The Real Work of the
21st Century Tim O’Reilly @timoreilly oreilly.com wtfeconomy.com Harvard Business School March 28, 2018

How is work changing? What
does technology now make possible that was previously impossible? What work needs doing? How do we make the world prosperous for all? Why aren’t we doing it? wtfeconomy.com

We have to let go
of the maps that are steering us wrong In 1625, we thought California was an island

Growth goes on forever?

Technology has a fitness landscape
In my career, I’ve watched a number of migrations to new peaks, and I’d like to share with you some observations about what happened, and why. And then we’ll talk about some lessons for companies like Google, but also for the overall economy. Personal Computer Big Data and AI Smartphones Apple

Big Data and AI Generosity
takes us to the next peak Tim Berners-Lee, 1990 The World Wide Web Linus Torvalds, 1991 Linux

Generous or “Long-term greedy”?

We are all living and
working inside a machine

The Equinix NY4 data center,
where trillions of dollars change hands

A Business Model Map of
Uber  A magical app that lets drivers and passengers find each other in real time  A networked marketplace of drivers and passengers  Augmented workers able to join the market as and when they wish  Managed by algorithm

“My grandfather wouldn’t recognize what
I do as work.” – Hal Varian

Algorithmic systems have an “objective
function” Google: Relevance Facebook: Engagement Uber and Lyft: Passenger pick up time Scheduling software used by McDonald’s, The Gap, or Walmart: Reduce employee costs and benefits

The runaway objective function “Even
robots with a seemingly benign task could indifferently harm us. ‘Let’s say you create a self-improving A.I. to pick strawberries,’ Musk said, ‘and it gets better and better at picking strawberries and picks more and more and it is self-improving, so all it really wants to do is pick strawberries. So then it would have all the world be strawberry fields. Strawberry fields forever.’ No room for human beings.” Elon Musk, quoted in Vanity Fair https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk- billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x

What is the objective function
of our financial markets? “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” Milton Friedman, 1970

“The art of debugging is
figuring out what you really told your program to do rather than what you thought you told it to do.” Andrew Singer Andrew Singer

Oikonomia vs Chrematistike

“Doughnut Economics”
Kate Raworth

Divergence of productivity and real
median family income in the US

Creating a “thick marketplace” Markets
are outcomes. A better designed marketplace can have better outcomes.

All of the great tech
platforms are using new kinds of algorithmic curation to build networked marketplaces wtfeconomy.com

The great opportunity of the
21st century is to use our newfound cognitive tools to build better marketplaces

“Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”
The world of his grandchildren—the world of those of us living today— would, “for the first time . . . be faced with [mankind’s] real, his permanent problem—how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.” John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes

The fundamental economic question is
no longer how to incentivize production but how to incentivize fair distribution of the fruits of increased productivity Brian Arthur

There’s plenty to go around.
It’s just not going around!

Will there really be nothing
left for people to do? Is there really nothing left for humans to do?

What happened when Amazon added
45,000 robots

Jeff Bezos calls this “the
flywheel”

Dealing with climate change Rebuilding
our infrastructure Feeding the world Ending disease Resettling refugees Caring for each other Educating the next generation Enjoying the fruits of shared prosperity

“Biophilic work”
Natasha Iskander

This is what technology wants
“Prosperity in human societies is best understood as the accumulation of solutions to human problems. We won’t run out of work until we run out of problems.” Nick Hanauer

Let the machines do as
much of the work as they can. Let humans get on with the real work of the 21st century.

Tim O’Reilly  Founder &
CEO, O’Reilly Media  Partner, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures  Board member, Code for America  Co-founder, Maker Media @timoreilly • O’Reilly AI Conference • Strata: The Business of Data • JupyterCon • O’Reilly Open Source Summit • Maker Faire • Foo Camp • … • 40,000+ ebooks • Tens of thousands of hours of video training • Live training • Millions of customers • A platform for knowledge exchange • Commercial internet • Open source software • Web 2.0 • Maker movement • Government as a platform • AI and The Next Economy