Why the future is human ... plus AI | Sal Khan and Esther Perel

0:02You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. We're back with the next episode of our original series, TED Intersections. The show features unscripted conversations between experts navigating the ideas shaping our world. As AI reshapes work and daily life and just about everything at a speed that's hard to keep up with, We keep circling back to a question many of you may be wondering. What part of being human can't a machine take over? There's one answer that's surprising because it's showing up in an unexpected place, the job market.

0:41This is a skill or set of skills that the workplace actually wants. And they're not calling it soft skills anymore. They're calling it durable skills. And these are human skills. These make you a better human being. So this is an example of the vocation is asking for you to become a better human. That's Sal Khan, Ted's vision steward and CEO of Khan Academy, who has spent his career rethinking how we learn. He's in conversation with relationship therapist Esther Perel, who has spent hers rethinking how we love. Together, they get into the history of how we've made sense of uncertainty, whether we're actually getting better at living or just better at optimizing, and whether it's true that we've started to treat love like a commodity.

1:23Optimizing is when people embrace romantic consumerism. Oh, yes. When they commodify each other. And they go with a shopping list looking for a life partner. They don't agree on everything, but they land in the same hopeful place. That the future doesn't have to be human versus machine. Maybe it can be human plus? That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:29And now, our TED Conversation of the Day. What worries me is that we are more and more disembodied. We gather less, we party less, we drink less. 74 % of food that is cooked in an American restaurant is eaten off the premises. What worries me is that we can't really deal with the messiness of human life the way that we are called upon to do.

5:07Where should we begin? Do you want to go first? No, no, no. Okay, let me see. I'll shuffle it up a little. Well, it's not... Okay, I'll put this in case they rigged it. If you could redesign one system from scratch, what would it be and why? I actually... If you give me that card, I would put it back in the bowl. No, no, no, no, you don't answer that? No, because I actually don't think that I have... there is no system that I would redesign from scratch, but there's only one system that I know well, that is the mental health system. So I think that there's so much that one can do to improve the services in mental health.

5:57Institutionally, training-wise, service delivery, interconnection to the legal system, to the medical system, it's a huge systemic redesign. and I actually work with very small systems, couples, families, groups. My systems are microsystems. What would you say is one system that you would redesign from scratch? Oh, well, probably the one that... It's an enormous question. It's a big question. Well, you had a good answer. You had a good answer. The one people would expect me to answer, and this would be the system, is the education system. I talk a lot about that we've always known that the ideal education system is one that's very personalized.

6:38I always talk about that Alexander the Great had Aristotle as his personal tutor. And throughout most of human history, if you had resources, if you were a young prince, you did have a very good education. You fast forward to 200, 300 years ago, we have a very utopian idea, mass public education, but we have to make compromises. We have to batch students together, move them all together at the same pace, have some state-mandated curricula standards. If a student doesn't understand a concept and gets a C, too bad that C is in their transcript forever, and they move on having to build on that C as opposed to having a chance to keep learning it so they can get it to a B or an A.

7:15So I would, instead of making it one size fits all, I'd make it personalized. Instead of making it, you only get one shot to get the grade and then you build on that gap, I would make it mastery-based, which means keep learning, which is what you would do today if you're learning a musical instrument or a sport, becoming an Olympian. And I think the credential should be the same way. higher education should be the same way. It should be what you know, not how long you sat in a chair. But you are looking at mastery and knowledge acquisition. Do you include in your definition of education also the relational component?

7:47100%. And I think this is something that's also been missing. You know, one of the main arguments people have always given for, especially why in-person schooling is so important, is that's a way to build social connections, socialization, learn to deal with conflict, relationships. And I agree. That is where many of us develop that, but nowhere on your transcript does it say that you are a good collaboration, you are a good listener. And so I would also, and I think we have an interesting opportunity in the coming years to really... Do you know why? Why? Because relationship skills and relational intelligence, even in the workplace, has always has been considered soft skills.

8:31And soft skills used to be seen as feminine skills. And feminine skills are often highly regarded in principle and they're disregarded in reality. And that is fundamentally changing now. For the first time, relationship skills and relational intelligence are actually part of the bottom line and they're seen as hard skills. And if the workplace needs it, the education system is gonna begin to value it too. 100%, you know, all of the talk these days about AI and how you develop skills for AI. And we're working on some higher education initiatives, including with TED and Khan Academy. And the skill, when we talk to employers, yes, they want people to know how to vibe code and do this with that model.

9:11But the one they really care about, and they're calling them durable skills now, are communication, collaboration, creativity, listening skills, relationship skills. So 100 % agree. Yeah, yeah. But it's interesting that it comes from the workplace and it will create, you know, in the same way that the workplace and the economy and the technological changes have constantly changed the curriculum, now it's going to change the relational aspects of education. And one last thing, we could talk the whole time on this one question. I'll say one last thing about that because sometimes there's a people view, oh, if you're preparing people for work, it's vocational and they view that as less than the pure academics.

9:50But this is an example of this is a skill or set of skills that the workplace actually wants. And they're not calling it soft skills anymore. They're calling it durable skills. And these are human skills. These make you a better human being. So this is an example of the vocation is asking for you to become a better human.

10:11What is a conversation that you think the world needs to have yet isn't ready for yet? There is, I think, a high likelihood that we have major disruptions actually in almost every dimension of our world in the next five to 10 years. The most obvious places in the world of work, where anyone from an Uber driver, you have the Waymos coming in, to a call center worker, to a software engineer, those jobs are either going to be transformed dramatically or there might be shrinkage. Some people say, oh, new jobs always get created, but hope isn't a strategy. And if we don't do anything about it, it's not just, and this is bad enough because those people have families.

10:50They're not going to find other jobs. It has follow-on effects. But one of the biggest ones is going to go into politics. It's going to go to polarization. A lot of people think, and I agree, that a lot of the polarization that we're seeing today is because of 30 years of globalization. But that took 30 years. If this takes three years or even five years, we don't have the systems to do something about it. So I think we have to have that conversation. And I think there will be a reemergence of people looking for the transcendent, the spiritual, whatever you want to call it. Because as AI starts to encroach on the things that we used to think were uniquely human, we are all going to be looking, one, we need the purpose and work.

11:32If we don't find that, hey, how am I contributing to society and how am I supporting my family? It's hard to think about anything else. But then we also want to think about what am I? Who am I in this grand thing? So those are the conversations we should be having with more urgency. What do you think are the conversations? I mean, the conversation I am participating in and trying to shape as well is the conversation about relationships. Because I think relationships are undergoing a massive makeover. The norms are literally shifting under our feet. and we don't necessarily have the skills because globalization is one piece, but social atrophy is something else.

12:11And so I think they are more complicated than they've ever been. Certainly in the parts of the world where they are organized by negotiation. It's no longer about duty and obligation and loyalty and community. Then you know what you need to do. You know what you need to accept. You know what you can and cannot change. And you know what decisions are on your shoulders and what is decided for you. But if you live in a model of individualism that puts the individual in the center and you are to negotiate and to make the decisions, then you have a lot more freedom, of course. But it demands a very different process.

12:49And it demands adaptability. It demands flexibility. It demands excellent communication skills. You know, if it's father decides and nobody argues, then you don't really need to develop many skills of communication. But if it's about being seen and understanding and feeling valued, then... So I think, interestingly, that I go to a lot of places that have moonshots about everything, but there is not to be a moonshot about relationships. What is a family today? How do we define the circle of care? What are the boundaries that people want to draw around their relationships? You have to negotiate.

13:30Have I found the right one? Am I ready for commitment? Do we want the same things? Who will wake up to feed the baby? Will we have a baby? How many babies? When do we want this baby? Will we visit your parents? Will we visit my parents? I mean, it goes on and on from the small to the big. And now it's what is AI companionship. Yeah, it's wild.

13:57Don't go away. We'll be right back with more of this conversation right after a short break.

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15:28That's what you'll hear on Season 6 of Planet Visionaries, stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

16:06What worries you about the future of how we connect with each other? What excites you? I love the fact that there is also what excites you. What worries me is that we are living more and more in a contactless world, that you don't have to leave your house. You don't. You can make a living. You can work. You can exercise. You can feed yourself. You can shop. I mean, it's just an unbelievable thing. And that is an enormous amount of points of contact that are being deleted. So, you know, we are becoming more machine. It's not just we are interacting with machines. Maybe the machines are going to actually resemble us quite a bit.

16:46What worries me is that we are more and more disembodied. We are less and less in real person, in real life. We gather less. We party less. We drink less. 74 % of food that is cooked in an American restaurant is eaten off the premises. So that whole aspect of what worries me is that we look for the same kind of predictability and perfection that the apps give us in our relationships to other humans. We want them to be just as perfect and predictable. What worries me is that we can't really deal with the messiness of human life the way that we are called upon to do. What excites me is that some of our fundamental human needs are so strong that we will find ways to connect, even if it's connecting to a machine.

17:38You know, we will find ways to express our longings, our aspirations, our yearnings, our loss, our need for adoration. And what I really am interested in is the proliferation of small groups, new small groups that come together around a shared purpose, a shared vision, an activity. it's like you see that there's a fatigue of just being constantly on a screen. There's something about meeting another human or humans in person. What do you think? It's easy sometimes to think that you live in a special moment in history, but I do think we're living in a very special moment in history. A lot of people have been theorizing about entering some type of a singularity for the last several decades, and as far as we can tell, well, we are in that singularity, whether it's artificial intelligence, biotech, manipulating the human genome.

18:37I mean, all of these things are converging at the same time. And one of the things that defines a singularity is you don't know what's on the other side. So that, by definition, is scary. We're afraid of things that we don't understand that we can't predict. And I think it's happening at an accelerating. And so I do worry. Everything you just said is 100 % true. But may I say something? I hear it a lot, this thing about we have uncertainty and we are, we have always had uncertainty, massive uncertainty, but we had religion. Religion was the intermediary between, and we trusted religion. A trust is the intermediary between the unknown and the known.

19:15And religion helped you deal with the unintelligible, with why people suffer, not that they won't suffer, but how to bear the suffering, and with why bad things happen to good people, the question of morality and evil. So we had a system in place that helped us with the ethical and the existential dilemmas of our lives. I don't think we were less or more uncertain, except for a very short period in time after World War II, where my generation had a kind of a boundless optimism. But for the rest, I think that what we have lost is the mechanisms that we used to use to deal with our uncertainty, not the fact that we have more uncertainty.

19:58No, it's a good point, too, because you're right. For most of human history, the uncertainty— Did you grow up in religion? I did not grow up in a religious family. And, you know, but I agree with you. I actually think you're going to see a revival of religion or religion-adjacent types of structures, I think. And I actually find that that can be exciting. I think that's going to be—that could be a good thing. And you're right. Even though I might say, oh, singularity, what's it going to be like in two or three years, uncertainty. The reality is for most of human history, the uncertainty was, where am I going to get my next meal?

20:29Oh, that neighboring tribe wants to come and kill us. Oh, my child's probably not going to live until they're five years old. Now, most of those things aren't our concerns. Especially in most of the developed world, we're not afraid of feeding ourselves. And they are these more meta-level things of human purpose and what's that AI going to be able to do. but it will to some degree a society in which even if you have uncertainty around your crop or where you're going to go find the next food to you know hunt and gather or whatever at least you have certainty about your place in it you have certain certainty of like oh and religion can provide some of that framework cultural traditions just yes where you fit in rituals rituals and I think that's the scary thing is that we don't know what our place is going to be in this world.

21:21And what excites me, though, is it's an opportunity to build, rebuild, maybe resurrect some of these things that have been throughout our history and we realize we need it. Religion, rituals, other forms of connection, culture, relationships. We're going to have even more abundance in terms of serious people talking about diseases being cured and understanding the cosmos and breakthroughs in science. Incredibly exciting. but they are all human plus AI right I think that it's at this point what needs to shift is the human versus AI has to become the human plus there is something in the power of this too there's something about a thing that augments me I mean you know if I can call you soon I mean I remember the the facts at the first the first moment it's like and I was all the time excited about the rapidity, the speed with which I was going to be able to communicate with people who were far away.

22:20What do we still have to learn as humans? A ton. Man, we are just, are we actually getting better at living or just better at optimizing? I think that is probably the best question. Because when I look at love and AI, I think that we at this moment are optimizing intimacy into something that is manageable, measurable, and disposable. And we have brought out metrics and markets to love. It is one of the most incredible things that because if there is something that has never been defined in data, it's love. It's not, you know, it's a feeling, it's a condition, it's a state, it's an action, it's a verb that you conjugate.

23:07It's so many things and are we getting better at living or better at optimizing? I think that from a relationship standpoint, there is something really powerful and questioning or questionable for me in how much we're bringing a technological approach to relational dilemmas when relational dilemmas are often not problems that you solve but paradoxes that you manage. 100%. You know, I think we're hopefully transitioning from an optimization state to a thriving state. How do you know that? Well, for decades now, and as a child of the 80s, we all, Gordon Gekko on Wall Street famously said, greed is good.

23:54Capitalism won the Cold War. We all fixate on GDP, where the stock market is going. and I used to be a hedge fund analyst before I did Khan Academy and you see that people are optimizing but they're optimizing around the things that they can measure which is oftentimes money or some other measurable thing and it's not that those are... From a relationship standpoint Oh yeah, those are... Optimizing is when people embrace romantic consumerism Oh, yes When they commodify each other and they go with a shopping list looking for a life partner. That's an optimization. That is an optimization. That's not money-based.

24:34But I think it comes from this. It's a very similar. The mentality is capitalism. Exactly. It's emotional capitalism. It's the same. What is my return on investment? Yes. I'm going to put this in and I need to maximize what I get out. It's the exact. But I think it's all a related culture. I think we're starting to get into a phase now. You know, I have many people in my circle who have done very well on some of those optimizations, at least say the monetary optimization. And they're realizing that, yes, if you're barely getting by and you're stressed about it, that those first few dollars have a lot of incremental benefit to you.

25:06But beyond a certain point, and most people are probably further than they realize. Incremental benefit is a bit of an abstract concept for something that gives people survival and ability to care for their own rights. Well, that's huge. That's what I'm saying. It's a huge benefit early on. But at some point, it's a smaller and smaller. But they're just used to optimizing for that. And as your point, they might take that same mentality and optimize for their relationships and then be frustrated that they're not thriving because their relationships are either they never find that perfect optimization.

25:38Or they're looking for the perfect and they resist the good because they're looking for the perfect. Can I do better? Can I do better? How much more can I get? And in fact, it is the greed transposed to can I do better with my hacking? Can I do better with who I'm living with? Can I do better on my dating? It is emotional capitalism 101. Yeah, I never thought about it that way, but you're right. You know, I mean, what is fascinating is how the emotional realm, the psychological realm has entered the business world. And we talk about safety and trust at the same conversation as we talk about performance indicators.

26:20And we talk about vulnerability and all of these things. That's a whole vocabulary that has entered the workplace. but the same thing has happened from the workplace and the business world into our intimate lives return on investment hedging your bets you know what's the deal we're going to strike yeah what's going to happen when we break up because we're going to break up eventually you know it's not it's not till we die it's still love dies exactly you know but hopefully that's changing i think we are seeing and this goes back to i think you're going to see spirituality and adjacent things to spirituality, people hopefully invest more in each other, and hopefully we get back to thriving.

26:58You're optimistic. I mean, I'll join you. I'm hope-tomistic. I like that. I like that. I'll join you on the train of hope. Let's do it.

27:13That was a conversation between Saul Kahn and Esther Perel for our original series, TED intersections. Visit TED.com to watch this conversation and others from the series. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott.

27:54Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.

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