic income isn't the only policy being floated to shore up the workforce's shaky financial foundation, whether it's using federal funds to guarantee jobs for anyone who wants one, giving tax breaks to companies to create more jobs, or strong-arming companies to keep their factories open.
What all these policies and strategies tell us is that the broad consensus is that right now PROTESTERS: We say fight back! ANDAVOLU: things aren't working.
BRYNJOLFSSON: We've designed a system where, as the technology creates more wealth, some people, bizarrely, are made worse off.
We have to update and reinvent our system so that this explosion of wealth and productivity benefits not just the few, but the many.
HAASS: This challenge of new technology is not taking place in a vacuum.
This country's already divided.
It's divided geographically.
It's divided culturally, politically.
We've gotta be prepared for the fact that it could actually take the social differences we already have, and make it worse.
There's gotta be a sense of urgency here.
A higher level of disconnection, alienation, more declines in social capital, more groups of people left behind, more geographic areas left behind.
- PROTESTER: What do we want? - ALL: Justice! - PROTESTER: When do we want it? - ALL: Now! MCAFEE: This is not a recipe for a stable, prosperous, happy society.
My worry is not that the robots will take all the jobs.
My worry is that more people will be left behind and will feel left behind by what's going on.
STIGLITZ: If we continue in the way we've run our economy for the last 40 years, it will be disastrous.
So, when you talk about the future of work, we're kind of talking about the future of the whole system? That's right.
I mean, you cannot have a prosperous economy without prosperous workers.
Voltaire said that work saves us from three great evils.
Boredom, vice, and need.
HAASS: So much of our identities are tied up with our jobs.
People ask you how you doing, who you are, what you do, and that's essential to our sense of self.
If we have millions, or tens of millions, of chronically, long-term unemployed, what's gonna become of those people? It's not simply a question of how are they going to support themselves.
What are they gonna do? (HORN HONKS) (ENGINE RUMBLING) (DRILL WHIRRING) This is your NOx sensor drift.
- One box.
- Conversion efficiency.
Yep.
One box gone.
(RATTLING) You know, someone might say robots are coming.
Might as well hang up the keys now.
Does that go through your head? It's gonna happen.
- It's gonna happen, I mean - What's gonna happen? With these vehicles driving by themselves.
Change is good.
Some change ain't good, you know? I mean, that's gonna be a lot of people out of work, and ANDAVOLU: What do you think you're gonna do? There's gonna be a crash.
I think there's gonna be a lot of outrage.
- Riots more or less, you know what I mean? - Sure.
'Cause they're gonna fight to try to keep their job.
I mean, would I do it? Yeah, I would do it.
It's gonna be a chain reaction.
In reality, you gotta look at the economy and what is it gonna do to the economy.
What is it gonna do to the American people? Not just the industry, I mean to to the world.
What's gonna happen you got the whole world pissed off? (HAMMERING, CLATTER) But me, I wanna die in a truck.
- Really? (LAUGHS) - I'm gonna die in a truck, brother.
I've told all my friends, I've told my family.
- That's when I retire is when I die in a truck.
- Yeah.
I mean, I been doing it for too long.
It's in the blood.