(spooky music)
- What will we do if the robots take over?
- Well, we already have all sorts of robots,
appliances, technology that helps us do
what we want to do.
We actually don't even think of them as robots.
The washing machine is a great example.
You pour in detergent, you put in your clothes,
you press go, it beeps when it's done.
We want the FarmBot to be like the washing machine.
- Rory is the inventor of FarmBot,
a robot that helps you garden and grow fresh veggies.
- It plants seeds, waters, weeds,
and you can control it from anywhere in the world.
If you look back a hundred years ago,
the vast majority of people
on this planet worked in agriculture.
Fast forward to today, it's something like 2%.
With inventions like FarmBot and new robots
for industrial agriculture,
that number will shrink even more.
And robots are just getting started.
They're becoming cheaper, safer,
and they're coming to every industry.
So yeah, they're coming for your job.
But what if that's a good thing?
(electronic music)
- Welcome to Uprising.
Fear not.
Robots are already here.
- There's widespread reports that we're on the verge
of some kind of robo-pocalypse that's going
to wipe out up to half of the jobs.
That is just a massive delusion.
It's been fueled by a lot of so-called experts
who don't really understand the difficulties
of actually building robots.
- Many of the newest robots aren't taking jobs, but tasks.
They're called collaborative robots, or co-bots.
- If you're an auto mechanic, for example,
or in construction, you have a limited work period
because your back usually gives out.
A co-bot can help you basically relieve strain
and prolong your work life.
Another really interesting example
of this is surgical robots.
They're not gonna replace any surgeons in our lifetime,
but what they do is they make it more ergonomically
comfortable for a surgeon to perform the surgery.
It's this idea that I call "complementarity".
You might think about Star Trek.
Spock is very logical.
Kirk is all about intuition and creativity and empathy.
They work together as a team extremely well.
That's the way I think that we should be thinking
about AI and robots.
- So for now, robots are just here to help,
but over time, they'll take over more and more tasks
and eventually, the whole job.
Where will that leave us humans?
Well, it probably means three things.
One, we'll probably end up doing more human-centered jobs.
You know, the Kirk stuff.
- Interacting, communicating, being creative,
those are very, very human skills.
Whether it's trying to solve a problem as a teacher
or feeling a pain in their hip as a patient,
no robot is gonna be able to do those.
As Elon Musk said, "Humans are underrated."
- Two, we're going to have to hone our skills
to stay relevant, but we've done that before.
- In 1910, only 10% of Americans went to high school.
Around that time, there was increased automation coming in
and some visionary educators saw that
and started something they called
"the high school movement",
and it was incredibly successful.
40 years later, 80% of Americans went to high school.
I think that that's actually a very important lesson today
that the technology of our time, namely AI and robotics,
could also influence education in a positive way.
- Three, we're gonna have to take a long look
at why we care so much about jobs in the first place.
Yes, we need money, but a job is more than just income.
In a techno-optimist future where everyone could just
have a fair income partially subsidized by robots,
would everyone just retire?
- If you retired today, what would you do?
- I would definitely go travel.
- Work out more.
- Probably go see some NBA games.
- Help the city of Detroit to become better.
- Stay in grad school.
- Visit more wineries.
- If money was no object, I don't know.
I'd just get bored.
Maybe I'd try to start a company or something.
- I'm retired, I don't have to think about anything
that I have to do.
- When I ask people what they want to do
when they don't have to work anymore,
you have kind of two camps.
You have those who think about the immediate.
"Well, I'm gonna sit on the beach
"and drink umbrella drinks."
I think for a lot of those folks,
they just haven't thought ahead to the next step.
Then you've got the folks who are thinking about it
in a more purpose-driven sense
and say, "I really care about climate change,"
or "I really care about homelessness in my community
"and I'm excited to be able to take that on."
The advent of automation at work is really not a new thing,
but there may come a time when we need to reckon
with this idea of life without the traditional structure
of a job.
- Tanja retired in her mid-thirties.
She saved money really aggressively
and now never needs to take another job.
- It hasn't all been puppy dogs and rainbows.
It does require you to figure out,
"What is my sense of self-worth
"when I don't have those outward signifiers of success?"
- And what has Tanja chosen to do with her time now
that she's retired?
She still works.
She's a writer, blogger, and speaker.
But it's purpose-driven work that she chooses and controls.
(upbeat music)
- It makes sense that we tend to think
of work in bad terms, but work has a lot
of positives as well.
Work can give us a sense of purpose,
it gives us a sense of community,
but when you're working a job, you're ultimately working
towards someone else's vision.
If you take that away, you can focus on
completely crafting your own sense of meaning out of life.
- For now, few people can retire early like Tanja.
But that might change sooner than we think.
(upbeat music)
We're at the start of a huge transformation in how we work.
The near future is going to be hard and scary,
but it's hard and scary partially because we don't have
a strong vision of what's on the other end.
It's probably not a sci-fi dystopia
and it's probably not a struggle-free utopia.
Can we have eight billion people doing work
that they really care about while the robots do
the jobs we don't want?
- There is a lot of work that needs to be done in the world
to bring people out of poverty, to feed everyone,
but the goal of solving all those problems,
I think, is so that we can reap the rewards
of all of the innovation that humanity has done
over thousands of years so that we can all then retire early
and have a lot of fun.
- We're only here once.
We have a limited amount of time
and in my case, I didn't want to spend all
that time at the office.
At the end of the day, you only get one life.
- Thanks for watching this episode of Uprising.
Please like and subscribe.
It really helps us grow our channel
and tell more stories about people who are thinking
differently and changing the world.
And if you want to learn more about early retirement,
check out Tanja's book, "Work Optional".