Why I’ve changed my thinking on how my investments impact everyday workers

I recently joined LinkedIn Senior Editor Caroline Fairchild for the inaugural episode of Work In Progress, a new LinkedIn podcast on the future of work. We discussed my recent investments in chatbots, the potential impact of this technology on workers around the world and how I relate all of this back to both Star Trek and Star Wars on a regular basis. See an excerpt from our chat below, and be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or Google Play. Want to join the discussion? Share your own post on LinkedIn using #workinprogress.

Caroline: We have roughly 4 million Americans working as either secretaries or administrative assistants. And 3.5 million working as cashiers. What are the technologies that you see replacing these human jobs?

Phil: This is a really deep question. I've actually changed my thinking about this significantly just in the past few months. I really have to say after the election, my thinking about automation has really shifted a little bit. Not so much in regards to bots, because I think the real thing here is probably robots, actual physical robots that are going to be replacing jobs. Kiosks that are going to replace cashiers at McDonald's. You know, McDonald's is already doing this massive test with kiosks, and vending machines for Big Macs, or whatever.

I used to be much more enthusiastic about using technology to do a better job than people could on various unskilled, or semiskilled jobs. And I always understood of course that what are we going to do with these people? These people need to have an income, they need to have meaning in their lives. But before, I was always kind of comfortable in saying, "Somebody needs to figure that out, but my job is to figure out how to use the technology to make this better." And then, other people's jobs is to then figure out how these people make money. Because that's why we have a government, right?

And I think now I'm just being a little bit less sure that anyone else is figuring it out, so I'm thinking, well maybe it's actually only figured out together. So maybe the same people who are deciding the technology and figuring out technology, also inherently in part of that need to figure out the other half, which is what happens with people.

Caroline: What role does Silicon Valley and the investors that you see every day have in terms of helping shape what those lives look like, or insuring that they have places where they can work based on the skills that they have, or will have?

Phil: I think I've said that my role as an investor is to move the world forward, not just the technology. I want the world to be more like Star Trek, right? We all wear crisp looking clothes, and carrying around clipboards aboard Starships, and write things down, generally happy. That's what I want, and technology has always been the driving force of that.

I think before, I would just focus on the technology. And obviously somebody's got to figure out the society. That's above my pay grade, I'll just figure out the technology. And now, I'm thinking this maybe needs to be done in a holistic way. But for the next generation, not necessarily for this one. We don't necessarily need to freak out about how actual human beings in jobs right now, who have had those jobs for 20 years, are going to have to get retrained. That isn't what's going to happen. Hopefully more and more of those people will continue with their jobs, and their jobs will become incrementally easier because of technology.

The real question is we shouldn't be setting up society assuming that their kids are going to be doing those same jobs. They aren't, and then they need to move forward.