SPACs tumble, the education tech market and the future of automation

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And this is Megan Markle.

No, it's not.

Come on.

Is it Megan or Megan?

Megan?

Megan Markle.

Meg, as Harry calls her.

I've been consuming all this Harry Megan content a lot.

I did.

It was interesting because my son was downstairs watching the NBA All-Stars or whatever.

They were doing all kinds of beeswax down there.

And he was screaming from downstairs every time Steph Curry made some sort of three-pointer type of thing.

And then, and then I watched the entire with Amanda, who was not that interested in Megan, Markle, and Harry, but I got her to watch it, and she liked it a lot, I think.

She didn't seem to be interested in it.

But it was a big splash for Paramount Plus, which is CBS All Access.

It was a big plus for CBS.

It had, I think, 17 million.

Oprah can really still bring it when she needs to.

Oh, my gosh.

She's incredible.

I thought for a minute she wasn't going to bring it, but she brings it.

I didn't watch it.

I think they should have renamed the episode White Lives Don't Matter.

I just think this is literally.

I think these are some of the most boring people on the planet.

No, you're wrong.

Oh, my God.

Oh my gosh.

It was

porn.

It's like,

let's trade my celebrity and talk shit and trade secrets.

I didn't even watch the thing and I watched it.

Why do we need to protect the crown?

The crown is already like a successful.

The crown is wonderful.

Well, then season seven is going to be lit when you listen to this interview.

Let me just say, it doesn't sound very pretty there over time.

Trading in on celebrity they have not created.

So what?

Big deal.

What's so what?

God save us.

Come on.

Why do you like the crown and not this?

Tell me.

Why do I like the crown?

I think that...

Because it's really quite fictional, according to many people who

don't doubt that, but it's good fiction.

I just don't like people trading off celebrity they inherit.

I don't like, I don't like the Trump kids who have done nothing themselves, who've have accomplished nothing themselves.

And I don't, it's unfair.

I don't, maybe you can tell me about anything these two have accomplished on their own, but I feel like.

Well, she's been an actress.

She was on a relatively successful TV show.

Yes.

She was on suits.

She was funny.

And then she went suits.

Yeah, but it was a successful show.

Are you on a successful show?

I'm sorry.

I would draw everything I've said.

No, she's not.

I think

17 million people disagree with you that this is interesting.

By the way, the point she was making during the interview was how much the tabloids in Britain have this deal with the crown, with Buckingham Palace.

They have parties for them and they trade access for behavior, like not attacking certain members of the crown, like Prince Andrew, for example.

Let me just say, the crown is already doing this.

So I don't know why you're all hot.

Well, you know Harry.

You know the story about Harry.

When he was born, they were going to name him up so they could call the family up Chuck and Die.

Oh, my God.

That's good royalty humor.

Or they were going to call him, actually, the second name they had for him was Shamu.

So they were calling him Shamu Prince of Wales.

Oh, my God.

That's good royalty humor.

That is not good.

Let me just say you liked it.

You thought it was well done.

I did because I think this fan, first of all, the crown is wrapped up in the tabloids already, and they have deals and everything else.

The way that works in Britain, it's a whole little economy.

So I don't think there's anything wrong with these two cashing in on it.

That's Uno.

Dose,

his mother died in a paparazzi accident.

Like, come on.

Like, she was being chased.

That's That's not fair to pull that out.

That's unfair to pull that out.

What does that have to do with Oprah interviewing them and then moving to LA and going to Soho?

Like, they discussed, like, because one of the topics discussed was how much she didn't play the game and got attacked for her race.

And there was a whole go look at the things of Kate Middleton, who's perfectly nice, and her.

Kate Middleton's pregnant, holds her belly.

They're like, isn't this beautiful?

She holds her belly and she's got a weird thing.

You're conflating.

I don't

know Princess Diana and

whether they're nice or not.

And basically, these these folks cashing in on again, celebrity based on other people's discretion and also their commitment to their nation and their crown.

You love that crown, don't you?

You think the crown is all that?

I think it's all been a scandal.

I was a dual citizen.

I was a British citizen for a short time.

You have to like the queen.

They were nice to the queen during this interview, just so you know, the queen didn't get anything.

Well, they're not stupid.

I mean, who's not going to be nice to the queen?

I think, I kind of believe the queen is one of the most, I think, respected or well-liked people in the world over the age of 105 or whatever she is now.

Perhaps.

I thought it was, look, let me just say it was a huge, huge hit for enormous.

Talk about Oprah.

Oprah, once again, does it fantastic?

Unbelievable.

Someone was just pointing.

There were so many good tweets about the whole thing.

That was my favorite part.

It was like Oprah just restarted the War of 1812.

Everyone was waiting for black Twitter to go against UK Twitter because she was talking about racial issues quite a bit, including someone asking about the color of her baby skin skin and stuff.

So I thought it was just good entertainment.

That's what I said.

At the end of the day, it's what I would call it's anything about these two.

It's a palate cleanser for anything of substance.

So, okay,

I'm sick of hearing about the pandemic.

I'm sick of hearing about what the Biden administration is doing.

I know I'll watch Megan and Harry and talk about their new home in the Hollywood Hills.

Good for them.

They live in Santa Barbara, in case you're interested.

They live in Santa Barbara?

That's right.

They live in Santa Barbara.

I just want to throw it out there and call this the Super Bowl for Millennial Women.

Like, that's what it was.

Oh, there's Rebecca.

I just need to throw it out there.

Thank you.

Rebecca Andrew, as usual, on my side.

Correct, Rebecca?

That's a shock.

Always.

Almost.

That's a shock.

What do you mean?

No, no, get rid of the word almost and we're accurate.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

You know what?

You missed the entertainment.

Like, it was funny.

I did watch it.

I got a message.

That sounds good.

It was so

good.

Go watch your NBA All-Stars bullshit.

I'm sorry.

The Millennial Super Bowl, does that mean it was very expected and obnoxious and will decline decline in viewership 8% a year for the next year?

No,

no, because it's Oprah.

Thank you.

After the pod, I'm going to go watch

on Paramount.

Listen to me, Scott.

Oprah, it shows how good Oprah is.

I have one.

One of the things

is why she was so, I learned a lot as an interviewer.

So Megan would say, you know, someone was tweeting about this X, Y, Z.

And then Oprah would go, X, Y, Z.

So she'd feign like she was excited.

She was in with them.

Then she sort of challenged them.

She was, she's a genius.

She's a freaking genius.

She's very good.

She's an inspiration.

I love Oprah.

I got to say, she's really good.

She made some great entertainment.

In any case.

A billionaire who deserves to be a billionaire.

But anyway, my son was watching the NBA All-Stars, but the NBA created a blockchain.

This is what he does not care about those.

He cares about Steph Curry and three-pointers, but NBA created a blockchain advisory committee.

And friend of Pivot, Mark Cuban's involved, Ted Leonces, Joe Sai from Alibaba.

They'll determine how to leverage blockchain to benefit NBA's business.

And now you can use Dogecoin to buy mavericks from the US.

Jesus Christ, this is a slow news day.

Why don't you and I create an Ethereum advisory committee for Vox?

I mean, who the fuck cares?

I think that's an advisory committee.

That's news.

I'm going to do it.

Breaking news.

Oh, my God.

A bunch of old white men are trying to act younger.

What are you interested in?

This is like the mother of all Botox.

I know.

Let's try and pretend we're younger and hipper with the young people and announce an advisory committee on Boxer.

Well,

they did pass stimulus.

What are you interested in, Scott?

Gallery?

There's not a lot going on this week.

I'm oh my god, what are you talking about?

They probably think the SPAC meltdown is more interesting.

We're going to go into that in our big story.

We're going to go into our big story.

Is there any other

look?

I'm a little bit forlorn.

I'm a little bit.

Why?

Why are you why would I have my heart sort of broken today?

Oh, well, we'll get to that.

Okay, Mackenzie Scott got married and it wasn't to you.

I am, honestly, honestly,

I am genuinely happy for you.

I think science teacher.

Look at that.

He looks like

she's fantastic.

Everything she's doing is like.

Literally,

she's a role model.

You think to yourself, that's how I would want my kids to grow up and behave.

I don't know.

She just,

I'm just, you know, I mean this sincerely.

I read it and I'm like, I haven't been this happy for a famous person in a long, long time.

She is doing it right.

She's living her best life.

She's finding happiness.

She's living her best life, giving away money For her.

Being her own story.

That was a really nice story.

I thought that was like, oh my God, when's the last time I opened TMZ and was happy?

Yeah.

Like page six.

Oh my God, I'm happy.

When does that happen after you reach page six?

When does that happen?

When does that happen?

I don't know.

Here's one good thing.

CDC guidelines say people who are vaccinated can hang out with other people who are vaccinated indoors and just breathe all over each other.

They're not tremendously concerned about more infection.

That's good.

That is good.

I think that's a good thing.

That's how restaurants have just vaccinated people like yourself.

I'm so sick of hearing about restaurants.

Jesus Christ, by the way, 27 million, 27 million the National Restaurant Foundation got for,

got for restaurants, but we could, but not all schools are open.

Yeah.

Thank God Johnny's taqueria is going to stay open.

I just don't get the whole restaurant thing.

This is not the hunger games.

We can't see

him.

I just don't get the whole restaurant.

In any case, there's no perfect answer in this situation.

Anyway, we're going to big stories now.

Something you'll be happy about.

SPACs SPACs are falling.

The SPAC index fell 20% since February peak.

This is a technical definition of a bear market.

As a reminder, SPACs are special purpose acquisition companies, essentially, but we like the word SPAC, essentially a shell company set up by investors with the purpose of raising money through an IPO, and then they back a company into it.

They've become the dominant way for a company to raise equity finance this year.

Over 200 new SPACs have raised $70 billion in 2020.

Meanwhile, one of the most prominent SPAC holders, he has other SPACs, by the way, Chamath Palihapatiya, faced backlash last week after finally showed that he had sold his entire personal stake in Virgin Galactic, which he took public as a SPAC, one of the very earliest ones.

So what do you think, Scott?

What's going on?

Tell me about SPACs if you don't want to talk about important things.

Well, I think SPACs, we're going to look back on SPACs the same way we looked back on the dot-com or dot bomb, and that is a lot of them.

are just overvalued.

But it's a new financing mechanism.

It's an interesting way.

It's an old one that's become new.

Well, but it's got in the in the first 17 days of 2021, there were more SPACs raised than in all of 2019.

Right, but it had been something that had been around.

But go ahead.

And this is essentially, I think, of everything through the lens now of dispersion, because I'm hoping to get into the

urban dictionary as the guy who wrote

a book called Dispersion.

My next book is called The Algebra of Wealth.

Oh, right.

Okay.

Strategies on Personal and Economic Satisfaction.

We just churn these books out.

I like to write.

You do.

I like to write.

So anyways,

write my book for them.

What are you talking about?

SPACs.

Oh, yeah.

So anyways, but it is the dispersion of investment banking, and that is companies and operators, and there's some very talented operators doing these things, have said, okay,

we don't need the investment committee of Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs to tell us who should be a public company.

We'll go public, and we'll add a lot of operating muscle and tensile strength to a good private company.

And boom, just add water.

It's public and reflects a few things.

One, never underestimate the market's ability to come up with a product when people have cash in hand.

Sort of the the analogy I use was when it starts raining, there's an umbrella for sale every six feet in Manhattan.

And I'm like, where did this guy come from?

Where are they hiding these things?

Anyways, it is,

a lot are going to go out of vogue.

A lot are overvalued.

But I do think for the first time, these things are here to stay.

And here to stay.

Shamath.

These are SPAC positive.

I mean, there's what I'd call the bearded lady and the world's strongest man inside the tent.

And then there's the guy in front of the tent saying, come on in, come on in.

And Shamath has done, you can call him a storyteller, storyteller, a visionary, P.T.

Barnum, but he has been the face for SPACs.

And he was early.

He got them done early.

He was visionary about it.

But when you sell your entire stake, to be fair, it's not his entire stake because he has a company that owns other shares.

But when you sell $200 million in one day of your, there's just no getting around it.

It's a negative forward-looking indicator that an individual who understands his company fairly well and understands the market, he's a great investigator.

He's a lot of NFTs.

Maybe he's doing that.

But go ahead.

Well, this was the ultimate jiu-jitsu move, I thought, on his part.

He said, well, I'm still committed to their mission, despite selling a quarter of a billion dollars in stock.

But I'm taking the money to reinvest in climate change.

That's like saying, well, if he decides to bail on the shares of his other SPACs, is it going to be to cure cancer?

I thought that was an interesting

kind of

acrobatics or gymnastics to try and turn chicken shit into

chicken salad.

But it ended up just that one sale.

The whole market went.

Well, if Shamath, if the king of SPACs has decided to leave the kingdom and go on Oprah and talk about how much the kingdom sucks, then something's wrong.

And the whole space, and it's not his fault, but all you need is an excuse for a space that's overvalued to become linking value.

No question.

So they look, certain SPACs have raised the money and they have to either use it or lose it, right?

A bunch of two and a half years, two years.

So the ones that exist are going to have to back themselves into a bunch of companies.

Oh, I mean, you want to talk about it.

There's now something like 150.

Right, looking forward to that.

And I'll add if it's 150 billion searching, it's really more like half a trillion because they typically do staple on financing or a pipe.

So there just aren't that many great private companies.

So you're going to see

that

you're going to see SPAC start to go abroad.

You're going to see them go into Latin America and Europe.

But basically, there's too much capital looking for good private companies.

And then there's all that venture capital.

There's a lot of capital.

There's going to be a a special lot of spending going to be happening in the next few months, I think.

So what does it say about the IPO landscape in general?

That's a good question.

I think that it's bifurcating, and that is

people have been saying, or

the kind of easy narrative is, well, this hurts investment banks because now there's new investment bankers.

No, it's not.

Goldman and Morgan Stanley are taking SPACs public, taking their 7%.

And there's definitely a bifurcation, and that is investment banks, Goldman, and Morgan Stanley.

Everything distills down to one dynamic in our society,

iOS and Android.

And iOS is the premium kind of

higher end, more aspirational, cost more positioning, luxury positioning.

And Android is for the masses, and it works really well and is almost just as good, 80% of the value of iOS for 0% of the price.

And essentially, what you have now is SPACs that go public, and then you have companies that go public through JPMorgan,

Morgan Stanley, and Goldman.

And quite frankly, they are are just of a higher quality.

And so iOS is

the companies that choose to go public the old-fashioned way.

And everybody says, everybody complains, VCs though, they screwed up, they got a huge pop, they left money on the table.

It's a branding event.

If your company goes up 30%, 50, 100%,

you're not getting, you didn't lose 50% of your net worth.

Usually they only take 10% of the shares public.

So if you underpriced it, then you lost 5% for what is the branding event that you will never have again because you're on the cover of every business store the next day saying, you know, Coursera, which just filed to go public, up 40%.

So they purposely...

It's an ecosystem where everyone sort of wins.

And that is, okay, the initial shareholders complain that they left money on the table.

Sort of not really because of the branding event.

And also the investment bank gets to give a pop to their clients.

It's a big ecosystem.

It's a big.

So what happened?

These SPACs will find homes and they will find companies to back into them.

And then these IPO landscapes, what?

There's just more public companies or some are questionable, or they're fine, shitty companies.

We're catching up.

There's been a dearth of IPOs, and the number of companies publicly traded in the last 30 years has been cut in half.

So you could argue that this is just a regression to the mean, and there'll be more publicly traded companies.

I would say somewhere between a third and two-thirds of SPACs will trade below their offering price.

We're already getting there.

We're already starting to see the SPAC index come back to where they went public at.

But it's definitely, I think the mechanism as a form of fundraising is definitely here to stay.

This is an innovation that's going to be a very important thing.

It will not be quite this, it's a fervor.

Well, SPAC, if you look at the economic history of SPACs, they typically underperform the market because the investment committees at Morgan and Goldman are smart and can pick from the best companies.

Pick of the litter.

There's a lot of litter going on here.

That's right.

What do you think?

What's your

I think there won't be as much fundraising and everyone and their mother won't have a SPAC like everything else, just like Substacks or podcasts or anything.

Everyone all rushes into things and then they rush right out like you know audio space any everything everything and this is just the same thing and they'll run out of really good things to do and some of them will do well and some of them won't but um it's certainly an easier way for a lot of companies to go public for sure and we'll see where that goes whether they should be public is another question you just said almost nothing

you just said almost nothing you conditioned everything you literally conditioned everything it would be impossible for you to be wrong with what you just said no i don't i like anything else it over it could rain it might

It could rain, it might not.

There won't be.

All right, here's neither here nor there.

There will not continue to raise as much capital.

Some of these companies will do badly because they aren't as good at picking things up.

I just got very self-conscious.

You know, I'm self-conscious.

I think you got mean there.

That's okay.

It's, of course, it's International Women's Day and you attack a woman, but that's okay.

All right, Scott, let's go.

Quick break.

That is that.

Oh, by the way, that's entirely fair.

That's entirely fair.

You know what?

I look forward to a day.

I look forward to a time care when we don't need an international woman's day.

I feel unsafe.

I look forward

in this relationship.

I feel unsafe.

I feel unsafe.

I look forward to an age when we don't have to have an international woman's day.

Oh, my God.

Well, that would be nice.

I'm not only self-conscious when I'm not right under the law.

Same thing for everybody.

About you.

You saying I'm mean and not nice to women, which will always stick when you say that about me.

You know what I'm really self-conscious about?

We have to go to a break.

Well, hold on, hold on.

I tell you, I'm self-conscious.

And

you don't don't care.

I have all this family.

Profane interest.

Tell me about it.

I have all this family.

No, do what Oprah does.

What?

You're insecure?

You're what?

You're self-conscious?

Oprah will move it right along.

I have all this family.

I have all this family in London and Glasgow, and I'm worried.

My comments were supportive of the Crown, right?

They're not going to be mad at me.

Okay, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

Good.

There's not a queen you don't love.

Anyway, we'll go to a quick break.

When we get back, we'll talk about the future of education tech, and then we'll be joined by New York Times tech colonist Kevin Roos, who has a new book out called Future Proof.

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Okay, Scott, we're back.

Let's talk about your area of expertise, education tech.

Coursera is among the education tech companies going public this week.

And then your company, Section 4, has raised $30 million.

Speaking of not enough rat holes to shove all the cash down, your company, Section 4, has raised

$30 million.

Full disclosure.

We were just about to ask you to go on the advisory board of our rent.

No, thank you.

I don't do any advisory boards.

Explain to us, yes, I am, why you think education tech is the next big thing.

Please illuminate us on what you're doing there.

And what do you think about Coursera, too, and all these?

So what?

Education tech.

Tuition up 1400%.

The upward lubricant of the middle class in America has been access to cheap,

great education.

It's now become the caste system where we enforce on people, we say you're either the children of rich people or freakishly remarkable or you don't get into a great school.

And my cohort has become drunk on luxury and brag about turning away 95% of our applicants.

And the result is a transfer of wealth of $1.5 trillion, middle-class households to the endowments and pockets of administrators.

So there is the mother of all chins hanging out there.

My company, Section 4, is very straightforward.

I think the scarcest product in the world, when I say scarcity, I mean value relative to the number of people who are

the product is available to,

is the American MBA.

It's a global brand.

It is transformative.

Kids who come into the Haad School of Business at Berkeley are making 70 grand when they leave.

They're making 140 grand 24 months later.

It is transformative.

And unfortunately, the total market for graduate MBAs full-time is about 8,000 people a year.

If you are one of the 66% of America that doesn't get a college degree, not accessible.

If you're one of the 99% of America that can't take a half a million dollars in investment in lost income, you're shit out of luck.

If you're, say, have a kid at home or you're a single mom, there is no opportunity for you.

Or you've collected things like dogs and spouses.

So

what I, our vision is we want to make it accessible.

It's 10% of the price, 1% of the friction.

Education, well, by the way, I want to ask one, you're at NYU, so you're kind of playing against your business.

Biting the hand that feeds me?

Biting the hand that feeds you.

I've returned my compensation for the last decade, so they're no longer feeding me.

All right, so you just said that.

Enough virtue, signaling.

Yeah, okay, all right.

Go ahead.

So when you think about this, education kind of has failed us during the pandemic.

It's been a really bad experience, I think, for everybody.

And this idea of analog education or analog people going to school, people seem to, that's the one thing.

Telework, I see, telehealth, I see.

It's continuing.

But teleeducation just hasn't been as great as it could be, as it could be.

So

how do you justify that?

What do you think is that?

It's not either or.

The jig is up.

A lot of people have realized that they're paying $59,000 for a streaming video platform called Harvard when it's online.

Yeah.

And also, it's where are we headed the same way we're headed with office.

It's not going to be all remote.

But the dirty secret of every professor is the following.

We have two or three good jokes.

And what I mean by jokes is we have two or three real insights that our research has provided or produced.

And we stretch it out over 36 podium hours in 12 weeks such that our host institution can charge $7,000 or $8,000 for those 12 weeks.

You have just two things to say, really?

well I generally believe and the model of our framework is the following in two to three weeks with intensity team groups a bunch of TAs live streams videos we can get 70 to 80 percent of the intellectual property across to you for again 10 percent of the price and we've talked about Google's the Google certificates which I'm super excited about

no actually they tweeted back saying that this is when they're starting no no no you aren't paying attention they said stay tuned stay tuned in

tuned in okay i'm ready so so but anyways you're right.

But where I was headed with this is it's not going to all remote, because you're right.

Remote,

it's not, there's something to the electricity, but the dirty secret of higher ed is the following.

Half our classes, half our classes where there's not a lot of interaction could be done synchronously.

I'm not saying videos, but synchronously online and lower costs.

And what do you do?

You take UCLA back to 60% admittance instead of where it is 12%.

And by the way, their applications are up 28%, meaning the kids of single parents, parents, not remarkable, are no longer getting the same access to opportunities that you and me got 30 years ago.

So big tech, small tech, online learning, a mix.

It's a mix.

It's not zero one.

It's a hybrid.

It's some on campus.

So think of analog.

Are you back in school?

Are you back in school?

I will be in the fall.

Okay.

So there's a magic and a mystery to being in a classroom, Greek-style theater, seeing people's emotions.

It's fantastic.

But you could have 95% of that with six of those classes in

person and then six online.

And then we can lower the cost of increasing admissions risk.

What's the 6% that's

in person?

When you say the 6%, I understand.

Oh, I'm not sure.

Yeah.

What should be the real live analog session?

The key sessions that are important, and there are a lot of them, is when you have interaction with the students.

And it's the bumping up against your students where you say, okay, should Dotson have become Nissan?

Why was it good?

Why was it bad?

Should Google have launched YouTube?

I mean,

there's fantastic learning there, but there's also a lot of classes where you're basically just lecturing and they don't need to haul their ass to Soho or to Palo Alto or to Ann Arbor.

And also, it scales really well.

Online, I have two, I taught 160 kids.

I teach 160 kids in person because guess what?

That's the biggest classroom.

at Stern.

And, but when I go online, I have 280 kids.

So the question is, how do we leverage, I'm not saying replace, but supplement online such that we can dramatically increase scale and stop this bullshit of thinking we're Hermes and realize we're public servants again, dramatically increase acceptance rates, dramatically decrease costs, and provide younger people with the same opportunity my generation had.

And then gets a lot of money.

I don't know why I'm so angry.

Why am I so angry?

You're very angry about this because you just raised $30 million.

But let me ask you, what do you think about K through 12, though?

Seemingly problem

for a mental health person.

Why?

Look,

I think the two are totally different.

I think a 19-year-old taking half his classes at home or even trapped at home is a nuisance, but it's not a tragedy.

A fourth grader needs, in my view, and I have experience with this.

This is pulse marketing.

I feel like I have some research background in higher ed, but none in K-12.

But what I've noticed personally is when a fourth and a seventh grader are trapped at home and doing remote learning, your house can collapse.

That it's incredible stress on the mother.

And let's be honest, it's almost always the mother that picks up the slack.

And kids need socialization.

Kids need to make eye contact with their teachers.

They don't.

Not as much.

Not as much.

You know why?

Because the socialization, they'll do regardless of the class.

Well, essentially, so you're trying to put NYU out of business, I see.

This is what's happening here.

Is that correct?

I'm going to choose my words carefully here.

No, I'm going to give stock to NYU and NYU.

Actually, to their credit, they kind of embrace this stuff.

Let me put it this way.

I'll give you this.

They're more generous and patient with me than I would be with me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But they like this stuff.

They've even, they've actually approved some professors teaching on it.

They're trying to, they don't see it.

I am

it's not competitive because I can't get you the certification that a top 20 NBA gets you, and it's still incredibly powerful for all the shit.

And that's what should happen now.

That's the next shoe to drop, correct?

Certification, some sort of.

Well, that's what Coursera is trying to do.

Yeah.

Coursera, the original gangster here, has filed to go public.

I think that's going to be, I don't know if it'll get at the pop, but I think it's going to be a fantastic stock to own.

I should say that.

I shouldn't say that in time of the valuation, but these guys are the original gangsters.

They took a lot of arrows.

They got a lot of mud on their face.

They were the pioneers here.

And I think it's really exciting that they're going public.

Online education and capital.

really holds out the opportunity to move away from this bullshit, artificial constraint of campus and self-aggrandizing arrogant administrators at universities and move it back to where it needs to be.

And that is the greatest upward lubricant in the history of mankind.

And that is higher ed that is affordable and lets in unremarkable kids and says, You're unremarkable, but we're going to give you remarkable opportunities.

We become totally drunk on the freakishly remarkable and rich people.

Does that bother you that I'm freakishly remarkable and you're unremarkable?

That's my question.

I'm used to it.

I'm used to it.

All right.

This gets us in a perfect situation for our friend of Pivot.

Kevin Roos is a tech columnist for the New York Times.

He has a new book out called Future Proof, Nine Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation.

It focuses a lot more on automation, but Kevin, you've just been listening to us.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

So talk a little bit about future.

What do you think of what Scott's saying here?

Does this fit into your future-proof situation where we have to proof ourselves from future?

You're talking about automation most of the time, not online school, essentially.

Yeah, well, I think a lot of that is connected.

I think what we're seeing now, and the reason I wrote this book is because we've seen this huge influx of AI and automation into industry and higher education and journalism.

And it's changing all of our jobs and requiring us all to adapt.

And so I was just, I was freaked out because I was looking at my own future and thinking, like, what can I actually do to prepare for this?

And I think, as Scott said, like, I think we've...

we've realized now that some parts of what we do are likely to be sort of automated or taken online or disaggregated in some way.

And so

it's up to us to figure out how to deal with that.

Name some of the rules.

Tell us what the rules are.

Well, there are nine rules in the book.

The subtitles, nine rules for humans in the age of automation.

I want it to be more efficient than

the 10 commandments.

Okay, all right, okay.

So this is just nine here.

But yeah, they're basically three buckets of rules, and I won't list them all because that'll take forever.

But basically, there are three buckets.

One is how to future-proof your life at home, your brain,

your personal life, your family life, how to future-proof your career, and how to future-proof your community.

All right, give us one from each.

So the one that is

for your own self is that I think you need to find work that is, or you need to basically find things to do that are not going to be replaced by machines.

I think we've been training people for the future entirely wrong.

We've been teaching them to

become more machine-like, to major in STEM, to become super efficient, to take all the optimize and life hack their way to success.

And I think we really need to focus on the more human skills that machines can't replace.

Creative ones.

Yeah.

So creative ones, compassion.

I have three categories in the book of work that I think is unlikely to be automated soon.

And it's surprising, social, and scarce.

So those are the types of...

A career, one thing that I think you both have done very well is to what I call leave handprints, which is to you make yourself less of a sort of cog in a machine, to make it clear that

you are a human creating human work.

One of the things I got from interviewing AI experts and economists from this book is that in the future, things that are done by machines will become very cheap and things that are done by humans will become more valuable.

Artisanal.

We leave our dirty handprints.

You know that.

That's our thing.

Yeah, but

there's a lot of literature showing that we actually value things more when we think that people had a real hand in creating them.

And so that's something that people can do for their careers.

And for your community, I mean, I think that the sort of what we teach children and what we teach, you know, ourselves as adults is really important here.

I think that we've...

we need a kind of update to the curriculum that we've been teaching people now for 100 years, which is all about making people into effective

workers in an economy that rewards things like output and productivity and efficiency rather than the more human traits that I think people are going to end up moving to as a result of AI and automation.

Scott.

Gosh, I love that.

Leave handprints.

So first off, and this is the most important question, although it's a bit of a digression.

Do you meditate?

I try.

Yeah, I don't always succeed, but I try.

Because I can just hear in your voice.

You have nice chi and center.

We need to roll.

We need to hang because my testosterone therapy has totally made me jumpy.

So we'll talk after the show.

But anyways, kudos to you.

I can tell you're a centered person.

I love that hands-on.

Let me ask you the following.

My sense is we need a new approach that all capital sees

labor that doesn't have a double E from MIT as a cost and a negative, as opposed to looking at people and trying to figure out how automation enhances human capital instead of replaces it.

Don't we need a different mindset around robotics?

Isn't the problem us, not the robots?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean, one of the key lessons of the book is that robots don't do anything on their own right now.

I mean, we people say, you know, robots are coming for the jobs, but it's really the, you know, the executives at the Fortune 500 companies who are saying, I want to shrink, you know, the accounting department by, you know, 200 heads, or I need to, you know, squeeze out some more margin in next quarter's numbers.

So I'm going to automate these jobs away.

It's a really simplistic, really substitutive kind of automation that we're seeing a lot now.

It's, you know, as I put it in a story yesterday for the Times, like it's about replacing Phil in accounting rather than

becoming a market leader, doing new dynamic things, developing new products.

Economists call this like so-so automation.

It's like the kind that kind of sucks.

It's like the automated customer service line that you're like, I just want to press zero and get to a human.

Like, please put me through to a human.

That's the kind of automation we're seeing a lot in the corporate world right now.

And that's the part that's really dangerous because that's not actually adding to human capability.

That's not empowering workers.

That's not developing new tools that are going to move the economy forward.

It's purely substituting a machine for a human.

And what do you see as,

what do you think the most exciting technology, I mean, robotics is, my understanding is

an amalgam or an alchemy of different technologies.

What technology specifically do you think is

driving the boom in robotics?

And the reason I'm asking is what area, if people want to devote their human capital or financial capital,

not only just to robotics, but what is, you know, it was the micro, it was Intel that drove the computing revolution, you could argue, and that was a, Intel was a great stock to own.

What are the technologies that are driving robotics right now?

Well, machine learning is the big one.

I mean, that's the thing that is transforming automation from something that can do rote and repetitive work to something that can do more kinds of creative,

you know, sort of cognitive work.

And that's what we're seeing now is that, you know, people, I think, still conceive of AI and automation as this thing that's going to replace people in factories.

And the thing is, like, the factories are largely automated already.

That happened a long time ago.

Now, you know, the robots are doing more kind of like managerial tasks.

There's some great research out from the Brookings Institution in Stanford about the fact that actually the people at most risk of replacement from AI are white-collar professionals in big metro areas who are doing, you know, sales projections and data analytics and those kinds of sort of cognitive tasks that, you know, are done by people with college degrees who make a lot of money.

That's not safe the way that we thought it was.

So when you think about that, this debate right now is over the $15 minimum wage.

What happens to those jobs?

Do you feel that they're at risk?

Certainly.

I mean, retail is a big target of companies doing automation.

We've already started to see some of that happening with the self-serve kiosks at fast food restaurants.

Amazon just came online somewhere.

Where was it?

So I just hear that story.

I mean, I think what worries me is is

less the sort of threat of displacement for those workers, because I think some of that stuff is going to end up being surprisingly hard to automate.

But it's kind of turning, it's using automation and AI to turn workers into human robots, essentially.

Essentially, this is what we see.

Like at Amazon warehouses.

Exactly.

So if you work at an Amazon warehouse, you know, you are taking instructions from one algorithm.

You're putting things into a box.

You're wearing a bracelet that tracks your productivity.

You can be fired if you miss your packing target.

I mean, it's, it's essentially these jobs are kind of human robots.

And I think that that's one of the cautionary tales.

And they have the arms to do it right now until they figure out arms that can do it better.

Exactly.

And so those people, you know, should be concerned.

But it's also like there are very, there are ways that this can improve workers' lives, that people can be freed up from mundane, you know,

tasks.

And we're just not seeing enough of that right now we're seeing you know i want to replace 10 people in accounts payable so i'm going to buy this off the rack you know ai solution that can do that for me

so should we work at all like i mean this idea of you know there's all those movies where we just sit in chairs and eat and then robots take care of it is that the is that do you predict that's what's going to happen with automation or is there any need for humans

Yeah, I think there's definitely

obviously there is, but there's definitely a need for humans.

I'm not full dystopian, but I think that our jobs are going to change a lot.

I think that right now a lot of people are employed in jobs that involve making things.

And I think that the future of jobs are going to be jobs that involve making people feel things.

It's going to be the kind of things that bring about human connection.

You know, it's not going to be enough to be a really good radiologist.

You're going to have to have a good side, good bedside manner, too, so that people have a reason to come to you rather than going to an AI.

Scott?

And what do you, we were just talking about education.

Do you see any thoughts around robotics as it relates to education and also healthcare?

Yeah, I mean, these are the areas that have been sort of resistant to automation.

You know, we don't have robots teaching college classes, most of them

yet.

We don't have robot doctors, many of them yet, but that's coming.

And I think that, you know, we need to stop educating people and telling them that they need to take on the machines head on to sort of compete with them, like the old, you know, John Henry thing.

And we need to start telling people what they can do that is not going to be disrupted by these forces.

And that's a journey that I've been on too.

I mean, I'm a journalist at a newspaper.

That's not like the most future-proof job.

But wait, wait, why not?

How are you?

How are you getting replaced?

Well, for example,

one of my first jobs in journalism was I was, you know, I covered finance and I wrote corporate earnings

You know, Alcoa made, you know, this much money last quarter in their smelting division, like that kind of thing.

And that's largely been automated in just the last 10 years.

Those jobs are few and far between now.

And I think there's another way in which automation has changed our industry, which is something that we don't talk about as much, which is that we've replaced these people who we used to call editors and ad salespeople with algorithms run by Google and Facebook that now choose what to show people and and sell the ads around it.

So there's been a lot of automation happening in our industry.

It just hasn't been happening at the news organizations.

It's been happening in Silicon Valley.

Your insight and your word, artisanal, is really, I think, striking insight as I think about it.

And I'm going to parrot it as my own, but the notion that any activity that's rote, That's the opposite of artisanship, right?

I mean, what you do, and I think

most of the journalists other than Kira Swisher at the New York Times do, is it's artisanal.

They actually come up with original ideas that no AI for decades is going to be able to do.

And I think that's a very interesting way of looking at saying, okay, artisanship.

So how do you prepare a new generation

of people coming up and maybe the ones that don't have access to college?

How do you encourage or how does our education system instill artisanship?

Well, I think it has to start from instilling a sense that this stuff is valuable, that you're not going to be unemployable if you're a

musician or a philosopher or a sociologist.

I mean, there was this really strong thread coming out of Silicon Valley for many years about the fact that STEM education was all that mattered.

That I think Mark Andrews said, English majors are going to end up working in shoe stores and stuff like that.

And so we really defunded and devalued those humanities programs.

And I I think we're starting to see the results of that.

I had a tech CEO tell me, you know, recently, like, I can hire tons of engineers, but I'm having a lot of trouble hiring salespeople because no one in the Bay Area has the people skills to be able to go to a company and sell them software.

And like, that is a real missing piece in.

the economy today are the people with those kind of empathetic human communication skills.

And I think we need to start reorienting the curriculum that we teach to kids

around that.

The jobs would be healthcare workers, that would be social workers, they would be what else?

Well, I think that the sort of categories that are sort of most automation resistant right now are in things like healthcare.

But I actually think that the job-based sort of taxonomy of like, this job is going to be totally safe from automation and this other job is not going to be safe.

I think that's the wrong way to look at it.

I think it's about the way that you do that job.

Are you doing it in a a rote and repetitive way?

Or are you doing it in a creative and human way?

And so that's what the book is trying to sort of guide people to is like, even if your job is not, you know, being an artist, even if you're an accountant, like there are ways to do that job that are more human and more, you know, less automatable.

And so.

pushing people toward those parts of their jobs is one of the goals here.

But when do computers get the ability to do that?

Or are they on that?

You're already starting to see sort of AI do some kinds of, you know, sort of emotional, what I would call like emotional work, like analyzing emotions.

I mean, they've implemented, you know, bots that are sort of therapy bots for, you know, people who are, who, you know, who need some sort of assistance there.

In education, I mean, you know, you already see

things that are sort of being,

you know, dynamic curricula that are being, you know, used by AI or that, you know, is using AI to sort of personalize learning for people.

And I think those kinds of jobs are

something to think about.

But I do think that this kind of task-based, this sort of job-based framework is not the right one.

I think we need to be thinking less about what you're supposed to be doing to prevent, to make yourself future-proof and more about how you're supposed to be doing it.

And there are certain jobs that really are, right, but have a big red target on them for sure.

Sure.

But

that's not to say that those jobs are going to go extinct.

I mean, even though the corporate earnings reports, journalists are not doing so well these days,

people who are creative and flexible and very human are finding ways to make money off of it.

So I think that's where the value is going is to the things that are sort of deeply human and away from the things that are more mechanistic and based on sort of productivity and output.

So whenever you write a book, you go in with a set of kind of

predetermined theses around what the book is going to be about.

There's some thoughts on, okay, I want to write about X, Y, and Z.

And then you do the research, you write the book, and typically you discover a couple of things that sort of change your view.

What did you come out after writing this book?

What changed in your view of automation and robotics?

So I started off as basically an optimist about AI and automation.

And I still am, although I've tempered it somewhat.

I now call myself a sub-optimist because I think this technology can be amazing if we do it right and thoughtfully.

I mean, it could free us from our worst tasks.

It could

solve world hunger and climate change and

cure diseases.

The technology is not the problem.

It's the people who are implementing the technology right now that's the problem.

And so I think that's what's changed in my view of

AI and automation is that

it's not a guarantee that all this is going to improve people's lives.

We actually have to make to work hard to make that happen.

And people need to prepare themselves.

It's not enough to

attend a coding boot camp anymore.

You really

have to work on yourself so that you're ready and you're not as replaceable as you might be right now.

So speaking, I'm going to ask you one further question.

Speaking of the people responsible for making these decisions about algorithms or automation or cutting costs, they're people doing this at the top who just want to make more money and they want to cut costs.

And the pandemic's been a way to hide a lot of these sins, essentially.

Like, why not do this?

I've heard like,

I have three or four people have gotten laid off recently who had jobs like that that that they're trying.

We're saving costs now since the pandemic, but I think it's just a feint because this is what they want to do in the first place.

But one of the things you do write about, and I'd love your comment at the end of this, you write a lot about misinformation and you've sort of looked at the past year or two.

And these hearings are coming up on Capitol Hill around the impact of social media networks on

the attack on the Capitol.

What is your assessment right now?

Given you're a sub-optimist, but I think in this case, you may not be an optimist, but I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I think the misinformation conversation is related to the automation conversation.

I think, you know, a lot of what we talk about when we talk about automation is kind of external automation, you know, like robots coming into factories and stuff like that.

But there's a kind of internal automation that's happening to a lot of people that is really worrisome.

And I include myself in that.

I mean, every day we wake up and we look at our phones and we are just fed algorithmic, you know, feeds and machine generated recommendations.

And

our phones and our devices are telling us what to think about.

And misinformation

has always been present, but now it's sort of

hyper-present because of these algorithms and the platforms that use them.

And so I think it's not only enough to sort of like

get the right job to

future-proof your career,

it's also about detaching yourself from some of the kind of

the sort of technologies that exist to sway your opinion, to you know persuade you of something that maybe you don't want to be persuaded of, and to ultimately sort of confuse you about who you are.

I mean, you have to know yourself better than the algorithms know yourself, or else you're going to be replaced.

And how do you look at these companies now?

How they influence us?

Well, I think they exert tremendous influence, and I think they don't want to admit it, but they, you know, they do have, I mean, that's another thing that I think I've become much more skeptical on is I think that, you know, AI is never going to make for

an effective sort of editing function.

What we've seen at Facebook, you know, they've been promising for years, you know, we're going to automate content moderation.

AI is going to take over, it's going to filter out all the hate speech and all the misinformation.

And I think what they've realized belatedly is that humans are just better at that.

And so you have to bring in a bunch of people and train them and put them to work in content moderation

divisions, and that that's sort of a mistake of over-automation and underinvestment in human potential.

On that note, Kevin, your book is called Future Proof.

It's an excellent book.

I've read it.

Nine Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation.

Thank you so much.

Let's roll, Kevin.

Don't roll with them.

I need the T.

Don't roll with them and figure out a way I can put one of those Amazon watches on Scott and make sure his productivity is.

And Kara, I should say, like, you are a big part of the reason that this book exists at all.

Because I threatened you.

Yeah, because a couple of years ago, we were talking and I said, I have this idea for this book called Future Proof about how people can protect themselves from AI and automation.

And you said, you know, well, that's a great idea.

And if you don't write it, I'm going to.

And

I said, as Michael Jordan would say, that about sums up, Kara Switzerland.

I was trying to get him to do it.

I wasn't going to do it.

And as Michael Jordan would say, I took that personally.

Yes, good.

She left her handprints on you.

I left my handprints.

I was trying to scare you because you thought I could.

You thought I could, and I might.

That's right, right?

Good for you.

I opened it.

Exactly.

So thank you for inspiring me to do this piece.

Through fear and loathing is how I like to do it.

And I'm glad it's here.

It's a beautiful thing.

Congrats on the book.

And congrats.

Do not hang with Scott.

Let me just give you that piece of advice.

Don't say another piece of advice.

Don't say that.

We're going to double date with Megan and Harry.

Okay.

Don't insult them.

And Oprah.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Kevin.

Congrats on the bank.

We get our dirty handprints on the rest of the show, but we really appreciate it.

It's a great

thing.

You should all buy it.

Okay, Scott, we'll be back after one quick break for wins and fails.

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Okay, Scott, wins and fails.

Obviously, your failure to marry Mackenzie Scott was

a grave error, despite the fact that you are.

Oh, I have a trivia question for you, Kara.

okay go ahead and this is my win okay do you know which organization is responsible for three quarters of all charity money given last year by philanthropists for pandemic relief

the u.s government who is responsible for three quarters

i'll make it easy what individual is responsible for three quarters of all pandemic related giving philanthropy last year bill gates

mackenzie scott oh there you go so my win i think mackenzie scott is a wonderful person I loved, and we talked about this, rather than taking, and you'll like this, a male approach to giving where she wants her name etched in marble, rather than hiring a bunch of Yale grads in social justice and RFPs and pretending to understand

their viewpoint should influence education in Newark or Connecticut.

She just said, people are hurting.

I have money and I'm going to push it out.

That was a bold gangster move.

And she's marrying a science teacher.

Good for her.

You're in love with someone who's a science teacher.

You're worth $30 billion.

You're empathetic.

You're changing the world.

Mackenzie Scott, you deserve all the happiness that is coming to you.

I like that.

What's your fail?

My fail is

so the stimulus package gets through.

I think that's a great thing.

I think this stimulus is less bad than the rest, the relief package.

But it just struck me that Joe Manchin, the senator from West Virginia, was the only senator.

And that is the Senate is supposed to be a deliberative body.

We're supposed to, they're supposed to argue, and then they're supposed to compromise with each other based on evidence and argument.

And what we have now is essentially red and blue.

And they all get into their caucuses and say, all right, Nancy and Chuck or Kevin and

whoever else runs the Republican caucus and say, this is how we're voting, yes or no.

And it's literally a party line vote.

And for once, we had an individual.

And I don't, you know, I don't know Senator Manchin that well.

I don't know much, I don't want to make an assessment on whether his arguments were the right one.

But he is doing, he's the one senator.

He is doing what they're all supposed to do, and that is negotiate and hammer out things and say, okay, maybe the other folks have a point.

So

let's get together.

And it just struck me that right now, as we sit here today, we are one for 100 in terms of deliberation and what the Senate is actually supposed to be doing.

That's my fail.

I like that.

I like that.

I think that's excellent.

I didn't so much, I think a fail for me was Kristen Sinema doing the weird hands-down thing.

I thought that was thoughtless.

Say more?

She was voting against the $15 minimum wage, which is fine.

Like, she can make her choices if she wants.

I do think the Democrats failed in pushing it out so much.

And they should have done it at 10 and 12.

You know, I know it was gradually, it just seemed like an opportunity lost in that one but i didn't like how she voted she she came out she put her thumbs down like john mccain did during the healthcare thing and then she curtsied and i thought well you know what you don't even if you lose you're you're on a losing site you don't want to be made fun of um i didn't like that very much i didn't like that not at all um here's what i did like i did like uh uh the the the vaccinations are going i like how it's moving it feels like there's some moving and i think it is a failure that schools are not haven't reopened and there's only so much time left in the year So that means kids really won't go back to school till September.

But I do think that

the vaccinations and the CDC is releasing important information.

I think the Biden administration's done a nice job here.

And

so that's, there is sort of a feeling of possible hopefulness in the news, which I think was going to happen in some fashion at some point.

But you do feel like winter is over.

I don't know why.

I just feel like it is.

It actually physically is here in Washington, but that's what it feels like.

So I feel hopeful.

I feel hopeful.

That's nice.

That's what I feel like.

In any case.

So, Scott, thank you so much.

This has been a delightful time.

I'm very happy you got raised money.

I'm serious.

I am happy you raised money.

You sound happy for my rabbit hole?

You sound happy.

Rat hole.

Not a rabbit hole.

Rat hole.

My rabbit hole.

Rat hole.

That's the expression I used to use when there was so much money in Silicon Valley chasing stupid startups.

I don't think these are stupid startups.

I think I'm happy that there's going to be serious startups done going forward.

I feel like climate change, whatever you think of Jamath putting the money, it's climate change tech, education tech, health tech.

I'm good with all those things.

I'm good with all those things, and I think they're important for the planet.

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

We'll be back Friday.

For more, go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your questions for the Pivot podcast.

We love listener mail.

The link is also in our show notes.

Scott, read us out.

Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Ernie Indra Todd engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Hannah Rosen and Drew Burroughs.

Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, or if you're an Android user, check us out on Spotify, or frankly, wherever you listen.

If you like the show, please recommend it to a friend.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things

tech and business, three-quarters of all philanthropic giving last year, a pandemic-related giving.

Thank you so much from the country.

Congratulations, Mackenzie Scott.

This month on Explain It to Me, we're talking about all things wellness.

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well.

Collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It to Me, presented by Pureleaf.

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