Latest / Trumponomics / Episode 8: How to Keep a Robot from Stealing Your Job
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome back to Bloomberg Benchmark. It is October
- 0:03Speaker 1: twenty two, Wednesday. Oh God, why are dates so hard
- 0:07Speaker 1: for me? I mean, would never make that mistake. Hi,
- 0:16Speaker 1: and welcome back to Bloomberg Benchmark, a podcast about the
- 0:19Speaker 1: global economy. It is Thursday, October twenty two. I'm Tori Stillwell,
- 0:24Speaker 1: a US economics reporter in d C with Bloomberg News.
- 0:27Speaker 1: I am with my colleagues and go hosts. Dan Moss,
- 0:30Speaker 1: our executive editor for International Economics who just landed in Ottawa,
- 0:34Speaker 1: and Akiedo, our editor for Benchmark in San Francisco. Hey guys,
- 0:40Speaker 1: you guys are always traveling. I'm just stuck here in
- 0:43Speaker 1: d C. Dan, send me to Sydney. I'm ready to
- 0:47Speaker 1: beat it up there. Well, I'll have to give you
- 0:49Speaker 1: some great recommendations before you go. Okay, deal. So Aki,
- 0:54Speaker 1: you've been in Japan for part of the last week.
- 0:58Speaker 1: When did you get back and what perspectives on the
- 1:01Speaker 1: news did you bring back with you? Well, I got
- 1:04Speaker 1: back late Saturday night and had a wonderful time there.
- 1:07Speaker 1: I thought i'd talked about the Bank of Japan or
- 1:10Speaker 1: maybe Chinese economic statistics today because I was in Asia
- 1:13Speaker 1: all week. But then I just saw this piece of
- 1:16Speaker 1: news roll in this morning that was really interesting. It's
- 1:19Speaker 1: a little nerdy and a little niche, but there's this
- 1:22Speaker 1: government committee that oversees Sweden's central bank and apparently they're
- 1:27Speaker 1: getting together to potentially revisit the central bank's mandate there,
- 1:32Speaker 1: which sounds like really technical jargon and really boring, but
- 1:35Speaker 1: it could potentially be a really big deal if it
- 1:37Speaker 1: does end up leading to some legal changes to the
- 1:42Speaker 1: way Sweden's central bank operates. UM. And right now Sweden
- 1:46Speaker 1: has this inflation target of two. Some people are saying
- 1:49Speaker 1: maybe Sweden needs to raise the central bank inflation target
- 1:54Speaker 1: to create more of a cushion between the target and
- 1:57Speaker 1: zero percent UM. Some people we're saying, maybe you need
- 2:00Speaker 1: a lawer the inflation target because you shouldn't really have
- 2:04Speaker 1: the school that you can't achieve at the end of
- 2:07Speaker 1: the day. Um. But it comes down to this question
- 2:09Speaker 1: of what happens when you have the school but you're
- 2:13Speaker 1: not able to deliver on it for years and years
- 2:17Speaker 1: and years. So I'm gonna be watching this really closely. Yeah,
- 2:20Speaker 1: I agree with you, that's really quite sexy. That country
- 2:24Speaker 1: central bank, the ricks Bank was one of the first
- 2:28Speaker 1: to adopt the flesh inflation targeting, and more recently, they
- 2:33Speaker 1: found themselves in the crosshairs um principally but not only,
- 2:38Speaker 1: the cross hairs of Paul Krookman for raising rates quickly
- 2:44Speaker 1: once what appeared to be the worst of the global
- 2:46Speaker 1: recession was over, only to find themselves in a situation
- 2:50Speaker 1: where they had to reverse and not only cut but
- 2:54Speaker 1: do que So it's quite fascinating. There's almost a parable
- 2:59Speaker 1: of moderns in full banking day. Yeah, definitely, they're really
- 3:02Speaker 1: ahead of the pack. Um, Tori, what's your what's your
- 3:06Speaker 1: current event chatter of the week. Well, I am focused
- 3:10Speaker 1: as always on the US and right now we're in
- 3:14Speaker 1: the midst of this like monthly cycle of housing data
- 3:19Speaker 1: that we get, and it actually turns out things are
- 3:21Speaker 1: looking pretty good. Um. Home builder confidence is at a
- 3:25Speaker 1: decade high, which is great. We got housing starts data
- 3:30Speaker 1: on Tuesday that showed that construction of new homes rose
- 3:36Speaker 1: to the second highest level in eight years, So that's
- 3:38Speaker 1: great news. We're gonna get more data over the next week,
- 3:42Speaker 1: so I'm definitely keeping an eye on that. Cool. So, Tori,
- 3:45Speaker 1: the idea is housing will help underpin things while manufacturing
- 3:50Speaker 1: and exports of suffering. Precisely, consumers have really been doing
- 3:54Speaker 1: the heavy lifting for growth in the US, and this
- 3:58Speaker 1: shows that housing is no exception. Well, I want to
- 4:01Speaker 1: talk this week, Tory about a story that you published
- 4:04Speaker 1: on Monday called Social skills are the Last Line of
- 4:08Speaker 1: Defense for humans seeking work? And what better date? We're
- 4:12Speaker 1: recording this on Wednesday, October, the date Marty McFly arrived
- 4:19Speaker 1: in the future. Now, we've all written and read stories
- 4:23Speaker 1: about robotics and their increasing news in say, vehicle assembly lines,
- 4:30Speaker 1: but most of that commentary has also suggested that more
- 4:35Speaker 1: people focused softer emotional intelligence skills in the workplace. They're
- 4:41Speaker 1: still some years away for robots. But you had an
- 4:45Speaker 1: interesting adventure with somebody or rather something called Amy Ingram
- 4:50Speaker 1: when you were developing this story. Why don't you talk
- 4:52Speaker 1: about Amy and how she is essentially what this story
- 4:55Speaker 1: is about. Yeah, So, when I was doing research into
- 4:59Speaker 1: this story, I initially saw a great paper out by
- 5:03Speaker 1: David Demming over at Harvard University about social skills in
- 5:07Speaker 1: the job market, and he basically found that almost all
- 5:11Speaker 1: the job growth since nineteen eighty has been in work
- 5:13Speaker 1: that is social skill intensive. So um, while I was
- 5:18Speaker 1: doing a little more research. I wanted to reach out
- 5:22Speaker 1: to this founder of a technology startup. They do virtual
- 5:25Speaker 1: personal assistance. I send him an email. Can we set
- 5:29Speaker 1: up a time to chat over the phone. He's like,
- 5:31Speaker 1: no problem, I'm gonna have Amy set it up. Amy,
- 5:34Speaker 1: can you just take it from here. Um. So she
- 5:37Speaker 1: sent me preferred day and time. This is around seven PM,
- 5:44Speaker 1: and I actually had an event that night, so I
- 5:46Speaker 1: wasn't checking email. Then at three twenty one am, she
- 5:51Speaker 1: emails me again and it's like I wanted to follow up.
- 5:55Speaker 1: Of course I didn't see it because I was sound asleep.
- 5:57Speaker 1: And four hours later she sent me another mel This
- 6:00Speaker 1: is about seven twenty. At this point, it's like, I
- 6:03Speaker 1: haven't heard back from you about this meeting. So fortunately
- 6:06Speaker 1: for Amy, I'm up and getting ready for work and
- 6:08Speaker 1: I'm checking my emails. I'm already stressed about getting out
- 6:11Speaker 1: the door, and Amy keeps bugging me about this meeting
- 6:14Speaker 1: that I could handle like as soon as I got
- 6:16Speaker 1: to work, and so I think I got a little
- 6:19Speaker 1: irritated with her. I thought it was there's no way
- 6:22Speaker 1: that a humans going to email me at three am
- 6:23Speaker 1: about a meeting. Um. So it was at that point
- 6:27Speaker 1: that I was like, all right, this has got to
- 6:28Speaker 1: be a machine. And when I brought up this whole
- 6:31Speaker 1: experience to Dennis Mortenson, who is the founder of AMY,
- 6:37Speaker 1: I guess I should say. Um. He was like, this
- 6:40Speaker 1: is exactly the thing that we're looking to figure out.
- 6:42Speaker 1: You know, how many social skills do we need to
- 6:46Speaker 1: embed these agents, these machines with and how do we
- 6:50Speaker 1: do that? Okay, So just so we're clear, Amy Ingram, Um,
- 6:57Speaker 1: she's a she's a machine. She's a virtual person assistant. UM,
- 7:01Speaker 1: she answers emails, she sends emails as she sets up
- 7:04Speaker 1: your meetings. And for AMY, ingram stands for artificial intelligence. Yeah,
- 7:10Speaker 1: they share the share of the same initials UM and
- 7:14Speaker 1: ingram is actually, God, this is like so over my
- 7:18Speaker 1: head he was trying to explain it TV. But it's
- 7:20Speaker 1: like a model used in natural language processing that helps
- 7:25Speaker 1: machines understand human speech. UM. So you know, for all
- 7:29Speaker 1: like the suber Nerds out there, they're probably oh, yeah,
- 7:33Speaker 1: that's so cool. But but yeah, she's she's a robot
- 7:37Speaker 1: for sure. And every any listeners who are interested in this,
- 7:40Speaker 1: it's uh. The website is x dot ai. If you
- 7:43Speaker 1: guys want to check it out. You know, one of
- 7:45Speaker 1: the things that intrigued me about this story is it
- 7:48Speaker 1: suggests that because Amy is sort of groping for some
- 7:53Speaker 1: emotional and empathetic characteristics, that it's not that far off
- 7:58Speaker 1: in the future. Yeah, I mean, I think computer scientists
- 8:02Speaker 1: will quickly tell you that they are trying to figure
- 8:06Speaker 1: out how to at least get robots to mimic social skills. Well, actually,
- 8:11Speaker 1: you're in San Francisco, You're in the heart of all this,
- 8:14Speaker 1: and you've spent a lot of time writing about the
- 8:17Speaker 1: impact of technological advances on the economy, not just the
- 8:21Speaker 1: macro economy, at what's happening in the micro economy at
- 8:24Speaker 1: an enterprise level. Did tory story mesh with your experience?
- 8:29Speaker 1: Didn't resonate with you? Yeah, definitely. I mean, so I
- 8:33Speaker 1: wrote this big story about artificial intelligence UM about a
- 8:37Speaker 1: year and a half ago, and even since then, even
- 8:40Speaker 1: in that year and a half, there's been a remarkable
- 8:42Speaker 1: amount of progress in that field. It's amazing how quickly
- 8:46Speaker 1: scientists are making progress in this field. But at the
- 8:49Speaker 1: same time, you know, one thing that I learned that
- 8:51Speaker 1: was really important is that there are a lot of
- 8:55Speaker 1: things that computers can do, but there are many, many,
- 8:58Speaker 1: many other things that computers cannot do. Um Our human
- 9:02Speaker 1: brains are amazing. They're so complex in ways that you
- 9:06Speaker 1: never would have thought before, and are capable of doing
- 9:09Speaker 1: so many things that robots aren't able to do. Daniel said, Like,
- 9:12Speaker 1: it feels like we're not that far away from computers
- 9:17Speaker 1: being able to replicate the full social skills of a
- 9:20Speaker 1: human being. UM. From the conversations that I had with
- 9:24Speaker 1: artificial intelligence experts, most people felt that this was something
- 9:28Speaker 1: that was decades and decades away. We should probably define
- 9:31Speaker 1: what where, what social skills aren't, what qualifies as social skills?
- 9:35Speaker 1: What you guys think, Yeah, definitely, I mean, let's let's
- 9:38Speaker 1: start with this. So, like, you know, imagine this kind
- 9:40Speaker 1: of spectrum between of tasks. Some's tasks are really repetitive.
- 9:45Speaker 1: You're doing the same thing over and over again, and
- 9:47Speaker 1: it's easy to write out a full instruction manual of
- 9:50Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do. There's this, you know, on
- 9:53Speaker 1: the other end of the spectrum, there are tasks that
- 9:56Speaker 1: are really complex, really diverse. You're doing something different every
- 10:00Speaker 1: single day. It's really creative. You're you're coming up with
- 10:03Speaker 1: novel solutions all the time. The kind of tasks that
- 10:06Speaker 1: are on the repetitive end of the spectrum are really
- 10:10Speaker 1: easy to replicate, and those jobs are already gone. You
- 10:14Speaker 1: can think of something you would do in a factory
- 10:16Speaker 1: and like an auto factory, for example, where you're putting
- 10:19Speaker 1: on the same part over and over again. Those kind
- 10:22Speaker 1: of jobs are gone. But you think of something really complicated,
- 10:25Speaker 1: like um being an executive editor like Dan, where you're
- 10:29Speaker 1: making all these different decisions every single day, you're providing oversight,
- 10:33Speaker 1: You're coming up with new things. That's the kind of
- 10:36Speaker 1: thing a computer hasn't been able to do yet. Right,
- 10:40Speaker 1: So it's a sense of collaboration, reading people like, kind
- 10:45Speaker 1: of working off of social cues. All those things qualify
- 10:49Speaker 1: social skills, and at least one expert that I talked
- 10:52Speaker 1: to said that upward of the workforce needs at least
- 10:57Speaker 1: some sort of collaboration to get their job done. So
- 11:02Speaker 1: it's a lot. If we've advanced this quickly, what makes
- 11:06Speaker 1: us think that that final stage is still some steps away?
- 11:10Speaker 1: Because zacky, this made me recall a story you wrote
- 11:14Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen about robots being deployed in lawyers offices
- 11:19Speaker 1: doing legal work. You know, that's a whole other step
- 11:22Speaker 1: away from the generic shot of a robot putting an
- 11:26Speaker 1: engine head into an suv. Yeah, definitely. So this was
- 11:30Speaker 1: you know, a very specific task in that lawyers UM
- 11:35Speaker 1: currently are performing called you know, it's document reading in
- 11:38Speaker 1: this initial stage of litigation where you have to decide
- 11:42Speaker 1: which documents are relevant and which documents aren't relevant to
- 11:45Speaker 1: your case. Before, it was impossible to have computers do
- 11:49Speaker 1: that because it was just too complicated of a task.
- 11:52Speaker 1: Every case of litigation was too different in order to
- 11:56Speaker 1: kind of come up with this like master set of rules.
- 11:59Speaker 1: But they found a way to do that do that
- 12:01Speaker 1: by um giving a small group of lawyers the small
- 12:06Speaker 1: subset of documents and having them say whether something is
- 12:10Speaker 1: relevant or not relevant, and the computer is watching those
- 12:13Speaker 1: humans make those decisions, and then the computer learns from
- 12:16Speaker 1: that experience and is able to amplify that experience across
- 12:21Speaker 1: a much broader set of documents for that specific case. UM.
- 12:25Speaker 1: This leads to a lot of savings and dollars you know,
- 12:29Speaker 1: in terms of like the labor that you have to employ,
- 12:32Speaker 1: and it also makes the litigation process go a lot more,
- 12:36Speaker 1: um go much faster. But I feel like to really
- 12:40Speaker 1: illustrate how far away robots are in terms of just
- 12:44Speaker 1: really being able to moot very well, maybe we should
- 12:48Speaker 1: try to have a little bit of a conversation with
- 12:50Speaker 1: Siri and see how that goes. Yeah, let's do it.
- 12:55Speaker 1: Let's see, Siri, I'm feeling really sad today. I would
- 13:01Speaker 1: give you a shoulder to cry on, Victoria if I
- 13:03Speaker 1: had one. Thanks, that's really nice, but it didn't really
- 13:08Speaker 1: make me feel better. You're welcome, okay, all right, Well,
- 13:15Speaker 1: I'm not sure that has quite the same effect as
- 13:17Speaker 1: if you know, Aki was asking me exactly why I
- 13:21Speaker 1: was sad. I feel like if if I told you
- 13:24Speaker 1: I was sad and you didn't ask me why or
- 13:27Speaker 1: try to make me feel a little bit better about it,
- 13:30Speaker 1: I might have to unfriend you. So that's that's a
- 13:35Speaker 1: you know, a kind of social skill that Siri has
- 13:38Speaker 1: been unable to learn yet. Can we follow or um
- 13:44Speaker 1: framed Amy? I mean, let's talk a bit about Amy.
- 13:48Speaker 1: Does she or it exists inside a computer, inside a
- 13:53Speaker 1: micro ship or in this chap's office tory? Is there
- 13:58Speaker 1: a humanoid look machine typing away to keyboard and her
- 14:04Speaker 1: or it the name happens to be Amy. What are
- 14:07Speaker 1: the dimensions that we're dealing with here? Amy is a machine.
- 14:11Speaker 1: I mean she's not. She's not a robot sitting at
- 14:13Speaker 1: a computer typing. You know, she she recognized. The machine
- 14:17Speaker 1: recognizes patterns in the emails, you know, today, tomorrow, a time,
- 14:22Speaker 1: and they use that very similar to how Google does.
- 14:26Speaker 1: If if any of the listeners out there have Gmail,
- 14:28Speaker 1: I'm sure they see when when someone sends an email
- 14:31Speaker 1: with a time and a date, they'll see these dash
- 14:33Speaker 1: lines under it and you can add it to your calendar. Um.
- 14:37Speaker 1: You know, Amy is analyzing these these dates and these
- 14:40Speaker 1: times and these words, um and being able to respond
- 14:44Speaker 1: to that and and added to your calendar. So UM,
- 14:48Speaker 1: I don't think you should think of it as like
- 14:49Speaker 1: a robot sitting at a at a computer, like slaving
- 14:52Speaker 1: away at a keyboard. Should we be scared of Amy? Well,
- 15:01Speaker 1: I don't think we should be scared of Amy. As
- 15:04Speaker 1: a Dennis Mortinson again, the creator Um said he's just
- 15:09Speaker 1: trying to sort of eliminate this email back and forth
- 15:13Speaker 1: that any human has to do. Whether you're lucky enough
- 15:17Speaker 1: to have a personal assistant and your personal assistant does it,
- 15:20Speaker 1: or like Aggie and I have to do it. Um,
- 15:23Speaker 1: he just wants to eliminate that, so it frees you
- 15:26Speaker 1: up to do things that are more productive and more
- 15:29Speaker 1: worth a humans time. So I don't think we should
- 15:32Speaker 1: be scared of amy. It's really interesting because I was
- 15:34Speaker 1: doing research for this story, I was able to talk
- 15:38Speaker 1: to people about what they think the future looks like
- 15:40Speaker 1: in terms of how much work robots will be taking over,
- 15:44Speaker 1: et cetera. And Paedro Domingos over at the University of Washington.
- 15:50Speaker 1: He's he's the author of a new book on machine
- 15:52Speaker 1: learning called The Master Algorithm, if any of you guys
- 15:55Speaker 1: want to check it out. Um, but he sort of
- 15:58Speaker 1: envisioned this world are robots will be able to do
- 16:03Speaker 1: basically everything that humans currently do now in their work,
- 16:07Speaker 1: but they're going to be certain things that will want
- 16:10Speaker 1: a human touch for. So, you know, you don't want
- 16:13Speaker 1: to go to the bar and like pour out like
- 16:17Speaker 1: your feelings about how your girlfriend dumped you to a
- 16:20Speaker 1: robot bartender. You want a real bartender who can take
- 16:24Speaker 1: a shot with you and who you can like go
- 16:26Speaker 1: back and forth on how terrible she was. Like. You
- 16:28Speaker 1: want someone who really understands what you're looking for. And
- 16:31Speaker 1: he says that these things are going to start to
- 16:33Speaker 1: command a premium in the labor market, and there's gonna
- 16:36Speaker 1: be way fewer of them, but they will still exist.
- 16:39Speaker 1: They'll be a luxury sort of. But also in that
- 16:42Speaker 1: new world, we're gonna totally have to rethink how people
- 16:46Speaker 1: get money, how people live. Um. There's this idea floating
- 16:50Speaker 1: around about basic income, and it's this this theory that
- 16:55Speaker 1: you know, as robots basically take over the way that
- 16:58Speaker 1: we earn a livelihood, and you're gonna have to be
- 17:01Speaker 1: able to guarantee people some sort of fixed amount of
- 17:05Speaker 1: income um that they can spend, whether that comes from
- 17:07Speaker 1: the government, whether that comes from taxing the people who
- 17:10Speaker 1: create robots that are gonna take all our jobs. We're
- 17:13Speaker 1: gonna have to change sort of the distribution of capital
- 17:16Speaker 1: because right now, you earn money based on you know,
- 17:19Speaker 1: the scarcity of your labor um, and and once robots
- 17:23Speaker 1: are taking that over, the money is going to be
- 17:26Speaker 1: held by the people who control the robots, who invented them.
- 17:29Speaker 1: So we're gonna have to rethink that. Going back to
- 17:32Speaker 1: your bartending example, like if you're really really amazing bartender
- 17:36Speaker 1: with these incredible, interpersonable skills and you're really warm and
- 17:41Speaker 1: you make these really cool creative cocktails, then yeah, your
- 17:45Speaker 1: future is golden. You're gonna be fine, and if anything,
- 17:48Speaker 1: you're probably going to be making even more money in
- 17:50Speaker 1: the future. But if you're kind of like the middle
- 17:53Speaker 1: of the road bartender, like you know, you're you're kind
- 17:56Speaker 1: of friendly, but not that friendly, and your cocktails aren't
- 17:59Speaker 1: that created of it's pretty much, you know, the same
- 18:02Speaker 1: stuff as what's on other menus around the city, then uh,
- 18:07Speaker 1: your future isn't that bright. That probably means that your
- 18:10Speaker 1: job is um much more vulnerable to robots and software. Right,
- 18:16Speaker 1: creativity is going to be just a huge game changer.
- 18:20Speaker 1: It already is now, but that's going to be really
- 18:23Speaker 1: how you can leverage yourself, is what these experts said. Right,
- 18:26Speaker 1: So I can't help but feel like it would lead
- 18:28Speaker 1: to more inequality in terms of who wins and who loses. Yeah,
- 18:33Speaker 1: you know, it reminds me of some of the issues
- 18:34Speaker 1: we talked about in our inaugural episode with our friend
- 18:38Speaker 1: Barry Bosworth of Brookings. He sketched for us a history
- 18:43Speaker 1: of automation going back to the spinning wheel, steam engine, electricity,
- 18:49Speaker 1: personal computers, where do you think Amy and machines like
- 18:56Speaker 1: her fit into that historical sweepe. There's this weird dichotomy
- 19:01Speaker 1: where we have people who are both afraid that robots
- 19:03Speaker 1: are going to take all our jobs and also afraid
- 19:06Speaker 1: that we're not innovating enough. Uh, that productivity is just
- 19:11Speaker 1: gonna be sluggish forever. I don't I don't know which
- 19:16Speaker 1: one is right. I don't think it's probably either extreme.
- 19:20Speaker 1: I think it's going to be somewhere in the middle. Um,
- 19:23Speaker 1: the so called Internet of things is really changing how
- 19:26Speaker 1: we look at productivity and how we use technology to
- 19:31Speaker 1: get data and to drive decision making and to to
- 19:34Speaker 1: make our processes more efficient and smarter. Um. It just
- 19:39Speaker 1: it may take some time for these things to show
- 19:41Speaker 1: up in the data. I think that's what people are
- 19:44Speaker 1: trying to figure out. But Dan, I think I have
- 19:45Speaker 1: a more important question, and that is are you a robot?
- 19:50Speaker 1: And Victoria we should probably wrap up, Tori. Tori, you
- 20:02Speaker 1: know we started this episode with a question of whether
- 20:05Speaker 1: a robot will be able to take our jobs? Should
- 20:08Speaker 1: we ask Sirie? Oh? Yeah, we should definitely ask Seria. Okay,
- 20:11Speaker 1: let's see what she says. Is a robot going to
- 20:16Speaker 1: take all of our jobs. Interesting question, Victoria, all right,
- 20:23Speaker 1: that was a super late answer, Siri. Yes, yes, old
- 20:30Speaker 1: technology for the win. Sirie needs some work. Thanks again
- 20:35Speaker 1: for listening to Bloomberg Benchmark. We will be back next
- 20:38Speaker 1: week and you can find us on Bloomberg dot com, iTunes, Podcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher,
- 20:44Speaker 1: all the places um as well as on the Bloomberg terminal.
- 20:48Speaker 1: And if you're on any of those platforms, please take
- 20:51Speaker 1: a moment to rate and review the show so other
- 20:53Speaker 1: listeners can find us and let us know what you
- 20:56Speaker 1: thought of this show. You can reach us and follow
- 20:58Speaker 1: us on Twitter at Daniel mass d C, Tori Stillwell,
- 21:02Speaker 1: and Kita seven. We'll see you next week. And I
- 21:06Speaker 1: am not a robot.