- The prognosticators of doom would have you believe that humanity is cursed to a future without work as artificial intelligence replaces people in the workforce.

But today's guest says we'll still be working, doing the kinds of things of only human beings can do.

He's Jamie Merisotis, this week on Story in the Public Square.

(uplifting instrumental music) Hello, and welcome to Story in the Public Square, where storytelling meetings public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

Joining me from his home in Rhode Island is my friend and cohost G. Wayne Miller of The Providence Journal.

Each week, we talk about big issues with great guests, authors, journalists, scholars, and more, to make sense of the big stories shaping public life in the United States today.

This week, we're joined by a leader in education policy and philanthropy.

Jamie Merisotis is president and CEO of Lumina Foundation and author of a new book, Human Work In The Age of Smart Machines.

He's joining us today from Indiana.

Jamie, welcome.

- Great to be with you.

Thanks, Jim, thanks, Wayne.

- So congratulations on Human Work.

I thought it was really a compelling read, exploring the future of human work, but also something of a meditation about that which gives many of our lives purpose.

Talk to us a little bit about the role of work in our lives.

- You know, I think we all tend to think of work as something where you are earning a paycheck; that is, that we go to work because we earn a paycheck, and that allows us to do other things.

But as we think about work, I think we increasingly recognize that work is about meaning and purpose and dignity.

When we work, we not only wanna make money; of course we all wanna make money, but we also want satisfaction and outcomes that we can understand and measure in our communities, in our families, and in ourselves.

And what's interesting is that survey research shows that even for the lowest wage workers, those in the bottom income quintile, they say that they will give up some money for meaning; in other words, that they wanna contribute to a greater whole.

So yeah, work is about meaning.

It's about social mobility.

It's about purpose.

And ultimately, it's about not just what we do, but who we are as humans.

- In the book, you refer to that as "earning, learning, and serving."

What does that mean for the average worker?

- You know, I think the idea here around human work is simply that as machines take over more and more of the tasks that humans have done, that we've gotta think about what we are doing as human workers.

So human work is obviously the work that only humans can do.

So as humans, we have certain desires, needs, outcomes that we're looking for from work.

Machines are good at lots of things, right?

They're good at repetition.

They're good at speed, algorithms, things like that.

But humans understand subtlety and nuance and how people react to each other in subtle ways.

So we need to work as humans in order to achieve the outcomes that I mentioned in terms of getting a paycheck, but we also need to go through this virtuous cycle of learning, of earning, and of serving others if we want satisfaction in the outcomes that we're looking for from work.

So it is this ongoing, continuous process that we go through as human workers where we learn, we earn, and we give back, we serve others as part of that process of working.

So this is the paradigm that I think we'll be increasingly facing in this new human work ecosystem: earning, learning, and serving others.

- So you mention machines, which of course are a major part of industrial production and many jobs.

There are a lot of scary predictions about what the increasing impact of machines, artificial intelligence, for example, and automation.

What does that mean for the average person?

Is that hype?

Are all these scary predictions hype, or is there something to it?

I mean, if you go on the internet, you see this is a topic discussed frequently.

- Yeah, I like to call this, Wayne, the "robot zombie apocalypse" narrative.

(all laughing) - Can I steal it for a book title?

- Yes, yes.

But you're right.

It is the theme of countless articles, books, documentaries about the scary nature of technology.

MIT Technology Review actually did an article about this two years ago that looked at all of the different surveys of the predictions about what will happen to work going forward, and their conclusion is, and I quote, "We have no idea what will happen."

(Wayne laughs) And so, I think that, look, technology has always destroyed jobs and created jobs.

It is the nature of what happens with technology.

And in the race between technology and skills, technology is always a step ahead.

And the human work ecosystem in this world where AI and automation and machine learning are taking on more and more of what we historically thought of as human tasks, we have to recognize that developing our human traits and capabilities is what's going to be key.

So as a worker, I don't think you need to worry so much about whether or not the machine is going to take your job.

What you should be thinking about is this idea of complementarity; in other words, what I'm good at is complementary to what the machine can do, and vice versa.

And if you think about work in that way, you can understand that our human traits, our ability to be compassionate, to be empathetic, to be ethical, or to collaborate, you know, these characteristics like collaboration, communication, and analytical reasoning, those are the things that make us uniquely human as workers.

And so, yeah, I think technology will go through a creative destruction process, but it will also result in creative renewal.

And I'm an optimist, as you saw in the book.

I believe that at the end of the day, we will be better off in this march of technological progress, because we as humans will advance our human traits and capabilities to serve each other better.

- So of course, there are a lot of jobs and professions where the human touch, the human involvement, is essential.

It may be changing.

I'm thinking of surgery, for example.

There's robotic surgery.

But that robot does not go into the OR alone, scrub up, come back out.

You know, there's a person guiding it.

I'm thinking of social work.

I'm thinking of mental health, and I could think of many other fields and industries.

So, what would the impact of automation be there?

Will there be an impact, further than what we've seen in, for example, robotic surgery to replace a hip or a knee?

- Of course there will, right?

We know that in that example, that the machine, the robot, is going to perform the task with precision, with speed, with the ability to achieve a more precise outcome than maybe the human can do.

But the human's gotta guide the technology.

The human's gotta understand if something goes wrong how to deal with what happens in the changing context.

By the way, in a different vein, I've looked at self-driving vehicles.

I've actually been in a self-driving vehicle, which is quite fascinating.

And what we found in the self-driving vehicles is not that they aren't accurate in what they're doing; it's that the unpredictability of humans causes problems in the self-driving vehicles, right?

So if somebody walks in front of the car, or the lights change, but the technology doesn't understand fast enough that people are still crossing the crosswalk even though the technology understands that the light has changed.

So dealing with the unpredictability of humans is part of what we need to focus on in terms of our human work.

And you're right, there are many, many jobs today that increasingly require these human tasks, these human traits and capabilities.

Think of therapists or customer service agents, or for that matter, people who are doing social work or teaching.

I think a lot of the human work jobs in the future are gonna rely on our creativity, our ability to actually create, whether it's entertainment, sort of bringing together the intersection of technical skills and pure creativity, so choreography.

As humans, we tend not to like art created by machines, which is sort of interesting.

We like art created by other humans.

So I think there's lots of potential in human work.

But we will need to develop and deploy our own human traits and capabilities going forward.

This is not simply something where you have that innate ability to do these things.

- Jimmy, you're president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, one of the great philanthropies in the field of education.

It seems to me, though, that the whole conversation around education and training and workforce development really misses the mark, based on what we've been talking about here today.

Is that fair?

- Well, you know, I think part of the issue here is that we've talked past each other for a long time.

So on the one hand, we know that the demand for talent is rising, and that the best way to develop that talent is in formal learning contexts, right, so colleges and universities, workforce training programs, et cetera.

And there was interesting data, by the way, that was released in March of this year that showed of the 900,000 new jobs that were created in the US economy in March of this year, only 7,000 of those jobs went to people with a high school degree or less.

All the rest went to people with a college degree, a certificate, a certification, what have you.

So clearly, the labor market, employers are voting with their feet and saying, "We need people with these developed skills, "these traits, these capabilities, But on the other hand, we're talking past each other, because what the employers are saying is, "What we really want is people with skills.

"What we really want is people with skills."

I mean, it's not that the credential matters.

It's that we need to know that what's behind the credential represents real and relevant learning that allows our employees to be adaptable, to be ethical, to be empathetic, you know, all of those things, those generalizable traits that employers increasingly say they value most.

Clearly, when you're doing a job, you need to know something about graphic design, or if you're a chemist, chemistry, or whatever it may be.

But you have to have those human traits and capabilities, and that's where I think the education system and the employers are talking past each other.

Colleges and universities for years have said that what they do best is prepare people for life with these generalizable skills.

But those life skills, it turns out, are the very same skills that employers say they need most when it comes to their employees.

- So there are obviously many people who have high school degrees but nothing further who would like to have higher education, and I'm thinking of the people who have to work, people who have children who have daycare needs, people who have low incomes, and I've seen, here in Rhode Island, the Community College of Rhode Island has programs catering to those people specifically, giving them the assistance they need, whether it's daycare or whatnot.

Are you seeing that across the country too?

'Cause I think that's very encouraging.

- Yeah, I think 2021 is an inflection year, a year that will be revolutionary when it comes to education and training.

Emerging from COVID with an increasingly vaccinated world, dealing with the consequences of the long-overdue reckoning around racial injustice, and then of course dealing with that fact that, because work changed so dramatically because of COVID, the jobs that are being created are not gonna be the same jobs that we saw before.

They're going to require these higher levels of skills.

But you're right that the workers of today, the adults, these are the people who got knocked out of the labor market, particularly women and people of color, because of COVID, these individuals are dealing with their lives, right, with their real life.

They have childcare.

They have transportation.

They have lots of issues.

So you look at the proposals that have been advanced, things like free college, for example, a very, very compelling, good idea, but most of the free college proposals only deal with the question of tuition.

Tuition for people going to a community college is probably 20 to 30% of the total cost.

The rest is, "How am I going to deal with the fact "that my child is in a hybrid learning context?

"How am I going to deal with an elderly parent "who I have to deal with?

"How am I getting to the campus?"

And so, rethinking the learning process, the paradigm, understanding that one of the good things that came out of COVID, if you can say that, is that we understand both the limitations, but also the potential of technology.

I think what we're going to see for those people in places like the Community College of Rhode Island is more hybrid learning opportunities, more opportunities to use technology and in-person learning together in more creative ways than what we've seen in the past.

- Jimmy, when we think about this new world of human work, how, when, where?

I think I wanna ask all the questions, right?

How do we actually train, prepare, educate, this new workforce, this new labor pool?

Let's start with the how.

What does that education look like?

- Well, first of all, I think that it has to be a continuous process, right?

So at the end of the day, we have all been indoctrinated into this idea that you learn in an early part of your life, and you work in a later part in your life.

And work is changing too much, too quickly for us to really understand that.

Now, by the way, educators like to call this "lifelong learning," which I say in the book, it sounds like a sentence, (hosts laughing) rather than something to be excited about as the learner-worker.

But the fundamental idea here is that it is this ongoing process, and it's really a ratcheting process, right?

What you want is you want to learn while you're working and work while you're learning and gain rewards, get benefits from that learning and earning along the way.

So the first thing I think we need to do is create opportunities for people who, we can get them the learning that they need, give them the credentials that show what they know and can do.

So we need to do a better job in articulating what's behind all of these degrees, certificates, certifications, and all the new things that we have now, badges and all these other things.

Let's be very clear about what they represent.

Second, we've gotta give people a better capability to actually participate in that virtuous cycle of learning, earning, and serving, which means we've gotta make it a learner-centered system.

A learner-centered system means that the learning doesn't have to take place simply in the way that the college or university or workforce program says it does.

The learner should have a lot of agency and say in how this works.

So an increasingly learner- and worker-centered system I think will be really important.

And then you know, I think from the employer perspective, employers have a really important role to play here, 'cause right now, we're talking at a national level about major, significant government investments, unprecedented investments at a federal level in both workforce training and education.

But employers have a very important role to play here in helping their employees actually go through this cycle of learning and earning and serving.

One way they can do that, a really practical way, is sit down with your employees and develop a plan, and with your employees, say, "All right, what are your objectives this year?

"What are your objectives five years from now, "and what are you doing to advance your own learning?

"How will that lead to the higher wages that you want, "and how will that give you the satisfaction "that you're looking for in terms of serving others, "in terms of finding meaning in your work?"

I think these sort of integrated, and I don't know what to call them but "learning, earning, serving plans," whatever they may be, I think it's something that employers can do in a really practical way, giving their employees that agency that they need to own their learning.

You should own your learning like you own your health as a worker, right?

You should actually tend to it and manage it and do regular checkups and actually make sure that you are focusing on developing it, but working with the employer I think will be very important so that those employees over time get better at what they do and have greater opportunities, whether it's in that firm or some other company.

- So talk about the future of apprenticeships.

I mean, they have long been important in many fields, medicine, for example.

Residencies and fellowships are essentially apprenticeships.

In the construction and plumbing and mechanical trades and many more, they have been important.

Talk about the future of apprenticeships.

I mean, I'll give you an example from my own life.

I have a good friend, he's now at the Washington Post.

He did not even have a college degree, does not have a college degree.

He learned on the job by starting at a small newspaper and then going to a larger newspaper.

So that was an apprenticeship.

A long way of asking, again, what is the future of this kind of earning and learning?

- Yeah, we've been talking about apprenticeship models, the German model, the Scandinavian models, for years.

They've never really taken hold in the US.

In fact, in the UK, they have something called an "apprenticeship levy."

Employers actually contribute to a fund to support these apprenticeships.

And so, most of the rest of the world does apprenticeship way better than the US.

Part of the reason for that is that we have a very diversified economy.

And so, in some of these countries, it's easier to develop scalable registered apprenticeship programs because you can do it for lots of people in a large-scale way.

Because of the diversity of our economy, that's a little bit harder.

But I think we are going to see a growth, a significant growth in apprenticeships, precisely for the reason you point out, that at the end of the day, people need to work with someone who understands what that job is now and what that job will be in a very coordinated, cohesive way, again, sort of learning and earning and serving along the way as they're participating in that process.

And many people think of apprenticeships I think in what you said, Wayne, which is in the trades, but in fact, there's apprenticeships in law, in medicine, in accounting, in lots of fields where I think you will see an increasing use of these apprenticeship models, because it's what individuals want, it's what the learner-workers want, and I think it's what the employers want.

What they want is people who can actually do the job.

Again, many employers are using degrees or other credentials as a proxy, but they state their dissatisfaction with those degrees or other credentials and say that they want more.

And what I think we need to focus on is these applied learning opportunities like apprenticeships where you can actually develop those much deeper human work skills.

- And of course, you also see apprenticeships in education at the high school level.

You don't graduate from a teaching college and immediately go into a classroom.

- That's exactly right, that's exactly right.

Teaching is a good example of where learning from a mentor, from a guide as you're apprenticing, is hugely helpful in terms of developing your human traits and capabilities.

You can learn lots of pedagogical techniques in the classroom, whether the quote-unquote "classroom" is in-person or virtual, but you have to apply it doing those teaching practicums so that you understand the ways in which this plays out in the real world, in the real classroom, where you've got 13 very difficult seventh graders or whatever it is in your class.

- Jamie, as I read this book, I was struck that the focus was democratic, and I mean that lowercase d, not left/right, not red/blue, but democratic in the sense that you're focusing on pharmacy techs and community college students and moms who are trying to come back into the workforce.

What are the implications for this world of work for the traditional, the CEOs of the world, the higher-income earners who have had all of the other advantages of life.

- Yeah, I think many people, not just the people who have never been or who haven't gotten far enough in the learning process in order to be successful, will need to participate in this virtuous cycle.

And you think about the people that you mentioned, for example, people who are senior managers or people like me who are CEOs.

This last year should give you great pause if you think you know how to do your job, and everything you learned is gonna help you actually succeed in that job.

I have learned so much in the last year, and I've had to learn from other people, and I've had to do it in formal contexts.

I've actually taken the time to learn about some things.

We all had to learn about, we're all amateur epidemiologists now, about understanding how we actually deal with healthcare issues.

It's just one small example of the ways in which developing those human traits and capabilities is not something that happens at an early point in life.

It happens throughout your life, and even for a guy like me in his 50s, I need to continue to do that in order to be successful in my job.

- That's a great example, of course, too, learning Zoom and what we're doing.

- Lemme hop in here with one other thing, 'cause we got about four minutes left here.

The last chapter before the conclusion looks at that link between democracy and our republican government, republican form of government, and this new age of human work.

Unpack that connection for us, because I think it's important.

- So you know, I'm a political scientist by training, so when people read the draft of the book, they said, "Well, of course Jamie's gonna talk about democracy.

"That's what he's gonna talk about."

(Jim laughs) I think the book has surprised people because of what I had to say about democracy and human work.

I'm very concerned about existential threats in the world, climate change, racial injustice, and I'm really concerned about authoritarianism, because authoritarianism prefers conformity, and authoritarians stoke fear.

They stoke fear of change.

They stoke fear of the other.

And if you think about authoritarianism, it's a threat to our liberal democracy and the diversity of ideas and beliefs and ways of living that democracy is designed to protect.

What happens, and again, we've seen this in COVID, when people lose opportunity, authoritarianism tends to spike.

So information bubbles that have been reinforced through these myths about COVID, for example, they reinforce these anti-democratic tendencies.

So how this relates to human work is that we know that people who develop their critical thinking, their problem-solving, their communicating skills, their human work traits and capabilities, empathy, ethics, actually are better judges of this democratic environment.

In fact, a third of Americans who haven't gone to college believe that the military would be a good way to govern our country.

So that percentage is dramatically lower for people who've developed their learning through college and university or workforce programs, et cetera.

And we know that all of the people who participate in this learning are also more likely to do that serving that I've been talking about, voting, volunteering, contributing more to society.

So we have to cultivate the critical thinking and ethical decision making and analytical reasoning traits, lots of those democracy-enhancing traits and capabilities in people, not just because it's a good thing to do, not just because it makes you a better person, but because it helps us develop active citizens, and those active citizens I think will protect our way of life in ways where I think that human work will give us the meaning and purpose that lead to individual and shared prosperity.

So yeah, I think January sixth was an inflection point and a realization, we have a lot of work to do in this country, and I think focusing on building our democratic traits is a key part of the human work preparation system.

- So these are daunting challenges, needless to say, given the history of our country, given where the country is today, the size of the country.

Where do we start?

Do we start at the federal level?

Is this federal and/or state?

Is it state, is it regional?

Is it institution and school by school?

- [Jim] You got about 30 seconds for this, Jamie.

- The federal government obviously is going to weigh in this here.

I actually wanna start at the level of the worker.

The workers have to own their learning.

It is a very important first step in this process, and then governments and employers and us in philanthropy can contribute to the development of their human work traits over a long period of time.

To me, let's start with the worker-learners.

They're the key to this whole system.

- That's a great place to leave it.

Jamie Merisotis, Lumina Foundation, and the book is Human Work.

It's an important read.

Thank you so much for being with us.

That is all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about Story in the Public Square, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter, or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more Story in the Public Square.

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