State of America: Part Two Talking Business


State of America: Part Two

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out the attack in Nice, one of its soldiers. Those are the latest

:00:00.:00:00.

headlines. Yotel in midtown Manhattan has a

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robot porter. I don't have to carry

:00:00.:00:09.

my bag and their's no What about the person who used

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to carry out this task? Are we inventing ourselves

:00:19.:00:22.

out of jobs? In this week's Talking Business,

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we examine the rapid rise of automation and what it means

:00:25.:00:26.

for the country's We are talking revolution here this

:00:27.:00:28.

week, one that is driven by the rise In the 1960s, this is how

:00:29.:00:58.

robots were dreamt about. As you can see from this

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historic BBC footage. Introducing Mabel,

:01:03.:01:11.

the robot housemaid. An outdated vision of technology

:01:12.:01:20.

and what it could do. By the 80s, automation had become

:01:21.:01:28.

standard in many factories and Now, machines are able to teach

:01:29.:01:31.

themselves and learn What about the workers whose jobs

:01:32.:01:39.

they're going to be doing? Today's transformation

:01:40.:01:49.

has been described by the World Economic Forum

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as the fourth industrial revolution. According to their research,

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over 5 million jobs globally will be lost by 2020, due to genetics,

:01:55.:01:57.

artificial intelligence, robotics and other

:01:58.:01:59.

technological change. Two thirds of the projected

:02:00.:02:00.

losses are expected to be As smart machines take

:02:01.:02:03.

over for routine tasks. Another study claims that nearly

:02:04.:02:11.

half of US jobs could be replaced by machines over

:02:12.:02:14.

the next two decades. Today we are asking,

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"Are machines about to take over?" What is the future of manufacturing

:02:21.:02:22.

and manufacturing employment? More broadly, can machines

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and humans coexist? To discuss this, I am joined

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by Eric Verhoogen, associate professor at Columbia University

:02:32.:02:34.

and international growth centre. Julia Kirby, you are co-author

:02:35.:02:38.

of a book, beyond automation. Last but not least, Matthew Putman,

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chief executive of nano tropics, maker of industrial microscopes used

:02:43.:02:50.

by the world's leading What is the future of

:02:51.:02:52.

manufacturing, certainly as it We are at an incredible time,

:02:53.:03:01.

I think, in manufacturing. If you look back at all the previous

:03:02.:03:07.

industrial revolutions, we have seen a fear of human

:03:08.:03:10.

jobs being replaced. The way this next industrial

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revolution looks, and the way factories are looking,

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mundane tasks, not just by factory workers, but even by engineers

:03:19.:03:24.

who have been doing a consider to be That is looked at as a bad thing

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in some ways but it ends up making better products,

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it makes the world or abundant place and frees humans

:03:44.:03:45.

to be more creative. When I think about manufacturing

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traditionally, Julia, Obviously, we have seen

:03:48.:03:49.

changes in the 80s. We saw from the video just there,

:03:50.:03:52.

robotic arms on a car What do you think

:03:53.:03:55.

the factory line looks People think of robotics

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as, what is new here? We've had robotics in automatic

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manufacturing, lots of manufacturing But it is the intelligence,

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the artificial intelligence that is being added to the robotics

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now that is really changing One thing is the layout

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of the assembly line. It used to be that the robot

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was a huge inflexible thing. It was actually dangerous

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to work around. So you had these massive

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machines caged off. What you have got now with this

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machine intelligence built into them is this incredible flexibility and,

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it is due to advances in machine So, they are now capable of doing

:04:36.:04:44.

different things and they can The line itself looks

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very different now. The type of work that can be

:04:53.:05:00.

given over to the robots I see you nodding your

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head there, Eric. It is very impressive the pace at

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which robotics is advancing and the level of skill that can now be

:05:19.:05:23.

replaced by machine. With a note of scepticism when many tasks cannot be

:05:24.:05:28.

replaced by machines. Anything that requires creativity. The machine has

:05:29.:05:34.

to be given parameters within which to operate. Setting parameters is

:05:35.:05:37.

something we still need humans to do. Much as we will get more and

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more machines and less mundane work can be done by people, we will still

:05:43.:05:45.

need people to programme the machines and also to approach the

:05:46.:05:49.

problems and figure out what is a smart way to get machines operating.

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We lived, for the last 50 years, in a time when we were programming

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everything. We were setting parameters across a factory. The

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difference now, we are looking how to optimise. We are now no longer

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having people tuning machines. We're having machines learn themselves in

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order to optimise make a better product than even a human can do on

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their own. Humans will study the ones raising new questions. The

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machines will come up with better and better answers. You're probably

:06:26.:06:29.

toast if you try to come up with a better answer than the machine for a

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well-defined problem or a codifying process. You are not beat it. The

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question of, what is next? Customers are still human. It takes one to

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know one, to think about, what is the next thing our business should

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be creating to solve human problems? There is an anxiety that people

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feel, will my job be replaced by a machine? The question I would ask

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is, how important is innovation of automation, technological change to

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America's manufacturing competitiveness if you look

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globally? The productivity numbers notwithstanding, I think it is very

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clear that these machines are incredible productivity boosters.

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There are two ways to get productivity. You can either put out

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the same output, exactly what you are doing yesterday but have fewer

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people with fewer labour hours, or you can use the same labour hours

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and up output. Probably by taking it into more creative territory, more

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customised territory than the manifest that -- the manufacturing

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space. Productivity is why companies introduce these machines. One would

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hope they would see their growth oriented option is to do more by

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bringing machines into augment human strength instead of automate them

:08:02.:08:09.

out of a job. The great thing we have learned over time as people

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like to make new things. I do not think we will enter a situation

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where machines will do so much we will have no new ideas. I think this

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allows us to have new ideas. It allows people to be people. We are

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seeing that happen. A lot of innovation actually comes from human

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desire to have that innovation. You need the next best cell phone. We

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need a new technology that adds to abundance, less expensive. That

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human ambition will continue to drive things, even as machines come

:08:46.:08:53.

faster. -- smarter. Is the pace of innovation slowing customer when you

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think back to vast new changes like the advent of electricity and the

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arrival of the internet? Do you see the pace of innovation slowing?

:09:02.:09:08.

There has been some stagnation or focus on things you do not consider

:09:09.:09:13.

hard Tech in the sense of now we are electrifying Manhattan within three

:09:14.:09:18.

years of the light bulb. I think that is more about human focus and

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the values we have as a society. It is not actually a stagnation of

:09:26.:09:28.

technology. We have the ability to do these new things that we have the

:09:29.:09:34.

ability to go to Mars. We have the ability to have self driving cars

:09:35.:09:39.

that is not a stagnation of research or ability, it is of human

:09:40.:09:43.

imagination that hopefully something like robotics and artificial

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intelligence will free us to do. Thank you all for now. Coming up

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later in the programme, will the factor of the future have any new

:09:54.:09:56.

employees and what does it mean for us? Why life of leisure or comedy?

:09:57.:10:01.

First, our comedy consultant offers his distinct take on the next

:10:02.:10:07.

generation of manufacturing on this week's talking point. I love science

:10:08.:10:15.

fiction. Anything involving a bit of prognostication about an imagined

:10:16.:10:18.

world in the future. It turns out now that the future is becoming the

:10:19.:10:21.

present a lot quicker than it used to in the past, if you know what I

:10:22.:10:28.

mean. For some insight into how tomorrow will look, I have come to

:10:29.:10:37.

the labs in Dublin. It is an after-school coding club which has

:10:38.:10:43.

grown into a global movement. They hold a coolest projects competition.

:10:44.:10:49.

This year, it was won by an 11-year-old girl who designed a

:10:50.:10:55.

robot to solve a Rubik 's cube. I do not need a robot to do that, I have

:10:56.:10:58.

the rest my life in order to work one out. We want to create a

:10:59.:11:03.

generation of children who are active participants in this world.

:11:04.:11:08.

We have had robotics printers which print Braille, a huge amount of

:11:09.:11:13.

projects which are really inspiring. Auto journalist is something that

:11:14.:11:20.

helps journalists and interviewees. Interviewees can use a camera or

:11:21.:11:23.

microphone to record themselves answering a journalist. So you need

:11:24.:11:28.

to get the video saving now and then and then I could put it out for

:11:29.:11:33.

testing. Children are not scared, they are fearless. They approach Rob

:11:34.:11:37.

is without the trepidation and adult might have. You could pay if you

:11:38.:11:45.

scan your face with your finger or something instead of using credit

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cards. If I could make that, it would be pretty cool. There is

:11:49.:11:55.

nothing like talking to a 13-year-old app developer to show

:11:56.:11:58.

you how much you wasted your teenage years. What is the future of

:11:59.:12:02.

manufacturing in this robotic world? I will talk to a man who is

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specialising in research on how to make the factory more like a human

:12:06.:12:10.

brain. Like in the human brain, if you become sick or sad, you might be

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a little less productive. These things can happen as we move towards

:12:17.:12:19.

these wireless factories where things are interacting with one

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another. That comes to the point of needing to transform our job is to

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look after the factories, rather than simply use the factories. We

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might have factory doctors that if you will, that fix up factories

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after they become sick, by retuning their coordination and interaction

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amongst individual parts. There is a massive transformation of jobs from

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more labour oriented tasks to more service oriented tasks, or jobs like

:12:49.:12:52.

mine or yours, where people can do things now with computers they could

:12:53.:12:58.

not do before. It is great to be playing with a Rubik 's cube again

:12:59.:13:01.

after all this time put up the discomfort into no you never learn

:13:02.:13:06.

how to solve on because a robot will do the job for you. We are entering

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a brave new world of automatic manufacturing. It is the next

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generation that is already designing our futures. You can see a lot more

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of those short films on the website. Today we have been talking about how

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this is not your grandfather or even your father's factory line but I

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wanted to talk a bit more about this fear that people have that somehow

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in the future, jobs will be replaced by technology. How realistic a fear

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is that? Eric, if I could start with you. Some jobs are rendered obsolete

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by technology. Once the car was introduced, there are fewer travel

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agents found when I was a kid. Economies typically are able to

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grow. Those people who are freed up by technology and economies grow.

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Overall the number of jobs continues to grow. We should not have a sense

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that their eyes fixed number of jobs. If the machine takes a job,

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there is one less for a human foot it has not been the case there have

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been big declines in employment because of automation or

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technological change. Artificial intelligence, you talked about that

:14:25.:14:28.

short while ago. At what point do they become smarter than us? Smarter

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is a strange thing to define. There is general artificial intelligence.

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Something specific for optimising a factory. We want the machine to be

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smarter than us at doing things humans are not particularly good at.

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Visualising and looking over huge amounts of data and being able to

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determine. That will happen very quickly and is already happening.

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Humans should be allowed to be creative and smart, what humans are

:14:59.:15:03.

best at. As long as we are continuing to invent, we need not

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worry about AI being smarter than us in that regard. We should embrace

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that intelligence. About the figures from the World Economic Forum, they

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talk about a future in which many white-collar jobs can be done by

:15:24.:15:29.

smart machines. It goes back to this idea that people will always find a

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way to make something new. As long as they know that that possibility

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exists to make something new and are supported to do that. You know, if

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you go back to the very first industrial revolution quickly could

:15:46.:15:48.

have had numbers about farm jobs that have been replaced. That number

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alone does not tell the. . The full story is told by what humans can

:15:54.:16:00.

invent next. The numbers you hear like 47 cents of jobs are at risk by

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artificial intelligence, they sort of miss the point that jobs really

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do not get replaced by robots or artificial intelligence. Every job

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is an amalgam of tasks. For an office worker, a knowledge worker,

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perhaps 20% of your work in a day is something that follows very regular

:16:24.:16:28.

rules. You probably consider it the most mundane part of your job, you

:16:29.:16:32.

are probably really happy to off-load it. But the net effect of

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that, of course, is that now, five of you can do, do the maths, eight

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if you can do the work of ten. We see attrition and those jobs are not

:16:49.:16:56.

replaced. But, what places can do is encourage people to figure out what

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new tasks to make part of their job because they are providing a higher

:17:02.:17:05.

quality service, or a more customised service and the more

:17:06.:17:10.

empathetic interface to clients and whatever it is they can take on. You

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need not see that job loss. That is why we have not already seen the

:17:17.:17:25.

much feared job loss. We do have to realise there are winners and losers

:17:26.:17:29.

from technological change. It is important... Not necessarily the

:17:30.:17:34.

task of the firm but the task of society to provide insurance for

:17:35.:17:38.

those who are losers. We want people to invest in skills which may become

:17:39.:17:41.

obsolete but make it easier for them to move to something as if they lose

:17:42.:17:45.

their jobs and be retrained. Otherwise all the cost of this

:17:46.:17:50.

innovation or automation or technological change is falling on

:17:51.:17:55.

workers themselves. You pick up on a good point. Former US Treasury

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Secretary Larry Summers has raised concerns about this in the UK, Andy

:17:59.:18:03.

how they achieve economist at the Bank of England has said, what

:18:04.:18:07.

happens to those disproportionately affected by technology? Who should

:18:08.:18:12.

come up with policies to try to address the problems or issues which

:18:13.:18:20.

arise out of technological change? Clearly, there are social issues.

:18:21.:18:24.

What people do not appreciate about the industrial revolution, we think

:18:25.:18:29.

of it as this tech catalysed event. This new technology came in and

:18:30.:18:35.

everything changed. But everything worked out well in the end for the

:18:36.:18:39.

workers. We tend to forget that there were a lot of new laws that

:18:40.:18:44.

were made. There were a lot of new Nets put into place. There was a lot

:18:45.:18:49.

of social innovations that had to go along with the technological

:18:50.:18:52.

innovation for this all to work out in the end. Matthew, when you are

:18:53.:18:57.

developing products and thinking about what your clients might be

:18:58.:19:01.

interested in, is this something you think about at all? Talk me through

:19:02.:19:07.

the thought process. I think about that all the time. With user

:19:08.:19:13.

interfaces, I think that we have become accustomed to thinking of

:19:14.:19:18.

either engineering work or more manual tasks in a factory is being

:19:19.:19:23.

miserable. In many cases they are. So, there are things going on and

:19:24.:19:26.

everything from virtual reality to gesture control and gaming back can

:19:27.:19:32.

actually be applied to the creative jobs that will be available in a

:19:33.:19:38.

factory. I think about these all the time. Even when they are not yet

:19:39.:19:44.

deployed quickly try to think about what the factory will look like and

:19:45.:19:48.

that is a place for innovation and creativity. We have been focusing on

:19:49.:19:54.

the fear side of it, what happens when our jobs are done by machines

:19:55.:19:59.

and robots. Some form of technology. What should we be thinking about as

:20:00.:20:07.

the jobs of the future? I think we should be thinking... When you talk

:20:08.:20:11.

about leisure, people will always want to work, regardless. That work

:20:12.:20:15.

need not be drudgery. The jobs of the future may be a lot more like

:20:16.:20:24.

either gaming, training, teaching, and doing those things within a

:20:25.:20:30.

factory or creative environment that we do not currently associate with

:20:31.:20:35.

manufacturing. There will be a lot of jobs attributed to the rise of

:20:36.:20:40.

machines that now the machines are coming into a workplace, there are

:20:41.:20:45.

different ways you can step aside. That seems a little dismissive but

:20:46.:20:53.

you can make room by taking on some tasks around them. Some of them will

:20:54.:20:57.

have to do with figuring out where the machine should be working and

:20:58.:21:00.

where the humans should be working and sorting out what the process

:21:01.:21:07.

should be. Some of it will be simply checking the machines work. At what

:21:08.:21:10.

point does it need to have its logic changed? We are training machines

:21:11.:21:16.

now. We still need people to build and train machines and we will have

:21:17.:21:20.

the next generation of machines to train. There are also a lot of jobs

:21:21.:21:26.

that will be about, we are just here to tend the machines or by the

:21:27.:21:30.

machines that there are still going to be these unique human strength

:21:31.:21:34.

that can we now have the ability, and I think this is your point, to

:21:35.:21:38.

double down on because we not having so much of our time and our

:21:39.:21:44.

cognitive capacity drained by these computational tasks that are really

:21:45.:21:48.

hard humans. We will get to work on the stuff we are actually good at.

:21:49.:21:54.

As the machines get more sophisticated, you need a higher

:21:55.:21:58.

level of education to look after them, manage them and programme

:21:59.:22:04.

them. I do not think that is true. We move away from a world where we

:22:05.:22:07.

are talking about programming and move towards much more of a world

:22:08.:22:12.

that is like artistic innovation. I very much agree with that. You are

:22:13.:22:17.

right that we would be making a mistake in saying we need to channel

:22:18.:22:21.

everyone through stem education as though we're actually going to race

:22:22.:22:25.

the machines and actually some of us will win. That is a race we should

:22:26.:22:34.

not be running. Instead we should be educating people in the humanities,

:22:35.:22:38.

I guess. That is for the humans. There we will have to leave it.

:22:39.:22:45.

We're out of time. Thanks to all my guests. For now, from New York, it

:22:46.:22:47.

is goodbye. It is a summer which has been

:22:48.:23:08.

lacking in 30 Celsius heat or above. Not everyone pulls back up of tea.

:23:09.:23:10.

Tuesday

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