Don’t Worry, the Robots Can’t Do Your Job—Yet

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2017

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The business reporter Sheelah Kolhatkar has recently written for The New Yorker about a wave of advances in robotic technology that will have dangerous implications for our economy and political stability. As more and more factories automate, many workers have found employment in warehouses, performing jobs where human dexterity and brains still hold a strong edge over clumsy robots that can’t recognize unfamiliar objects very well. But as robots advance in gripping skills, visual recognition, and problem solving, a dangerous wave of unemployment may loom. Kolhatkar speaks with a roboticist, an economist, and the C.E.O. of a robotics company, Symbotic, which is taking the people out of warehouses. Symbotic’s robots don’t earn pay, they don’t need health insurance—they don’t even need lights or heating to operate. Plus, Fabio Bertoni, The New Yorker’s lawyer, reveals what he does on the very rare occasions when he’s not at work.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent.
0:09.0	And I think it's interesting to really try to unravel what his ties.
0:13.0	There's this sort of country city divide for their own convenient, and then it's not clear where it goes next.
0:20.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production
0:24.6	of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:29.1	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:32.7	Staff writer Sheila Cole Hadkar covers a lot of business stories for The New Yorker, and she's
0:36.7	been looking at a tremendous economic change going on in our country right now.
0:42.4	Sheila's been reporting on how automation is making its way into industries that are still depending very much on human labor, with robots that are much more advanced than what you might imagine in an automotive factory, for example.
0:56.1	And every time robotics makes another leap forward, economists start worrying with good reason.
1:02.3	Here's Sheila Kolhatkar.
1:04.5	Well, I first became interested in this because income inequality is one of the defining issues of our time,
1:10.2	and it's one of the major reasons
1:12.8	that President Trump won elected office. It was one of the strong motivations of many of his voters.
1:20.0	And it occurred to me that technology and automation might be partly to blame. And this actually
1:24.1	defies conventional wisdom, because in the past, technology has eliminated certain kinds of jobs, but it was largely seen as creating new and better jobs.
1:34.7	But that seemed to not be happening anymore. So I wondered what was going on.
1:39.5	I have really interesting experiences over and over.
1:43.0	I talk with Andrew McAfee, who's an economist at MIT.
1:46.1	Because when I give my talks or engage in discussions about this phenomenon, very often
1:51.5	afterward, I have fascinating hallway conversations with CEOs who will come up to me and say,
1:58.4	hey, where are all the jobs going to come from?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.