[0:04]What can we do to protect ourselves from robot automation? The CEO explained that machines will replace traditional labor. This is all about artificial intelligence and how much faster it can process. Human labor is never going to be cheaper as we get more advanced. So we're just going to have to adjust to that and deal with the results. For 3.3 million years, humans have developed technologies to make our lives easier.
[0:36]These inventions made us more efficient. It meant we didn't have to spend as much effort working to survive.
[0:49]But each new development came at a cost. When bronze tools were invented, all the guys who made stone tools were driven out of work. And when iron tools came along, all of the bronze workers lost their jobs. When the Industrial Revolution hit, it wiped out the livelihoods of millions of cobblers and weavers who had to adapt or get left behind. And this process continues today. Only now, it's happening faster, much, much faster.
[1:31]All kinds of routine jobs have become automated in the past few years, thanks to breakthroughs in technologies like robotics and radio frequency identification, computing, and high-speed networking. And at the same time, another powerful force, globalization, is making it easier for companies to move jobs overseas where wages are lower and regulations are less stringent. In the past 20 years, these two forces, technology and globalization, have wiped out millions of American jobs in manufacturing, from Detroit's auto plants to North Carolina's textile mills. And it's not just manufacturing jobs. We're now entering a dramatically new phase where high-skilled jobs are also at risk. Here's why.
[2:24]Since 1965, computer processing power has roughly doubled every two years.
[2:33]All of the computing power that controlled the Apollo mission to the moon can now fit on the chip inside your smartphone. And in a few decades, computers will be thousands of times more powerful than they are today. Already, computers use artificial intelligence to easily beat the world's greatest chess masters, recognize faces, understand spoken language, and even compose music. They can do many of the things that we've always thought made us human, and that threatens many of the jobs we've always thought were secure. Take driving a vehicle, which is one of the top jobs in most states in America. With driverless cars already on public roads, millions of truck drivers, bus drivers, and taxi drivers may soon find themselves obsolete. In hospitals, hundreds of thousands of jobs are on the line, as computers learn to analyze cat scans and biopsies, deliver low-level anesthesia, and even do surgical procedures. And in restaurants, hundreds of thousands of cooks may be replaced in the coming decades by machines that can follow recipes perfectly without ever taking a sick day or a smoke break. An Oxford University study predicts that within 20 years, 47% of all jobs are at risk of being replaced by technology. That's over 70 million people. And at the same time, globalization is also affecting high-skilled jobs in ways that it never has before. Law firms, for example, are beginning to outsource work to lawyers in developing nations who are trained in American law. These lawyers can do legal research and even review contracts for a fraction of the cost of an American lawyer. Now, just as technology and globalization destroy jobs, it's important to point out that they also create jobs by generating new industries and new markets for American products. We don't know exactly what the future is going to look like, but we do know this. Millions of American workers, white-collar and blue-collar, young and old, are about to face a normal, difficult transition. We're living longer than ever before, and we'll be forced to change our jobs more often than any people in history. We're going to need to learn new skills constantly throughout our careers to keep from being left behind.
[5:22]This revolution in the job market is not coming in the distant future. It's happening now and it's going to accelerate. It's going to affect all of us, our friends, our families, and our communities. Are you ready?
