Automation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

jobs you know the thing every kid gets asked about I want to be I want to be a lawyer lawyer highway pilot patty and a dad a poly appraiser that I want to be an artist that goes around painting walls I the feedback doctor moving around me doctor Oh a mermaid doctor I mean sure everyone wants to be a mermaid doctor until that is you have to do your first mermaid colonoscopy two things that you know about a mermaids are soul kid and you may as well learn them now one no matter where you're picturing it that's not where it is and to no one comes out the same person they went in a part of you dies in there and you'll spend the rest of your life trying to get it back anyway jobs were a major theme in Donald Trump's presidential campaign along with of course walls taco bowls allegations of sexual assault and admissions of sexual assaults but the Trump's primary focus as candidate and president has been on jobs specifically who was stealing them whether it's China or Japan or Mexico they're all taking our jobs now Vietnam that's the new one they are taking our jobs the jobs are being taken by India our jobs were stolen away and shipped far away to other countries some of which you've never even heard of yes all jobs are being stolen by countries you've never even heard of although try to remember that this is coming from the man who reportedly referred to Nepal and Bhutan as nipple and butter so for truck countries you've never heard of could just mean bulgy areola Bob's anus boring urethra honda rice ankle fat hamster fence jeremy bikini fatso the sulfur bulls Enya and hater vagina gay water but swallow licking time Pocahontas looks and blush hot girl with jizz in her hair my taco grenade the one that sounds like a but bad Asia Slim Shady Kato bold that daddy fat hamster nice lesbian Russia Macarena badge Lance pool and Pamela marinara Seagal pillow Russia Jarrod's friends Santa kitten orbit more titties guitar pair of gays samosas toga to go feeling pains the median gross lettuce you're a gay Zumba janitor Magnolia and Hotel for Dogs no wait the other one the one that's not for dogs hotel that one basically stealing your jobs look some manufacturing jobs are gone because they went overseas but Trump is completely ignoring another major factor behind job losses Automation its impact has been massive you wouldn't know it from how Trump talks but our manufacturing sector now produces twice as much as it did in 1984 but we produce it with one-third fewer workers the point is many of those jobs aren't being stolen they are disappearing because machines are now doing them and thanks to advances in AI and robotics there are concerns that this sort of job loss could accelerate in fact a few years back some people got very concerned when an Oxford University study came out with a startling number an Oxford University study says that up to half of all jobs in the US are at risk to automation they new study which suggests many of us may lose our jobs because of robots a robo is probably going to take your job that's according to a new Oxford University study but that's close to 50% of the workforce being completely eliminated as in no more jobs for them Wow 50% of all our jobs will be gone that is terrifying for you luckily a robot could never be a late-night host it make basic mistakes like say devoting 90 seconds of airtime to a list of dumb names Trump might have for other countries how weird would that be it's called pacing robots look it up you don't do a massive list of names before you've introduced the thesis of your piece anyway the thesis of this piece is that what people often talk about automation in apocalyptic terms the truth is everything about it is more complicated than you think including that half your jobs will be gone Oxford study so tonight let's talk about automation let's begin with the fact that while it's often presented as a scary new problem it's neither entirely scary nor entirely new from the Industrial Revolution through the rise of mass production automation has transformed our society in ways people have marveled at sometimes in less than ideal language power and the highly important standardization of parts and mass production with its assembly lines have created more mechanical slaves for man mechanical slaves in the machine tool industry created by man to create more mechanical slaves the average man in the United States today is said to have at his beck and call 20 my chemical slave slave slave slaves oh how I have missed them yes mechanical slaves if you close your eyes you can forget that they're mechanical and look there is no doubt mechanical slaves or machines as a normal person might describe them have had hugely beneficial effects they've made goods cheaper and jobs easier and sometimes safer take this man he runs a logging company is different and he's developing machines to felled trees which would put his own son out of a job but he's doing it for a pretty compelling reason if you have a man on a chainsaw falling trees they're eventually going to get hurt logging has the highest death rate of any American occupation for its size logging kills people at a higher rate than the military I've come to the belief it the only way I can ensure the safety of my peoples not have them there the best way not to kill a hand cutters not half of them he's right the best way not to kill a hand cutter is not to have one which presumably means the best way to kill a hand cutter is to have one so if you are trying to murder a lumberjack we best just to hire him and wait also also don't do it don't do it but if you really want to that would be how to go about it which you shouldn't yeah absolutely shouldn't despite the fact I've just given you a perfect blueprint for how to get away with it but again I want to make this absolutely clear nobody out there should murder a lumberjack you just wait for them to die in an accident is that it's the perfect crime but the truth is from employer's point of view the big selling point for automation is that it increases productivity and it maximizes profits and for displaced workers that has caused immense pain throughout history and not just in factories for instance in the 90s as voice recognition technology improved phone company operators were rightly worried for their jobs my first thought was uh-oh here comes trouble this is gonna get my job for sure the first thing I thought about is that this is gonna be a robot they're not gonna need as many operators I'm about to lose my job now talk to some friends of mine back where I came from from shirt board in the office and the rumors were running rampant over there you know like oh my gosh they're testing this machine and it's gonna do away with their job and they're shutting you know we heard you out they were shutting down y'all's office and going completely to machines okay first of all I don't know this isn't the point here but what the is going on in Shreveport Lisa Lee here is your friend and you're all hey Lisa you're gonna get fired you three ports go you deserve friends who lift you up not tear you down take a step back and remember how far you have come you don't need Shreveport Shreveport needs you now you pick yourself up and you show the world what Lisa Lee is really made of you go when you see this story through the eyes of worried employees you can understand the deep-seated human urge that many of us have to see robots come to harm whether we're joyously retweeting this photo captioned our DC office building got a security robot it drowned itself or just attacking any robot foolish enough to trust us the idea was to see how people would interact with a talking solar powered robot as it hitched across America on its own tracked by a GPS on Saturday the robot was found in Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love resting in pieces late today video surfaced of the attack but the robots creators are not out for revenge yeah you're wrong about that it has absolutely everything to do with Philadelphia this is a city with a chronic police horse punching problem sending a hitchhiking robot into Philadelphia it's not unlike sending a beautiful Bell symbolizing freedom into Philadelphia there is no way it's going to remain in one piece and there's a nonzero chance that someone is going to try and it so so at this point you may be thinking well whatever its advantages Automation throws a lot of people out of work right well yes but again it is complicated and the picture often gets distorted remember that report from earlier the one that led to claims that half of our jobs were going away there are real concerns about its methodology and other studies have come up with much lower numbers but even more importantly it didn't claim half of jobs would be gone it suggested some jobs were in the high-risk category for being automated and that is actually a very different thing because a job automated is not necessarily a job lost frequently machines don't replace jobs so much as tasks a good example of this concerns ATMs it is hard to imagine a time now that they weren't around but but when they became common in the 1980s bank tellers were afraid of them stealing their jobs of course customers were sometimes afraid of them for very different reasons does it hurt yeah ignoring the old adage never bite the hand that feeds you the Bank of America versateller did just that snap down to Paul's hand while he was trying to transact business with it [Music] that man died that's ridiculous he died two years later when he got stuck inside a claw machine that's a fact that's a fact what is that fact based on nothing other than my total conviction that it's true but but while ATMs did eat the occasional customer fears of job losses turned out to be completely overblown because bank teller employment actually increased over the next thirty years what happened was ATMs took over the job of dispensing cash and tellers were then freed up to do sales or other work their jobs didn't go they changed and when automation does lead to job loss in certain sectors historically it's also actually created jobs as these economists from MIT explains let's do the following thought exercise it's a year nineteen hundred and forty percent of all employment is in agriculture right and so some twerpy economist from MIT he teleports back in time and says a hundred years from now only two percent of people will be working in agriculture what do you think the other 38% of people are gonna do well I wouldn't know you would say Oh search engine optimization you know health and wellness software and mobile devices most of what we do barely existed exactly that's twerpy economist is right 50 years from now people will be doing jobs that we can't imagine right now like crypto baker or snail rehydrate err or investment harvest I don't know the point is you can't imagine them so so we get rid of some jobs but we get new ones so that's even-steven right well not necessarily because the new jobs Automation creates won't necessarily pay the same as the ones it takes away and it might not be easy for displaced workers to transition into them for instance right now our economy is creating lots of jobs in the tech sector at the same time we have three and a half million truckers possibly facing unemployment due to driverless technology now in an ideal world those truckers could seamlessly move into high-tech jobs but as this mat explains it's just not that easy if the average age is 55 these guys going to be computer programmers they didn't finish high school I doubt it of course I mean but maybe some fifty five-year-old truck drivers will become web designers but if you think all of them will it might be worth remembering that time your father accidentally typed his Google search into Facebook and then tried to cover it up by putting whiteout on the computer so so the big question here is how do you harness what is good about automation while minimizing the damage to those hurt by it well the best thing would be if America were in the hands of someone nimble and forward-thinking and unfortunately that brings us back to this guy and he has not demonstrated much of a grasp on this issue just look what happens with the company called carrier you may remember right after the election Trump with the aid of a massive tax break convinced the CEO of carriers parent company Greg Hayes not to move one of their factories to Mexico he made a big deal out of saving those jobs and he was excited about what was coming next they're gonna spend so much money on renovating this plant and I said Greg say that number you know he said ten million well the minimum number 16 it's going to be in my opinion a lot more than that he said well I'd rather say the lower number see I'd rather have him say the higher number so I won't say it okay it's just a difference in philosophy do you agree both are okay but difference in philosophy but they're gonna spend more than 60 they're gonna spend a lot of money on the plant that's it's a difference in philosophy you see I want a lie he doesn't want to like both are ok I'm still gonna lie to you I'm just gonna do it vaguely for Gregg this lies for you Gregg Gregg seem to spend way more than 16 million dollars on the plants but here's the thing about that 16 million dollars it wasn't actually good news for the workers as Greg Hayes made clear just a few days later we're gonna make up 16 million dollar investment in that Factory in Indianapolis to automate to drive the cost down so that we can continue to be competitive that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs oh great work mr. president so basically carry workers are still going to lose their jobs it's just the government now helped us for some reason pay for the robots that will replace them that is the classic Trump deal making that you can read all about in his best-selling book the art of saying whatever and letting someone else a different person or hey maybe even a robot deal with the consequences is that a good title why not it's a moot point cuz it's 11:45 a.m. which is basically noon so that's lunch and the Trump administration's response alternation honestly hasn't gotten much better since because for someone who claims that he cares so much about the American worker he's done almost nothing to help people displaced by automation and there is frankly plenty that he could be doing one set of proposals includes funding retraining ideally retraining that he's directly tailored to available jobs in your area that seems like a sensible idea as does trying to help older workers who may end up having to take a new job with a lower salary through things like wage insurance or an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit now all of that will cost money and quite a lot of it so Trump will probably revert to his preferred solution blaming China Vietnam and other countries you've probably never even heard of so in the meantime we need to start preparing younger workers for the job market that they're about to enter because the pace of technological change is now so rapid some experts suggest that we might need to start rethinking our basic section of a career the majority of people will end up having an episodic career it's great to ask kids for example what do you want to be when you grow up but one thing that might be added to that question is what five things do you want to be when you grow up she's right about that and that means that the girl from before who said mermaid doctor may need to come up with some backup plans partly because that job may be partially automated in the future and partly because let's be honest rising ocean temperatures are going to kill all the mermaids it's just a fact they're going to be boiled alive and look look I've thrown a lot of complication at you tonight but the one thing we know for sure is automation is not going to stop and some people are going to lose their job so we should help those that do and be preparing the next generation for the possibility that they may need to be more flexible in their career plans what do you want to be when you grow up I want to be an inventor I want to be a musician under a person who takes people onto fire then I look like a fashion designer so are you worried about robots taking over certain jobs no okay you might need to be aware of that long term tell me what you name some jobs and I will tell you whether I think a robot could do it or not okay policeman a robot could do that that's literally with the plot of Robocop robots could definitely do that Zoe sorry Kendall Roberg get wet yeah robot can get wet that's not a job but yes or a robot and it works fire robot with a hose right a drummer Oh a robot could definitely do the drums they'd be probably really bad at basketball robots are actually incredible in basketball I'm gonna Google robot drummer right now okay I just put robot D and it autocorrected you're definitely faster than the robot mm-hmm here's the thing you're definitely not Lauren do you think a robot could do my job in the future shall we take a big story and we try and inject it with as much nuance as we can so we really try and get a deep dive into complicated issues and and then I present our work you know to the audience at the end of the week do you think a robot could do that well what can I do what can you do that is actually a good question you can do a series of non routine tasks that require social intelligence complex critical thinking and creative problem solving okay okay okay can you repeat that back to me I want to do a series of non routine tasks I like to do a series and our mountaintops tasks pass I feel like you're doing a British accent layers only that requires social intelligence social intelligence complex critical thinking and creative problem solving and creative problem solving and creative problem solving that's what you got to do in the future Zoey yeah okay is that a deal we did it I like don't know what it means [Applause] you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 9,526,021

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Id: _h1ooyyFkF0

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/blove135]

I feel like making the comparisons to the industrial revolution and machines replacing jobs in the past is not the same as what we are about to go up against. Automation has been taking jobs for a long time. What is different now is artificial intelligence. When we talk about automation today what we really mean is implementing artificial intelligence into automation. Just about every multibillion dollar company out there with almost limitless resources are working tirelessly on it. In the past automation replaced muscle and now A.I. will replace brains and muscle. It will change the world and people won't just move to other jobs because there won't be enough jobs left to go around.

[u/[deleted]]

Why is it blocked in Canada

[u/insomnic]

Relevant CGP Grey: https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU

[u/lozzobear]

Blocked in Australia.

[u/krisashmore]

Blocked in UK

[u/Azar002]

I sub to hbo once a year to watch the new season of Silicon Valley, and binge watch the SH*T out of this and Bill Maher.

[u/vrinca]

It’s crazy that’s blocked in free first world countries. Basically explains how automation changes jobs but doesn’t necessarily eliminate them.

[u/DannyC-147]

I recently left my parents house. They have HBO. I miss HBO.

[u/DMTDildo]

Great to see this show back again. Properly researched pieces on important topics while still being funny. 10/10