Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Robots Will Steal Your Job, but That's OK: Federico Pistono at TEDxVienna

https://youtu.be/kYIfeZcXA9U

Published on Dec 8, 2012

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Published on Dec 8, 2012 http://www.tedxvienna.at/ http://www.facebook.com/tedxvienna

Federico Pistono is an author, social entrepreneur, scientific educator, activist, blogger, and aspiring filmmaker. He is author of the book Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and be Happy, which explores the impact that technological advances have on our lives, what it means to be happy, and provides suggestions on how to avoid a systemic collapse. He is Co-Founder of WiFli, a benefit corporation that seeks to provide universal access to information and knowledge via the Internet, for every person on the planet, focusing on the disenfranchised in emerging economies. He has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Verona, he completed the Machine Learning online course at Stanford, and the Graduate Studies Program at Singularity University, NASA Ames Research Center. Federico is an award winning blogger/journalist and Italian Ambassador of Singularity University (having co-founded Axelera). He started social movements and non-profits focused on human rights, anti-corruption, environmental sustainability, and innovation for positive social change through exponential technologies. http://www.federicopistono.org/

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Transcript

English (Automatic Captions) 0:00yeah 0:04ok 0:13yeah 0:14hello everyone hi welcome so how are you doing today good 0:19yeah it's a wonderful day isn't it well let me fix that for you 0:24I'll talk about jobs can have please a quick show of hands raise your hand if 0:31you either work or if you know somebody close to you who works in any of these 0:35areas 0:35how about driving that's trucks delivery buses taxes and you think raise your 0:40hand 0:41i have about jennifer's house cleaning cashier sir or no one no one knows 0:50anyone who works ok good secretaries real estate accounting retail 0:55manufacturing journalism 0:57okay i'd say about seventy percent of your good good 1:03robots will steal your job laughter really kill contempt 1:08this is always greeted by the establishment of economist about four 1:11years ago when i first started thinking about these issues at the time I helped 1:15start an organization called The Zeitgeist movement and we were thinking 1:18of ways on how to build a better society 1:21now at the time nobody took it seriously but things have changed now 1:26what changed well very few people laughing 2009 1:31Marty for comes out we light in the tunnel where he paints a picture of an 1:35increasingly automated economy 1:37lots of jobs have been replaced by machines and very few new jobs have been 1:41created 2011 to MIT economy state have pretty much the same thesis so let's 1:47look at the evidence for this shall we 1:49kodak that was undisputed giant of the photography industry they had a ninety 1:54percent market share in the u.s. in 1976 by the year nineteen eighty-four they 1:58were employing a hundred forty five thousand people and in 2012 2:02they have a net worth of negative billion dollars when they went bankrupt 2:06why because they failed to predict the importance of exponential trends when it 2:11comes to technology 2:12on the other hand instagram a digital photography company 2:16the same year 2012 they had 13 employees and there were still two facebook for a 2:22billion dollars 2:24now this is kind of ironic because kodak pioneer digital for 2:27photography actually invented the first digital camera when they came out in 2:311975 with the point 0 1 megapixel digital camera but they thought it was a 2:36toy and didn't pay attention so that's what happens with Exponential's we don't 2:41pay attention 2:42so let's play a little game with you let's be a more interactive school three 2:45steps 2:46now imagine i take three steps linear thats 1 2 3 where do i get if i get to 2:5130 about the end of the stage right there okay how about if I take 36 of 2:57exponentially 248 16 where do I get 3:03we're outside actually I get to the moon 3:09by the way this is not to scale the more as much farther away and back and i 3:15still have enough steps to circle the Earth eight times over 3:20that's what exponential means how do i noticed i just asked the Wolfram Alpha 3:24now foxconn the world's largest manufacturer of electronic components 3:29they make pretty much anything so if you've got something on your lap or on 3:33your pocket that makes noises and you know it's blinking and bright and 3:38probably tweeting right now 3:40they made it not just Apple they make anything it's a multinational 3:43corporation worth a hundred billion dollars which employs 1.2 million people 3:48what are they doing there automating of course in fact they're about to deploy 3:52an army of 1 million robots to cut rising labor expenses and improve 3:56efficiency cannon is doing the same going fully automated very soon lots of 4:01other companies are following 4:02now what if walmart follows biggest multinational corporation in the world 4:07employees 2.1 million people 4:10what if they automate well they can't write they don't have the technology to 4:14that we most certainly do 4:16amazon knows this very well so this is a graph may by a fellow author Andrew 4:24McAfee from MIT we pretty much agree on the analysis as you can as you can see 4:29profits investments are all going up and up and up for corporate investments and 4:34multinational corporations but 4:36the red line which is the employment to population ratio is going down and down 4:40and down and we both agree that when it comes to automation 4:45we ain't seen nothing yet this is the google autonomous car 4:51you know the future is the car that drives itself without a human driver 4:56yeah by the way it's as cool as it sounds I was inside this is me at NASA 5:04few months ago and it's a pretty neat piece of technology they have all sorts 5:08of sensors and lasers and gps and machine learning algorithms drives 5:12itself 5:13it's safer better than any human driver doesn't get tired for every street will 5:16never crashes never breaks any rule whatsoever 5:20basically it's just works and it's better then humans problem is 3.6 5:27million people in the united states alone work driving 5:32I mean the drive for a living that's two-point-six percent of the population 5:36australia and europe they have very similar numbers 5:40I think these people might be affected by this counter to this kind of 5:43technology 5:44don't you so are counting retail manufacturing translations 5:50no one is safe journalism as the wall structure 5:54no journal puts it software is eating the world 5:57so what do we do - we despair 6:02how about putting taxes and technology or impose more regulation or maybe do 6:10some education reforms basically find any clever ways to get everyone a damn 6:14job 6:16that's what these guys are proposing that's what the presidential campaign is 6:19all about and it sounds reasonable enough 6:21after all fit famously said by voltaire is the sentence work saves us from three 6:27great evils boredom vice and need 6:31he said that in 1759 but is that really the case today in this society 6:38I think we might be missing a big opportunity 6:41it was Confucius who said that if you choose a job you love you never have to 6:47work 6:47a day in your life brilliant I agree problem getting a job you love one that 6:56is fulfilling and that allows you to follow your moral code today 7:00I don't know about you but it's pretty damn hard 7:03in fact according to what shift index as much as eighty percent of the people 7:08hate their job 7:10eighty percent that's four out of five spending most of their useful life time 7:15doing something they don't particularly enjoy now in 2012 with this kind of 7:22technology at our fingertips guys but doesn't that make your little mad little 7:31bit and so we are in a card of a work paradox because we work long and hard 7:38hours on jobs we hate to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't 7:43like 7:44genius 7:51yeah 7:52and so we have to adjust what the economy allows us to perform and the sad 7:56reality is that most jobs 7:58unfortunately on either fulfilling no did they create any value for society 8:02and i don't think i have to name which jobs i think you know which ones 8:07by the way they're going to be automated very soon and I suspect within our 8:11lifetime 8:12so we're screwed that's the end of my talk by now I think there is light in 8:19the tunnel because I spent years researching this problem and I think I 8:23might have cracked it 8:25I might have discovered what the purpose of life is 8:31and i'm going to give it to you right now 8:36TEDx bien would you like to know ok here it goes 8:42the purpose of life is 8:48to have robots steal your job 8:51all right let's be serious I suppose I don't know my purpose let alone your 8:56purpose or that of anyone else but i'm pretty sure what the purpose of life is 9:00not 9:01and the purpose of like cannot be to work produce and consume more and more 9:06and more 9:07so here's a radical idea the goal of the future is full 9:13unemployment so we can play 9:17that's why we have to destroy the present political economic system 9:21this is not light statement consider it comes from legendary author and futurist 9:25part of sick like you see I think we must do our way with the absolutely 9:29spacious notion that everybody has to earn a living 9:33it is a fact today the one in 10,000 can create the technological breakthrough 9:38capable of supporting all the rest 9:40and so the youth of today absolutely right and recognizing this nonsense of 9:44earning a living is that we keep inventing new jobs because of this false 9:49idea that everyone has to be employed at some kind of drudgery or another because 9:55according to the William illusion theory they must justify their right to exist 10:00and so we have inspector of the inspectors of inspectors and people 10:06making instruments for inspectors to respect inspectors the true business of 10:11people should be to go back to school and think about what ever they were 10:16thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a 10:20living 10:20I know what you're thinking 10:23these are naive words words of a young mind oblivious to the intricate and 10:29complex fabric of society and economic system that might be true 10:35good thing they're not my words though but that of genius future is back mr. 10:38full interview 1970 by New York magazine 10:41now okay this is all very nice but look we gotta face reality okay tomorrow 10:46gotta go to work 10:49well tomorrow sunday but on Monday we gotta go to work 10:53we buy food pay the rent pay the bills look II can keep can just you know leave 10:58everything 10:59so how do you solve this problem now as I said I spent years researching this 11:03problem 11:04so here's the short answer there is no short answer 11:08that's why i wrote a book to explain this and i spent the last years 11:16traveling some 20 countries 11:18I went to NASA I studied at singularity University and I spoke with some of the 11:23greatest minds on this planet to tackle this problem as it turns out you need a 11:29plan and I just any plan you need a multi-year plan that involves lots of 11:33people and everyone has a different plan 11:35so it's pretty complicated and kind of short in time and they told me to keep 11:41it simple the dead guys so i made a picture of two possible futures to the 11:47left 11:48we've got exponential technologies a limited resources i think that's a fair 11:53assumption to make 11:55we add the need for growth and labor for income that's the basis of every society 12:02today to me in a few years that equals to mass unemployment runaway climate 12:07change resource depletion starvation word by violence and civil and rests not 12:13too nice to the right 12:16we still have exponential technologies and limited resources we can't really 12:19change that unless we obliterate the human race or break the laws of physics 12:23but we can change is our attitude 12:26our goals and our purpose open source 12:31DIY innovator self-sustaining communities I think this will redefine 12:35the idea of work by letting go of the idea of infinite growth and labor for 12:40income we can use our ingenuity 12:43instead of finding your clever ways to get everyone a new job may be useless 12:47we can use the same ingenuity to work less have more free time have more 12:54fulfilling lives restore global resource balance and generally have a more 12:59resilient system so 13:02uh-huh 13:06you sir are a techno utopian you believe technology solves everything that's what 13:11everyone tells me to the contrary I believe technologies male facilitator of 13:17your intention 13:18look back to the picture if you subscribe to the idea that we have 13:21infinite needs that require an infinite amount of work and infinite growth to be 13:25satisfied which by the way is impossible exponential technology will help you get 13:30there exponentially faster to these awful results 13:34ok but we've been living like this for thousands of years are we supposed to 13:37just give that up 13:39isn't that against human nature well we had slavery for thousands of years 13:47we gave that up I believe we are at the dawn of a new civilization but we can 13:55only evolve as a society if we are ready to accept the some of the assumptions 13:58that we most old year we have to let go of them 14:02technology was never meant to increase productivity and growth 14:06so we can work longer hours anywhere anytime on any device that's insanity 14:12it was meant to make our lives better 14:15and by the way this isn't anything new people have been talking about this for 14:20ages 14:21Aristotle 2,300 years ago said exactly the same thing 14:25so why is that hasn't happened in two thousand three hundred years 14:28well I believe you need three conditions satisfied in order to achieve massive 14:34social change 14:36you need the vision the resources and the technology to fulfill your dreams 14:40so in the past we had the vision and the resources but we didn't have the 14:45technology and now we have the resources for a little more still 14:50and we certainly have the technology but we've lost our way 14:54I believe you're fighting a lost battle 14:58we can't win against nature and its limited resources we depend on nature 15:02and we certainly can't win against robots and AI and their exponentially 15:07increasing intelligence but 15:10you can win with them 15:13so ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters comrades and Friends 15:18we have many challenges ahead of us as a species among which runaway climate 15:24change 15:25increasing inequality massive unemployment and I believe we can solve 15:28all of these challenges and more if we change our vision our perspective our 15:34focus what drives our lives and so I wrote this book which is called robots 15:40will steal your job but that's okay 15:43and it can be more than ok can be marvelous 15:49I believe every human being is an invaluable masterpiece from the moment 15:52they're born and we as a species we are meant for great things greater than we 15:59can even conceive right now with our limited brains and compulsory work for 16:06the sake of survival is an obstacle that prevents us from achieving these goals 16:10and so since then I started giving speeches and talks around the world and 16:17i co-founded a benefit corporation with other three extraordinary individuals 16:21from NASA and singularity university that i hope will inspire people to do 16:26just that to make this world a reality to express their full cognitive and 16:32intellectual potential and then I look back to my past and I realized I'm 26 16:39years old almost 27 16:42I'm getting old 16:47and then I look at the future and I say this and I would really love to create a 16:57future that I can be proud of 17:00to create a future where one day my kids will growing 17:06thank you very much