We've all heard that robots are going to take our jobs -- but what can we do about it? Innovation expert David Lee says that we should start designing jobs that unlock our hidden talents and passions -- the things we spend our weekends doing -- to keep us relevant in the age of robotics. "Start asking people what problems they're inspired to solve and what talents they want to bring to work," Lee says. "When you invite people to be more, they can amaze us with how much more they can be."

1. Why jobs of the future won't feel
like work – David Lee
TRANSCRIPT:
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_lee_why_jobs_of_the_future_won_t_feel_like_w
ork/transcript
VIDEO URL: https://youtu.be/B905LapVP7I
00:12
So there's a lot of valid concern these days that our technology is getting so
smart that we've put ourselves on the path to a jobless future. And I think the
example of a self-driving car is actually the easiest one to see. So these are going to
be fantastic for all kinds of different reasons. But did you know that "driver" is
actually the most common job in 29 of the 50 US states? What's going to happen to
these jobs when we're no longer driving our cars or cooking our food or even
diagnosing our own diseases?
00:42
Well, a recent study from Forrester Research goes so far to predict that 25 million
jobs might disappear over the next 10 years. To put that in perspective, that's three
times as many jobs lost in the aftermath of the financial crisis. And it's not just
blue-collar jobs that are at risk. On Wall Street and across Silicon Valley, we are
seeing tremendous gains in the quality of analysis and decision-making because of
machine learning. So even the smartest, highest-paid people will be affected by this
change.
01:13
What's clear is that no matter what your job is, at least some, if not all of your
work, is going to be done by a robot or software in the next few years. And that's
exactly why people like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are talking about the need
for government-funded minimum income levels. But if our politicians can't agree on
things like health care or even school lunches, I just don't see a path where they'll
find consensus on something as big and as expensive as universal basic life
income. Instead, I think the response needs to be led by us in industry. We have to
recognize the change that's ahead of us and start to design the new kinds of
jobs that will still be relevant in the age of robotics.
01:52
The good news is that we have faced down and recovered two mass extinctions of
jobs before. From 1870 to 1970, the percent of American workers based on farms

2. fell by 90 percent, and then again from 1950 to 2010, the percent of Americans
working in factories fell by 75 percent. The challenge we face this time, however, is
one of time. We had a hundred years to move from farms to factories, and then 60
years to fully build out a service economy. The rate of change today suggests that we
may only have 10 or 15 years to adjust, and if we don't react fast enough, that means
by the time today's elementary-school students are college-aged, we could be living in
a world that's robotic, largely unemployed and stuck in kind of un-great depression.
02:39
But I don't think it has to be this way. You see, I work in innovation, and part of my
job is to shape how large companies apply new technologies. Certainly some of these
technologies are even specifically designed to replace human workers. But I believe
that if we start taking steps right now to change the nature of work, we can not only
create environments where people love coming to work but also generate the
innovation that we need to replace the millions of jobs that will be lost to
technology. I believe that the key to preventing our jobless future is to rediscover
what makes us human, and to create a new generation of human-centered jobs that
allow us to unlock the hidden talents and passions that we carry with us every day.
03:23
But first, I think it's important to recognize that we brought this problem on
ourselves. And it's not just because, you know, we are the ones building the
robots. But even though most jobs left the factory decades ago, we still hold on to
this factory mindset (attitude, mentality) of standardization and de-skilling. We still
define jobs around procedural tasks and then pay people for the number of hours
that they perform these tasks. We've created narrow job definitions like cashier,
loan processor or taxi driver and then asked people to form entire careers around
these singular tasks.
03:56
These choices have left us with actually two dangerous side effects. The first is that
these narrowly defined jobs will be the first to be displaced by robots, because
single-task robots are just the easiest kinds to build. But second, we have
accidentally made it so that millions of workers around the world have unbelievably
boring working lives.
04:15
(Laughter)
04:18

3. Let's take the example of a call center agent. Over the last few decades, we brag
(talk boastfully/presumir) about lower operating costs because we've taken most of
the need for brainpower out of the person and put it into the system. For most of
their day, they click on screens, they read scripts. They act more like machines than
humans. And unfortunately, over the next few years, as our technology gets more
advanced, they, along with people like clerks and bookkeepers, will see the vast
majority of their work disappear.
04:47
To counteract this, we have to start creating new jobs that are less centered on the
tasks that a person does and more focused on the skills that a person brings to
work. For example, robots are great at repetitive and constrained work, but human
beings have an amazing ability to bring together capability with creativity when faced
with problems that we've never seen before. It's when every day brings a little bit of
a surprise that we have designed work for humans and not for robots. Our
entrepreneurs and engineers already live in this world, but so do our nurses and our
plumbers and our therapists. You know, it's the nature of too many companies and
organizations to just ask people to come to work and do your job. But if you work is
better done by a robot, or your decisions better made by an AI, what are you
supposed to be doing?
05:35
Well, I think for the manager, we need to realistically think about the tasks that will
be disappearing over the next few years and start planning for more meaningful, more
valuable work that should replace it. We need to create environments where both
human beings and robots thrive (grow healthily). I say, let's give more work to the
robots, and let's start with the work that we absolutely hate doing. Here,
robot, process this painfully idiotic report.
06:00
(Laughter)
06:01
And move this box. Thank you.
06:03
(Laughter)
06:04
And for the human beings, we should follow the advice from Harry Davis at the
University of Chicago. He says we have to make it so that people don't leave too much

4. of themselves in the trunk (rear compartment/baúl) of their car. I mean, human
beings are amazing on weekends. Think about the people that you know and what they
do on Saturdays. They're artists, carpenters, chefs and athletes. But on Monday,
they're back to being Junior HR Specialist and Systems Analyst 3.
06:30
(Laughter)
06:34
You know, these narrow job titles not only sound boring, but they're actually a subtle
(not obvious/sutil) encouragement for people to make narrow and boring job
contributions. But I've seen firsthand that when you invite people to be more, they
can amaze us with how much more they can be.
06:50
A few years ago, I was working at a large bank that was trying to bring more
innovation into its company culture. So my team and I designed a prototyping
contest that invited anyone to build anything that they wanted. We were actually
trying to figure out whether or not the primary limiter to innovation was a lack of
ideas or a lack of talent, and it turns out it was neither one. It was an empowerment
problem. And the results of the program were amazing. We started by inviting people
to reenvision what it is they could bring to a team. This contest was not only a chance
to build anything that you wanted but also be anything that you wanted. And when
people were no longer limited by their day-to-day job titles, they felt free to bring
all kinds of different skills and talents to the problems that they were trying to
solve. We saw technology people being designers, marketing people being
architects, and even finance people showing off their ability to write jokes.
07:43
(Laughter)
07:44
We ran this program twice, and each time more than 400 people brought their
unexpected talents to work and solved problems that they had been wanting to solve
for years. Collectively, they created millions of dollars of value, building things like a
better touch-tone system for call centers, easier desktop tools for branches and
even a thank you card system that has become a cornerstone of the employee working
experience. Over the course of the eight weeks, people flexed (stretched) muscles
that they never dreamed of using at work. People learned new skills, they met new
people, and at the end, somebody pulled me aside and said, "I have to tell you, the last

5. few weeks has been one of the most intense, hardest working experiences of my
entire life, but not one second of it felt like work."
08:31
And that's the key. For those few weeks, people got to be creators and
innovators. They had been dreaming of solutions to problems that had been bugging
(bothering) them for years, and this was a chance to turn those dreams into a
reality. And that dreaming is an important part of what separates us from
machines. For now, our machines do not get frustrated, they do not get annoyed, and
they certainly don't imagine.
08:57
But we, as human beings -- we feel pain, we get frustrated. And it's when we're most
annoyed and most curious that we're motivated to dig into (investigate) a problem
and create change. Our imaginations are the birthplace of new products, new
services, and even new industries.
09:15
I believe that the jobs of the future will come from the minds of people who today
we call analysts and specialists, but only if we give them the freedom and protection
that they need to grow into becoming explorers and inventors. If we really want to
robot-proof our jobs, we, as leaders, need to get out of the mindset of telling people
what to do and instead start asking them what problems they're inspired to solve and
what talents they want to bring to work. Because when you can bring your Saturday
self to work on Wednesdays, you'll look forward to Mondays more, and those feelings
that we have about Mondays are part of what makes us human.
09:52
And as we redesign work for an era of intelligent machines, I invite you all to work
alongside me to bring more humanity to our working lives.
10:00
Thank you.
10:01
(Applause)
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6. few weeks has been one of the most intense, hardest working experiences of my
entire life, but not one second of it felt like work."
08:31
And that's the key. For those few weeks, people got to be creators and
innovators. They had been dreaming of solutions to problems that had been bugging
(bothering) them for years, and this was a chance to turn those dreams into a
reality. And that dreaming is an important part of what separates us from
machines. For now, our machines do not get frustrated, they do not get annoyed, and
they certainly don't imagine.
08:57
But we, as human beings -- we feel pain, we get frustrated. And it's when we're most
annoyed and most curious that we're motivated to dig into (investigate) a problem
and create change. Our imaginations are the birthplace of new products, new
services, and even new industries.
09:15
I believe that the jobs of the future will come from the minds of people who today
we call analysts and specialists, but only if we give them the freedom and protection
that they need to grow into becoming explorers and inventors. If we really want to
robot-proof our jobs, we, as leaders, need to get out of the mindset of telling people
what to do and instead start asking them what problems they're inspired to solve and
what talents they want to bring to work. Because when you can bring your Saturday
self to work on Wednesdays, you'll look forward to Mondays more, and those feelings
that we have about Mondays are part of what makes us human.
09:52
And as we redesign work for an era of intelligent machines, I invite you all to work
alongside me to bring more humanity to our working lives.
10:00
Thank you.
10:01
(Applause)
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