Billy Riggs (00:42)
So welcome. welcome to Rewiring the American Edge. I'm Billy Riggs and, this is our sixth episode and super excited today to host, Ruth Whittaker and, from the Chamber of Progress.

If you joined us last time, we had an interesting discussion about "guarding the gates," but the future of how we think about sharing knowledge across borders, sharing ideas across borders. Check it out.

We, are a spinoff of the Autonomous Vehicles and the City Initiative, focusing on innovation, entrepreneurship, all things, jobs, the economies, but also entrepreneurship and innovation; but, really spinning off of this idea of, what's happening with the automation and innovation economy;

that really came about based on my work in transportation and autonomous vehicles and people's work in this idea of generative AI. So it really all became apparent based on this work that we were doing in the tech space. So we're really excited today to have someone that's done some work thinking about the future of jobs and tech. Today we have Ruth Whittaker.

from the Chamber of Progress. So, Vip, Ruth.

Yeah, let's talk how the workforce is going to evolve in the future.

All right. Hey, Vip, how's it going? And welcome, Ruth. Really excited to host you and talk about the future of labor.

Ruth, before I spoil introduction, Ruth Whittaker, Chamber of Progress, would you like to introduce yourself to our vast global audience?

Ruth Whittaker (02:26)
Sure, yeah, excited to be here. I'm the Director of Civic Innovation Policy at Chamber of Progress, which is a tech industry coalition. So we represent a pretty broad swath of the tech industry, but my role in particular focuses on autonomous vehicles in addition to a number of other sort of.

tech services that interact with the physical infrastructure of our lives, how we get around, how we get food, where we work and how we earn.

Billy Riggs (02:49)
That's cool. Yeah. And I think one of the things and one of the things I was really interested in excited about talking to you on on our podcast and as a part of our Autonomous Vehicles and the City Initiative is, is frankly talking about this one of the I think the most misunderstood issues is kind of in this automation debate is kind of

not only the jobs we're losing, but the jobs that we're, not seeing. And what I, what I consider the back of house industry. And I think Vipul, maybe you, you talk a lot of it, but this kind of like the job amplification, also that, mean, you, talk a lot about kind of implication, but also retooling and kind of like how we need to kind of prepare for the future of it. Well, I don't know if you want to kind of like,

Add to that a little bit.

Vipul Vyas (03:40)
Sure, in terms of preparing for the future, I don't think we know what the future is or what it's going to look like really. And so at least I don't. given, you know, there's a bunch of hypotheses we can make. But the question in my mind is, do you make some bets, conscious bets as to where things are going and

Billy Riggs (03:53)
Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (04:07)
put your chips down on those bets, like where you know you need to. And this is sort of the way that China operates in some regard. You you have a central command economy and you can say, we're gonna bet on EVs, we're gonna bet on green tech, and we're gonna bet on these collection of different technologies and spaces that we think represent the future. And so you have that approach. The other approach is,

maintaining absolute maximum flexibility and a very decentralized fragmented landscape with minimal regulation or minimal encumbrance to people just having thousands of different ideas and one of them emerging. So if you look at warfare right now, and I'll wrap this up, but you know, no one anticipated the way things were.

playing out in say, Ukraine or even the recent India Pakistan conflict, where you had a lot of drones and AI based fighting tools that we haven't seen before that dominated the landscape. And so that's not where the US from a command perspective, as an example, has been making its bets. It's making it with like Boeing and Lockheed and whatnot. And then you have Andrel, which is this thing that's happening on its own on the side. And the point of that analogy is that in the US,

if we just sort of left it to making bets centrally, then, and that was all, then we would have missed things. Now there's a compromise. think that the Chinese approach is just to example, you know, between the Chinese and the American approaches is that they've made massive strides in certain areas, but there's also potential misallocation of capital and resources by virtue of that.

And in the US system, we've also, we've kind of a little bit of both and probably the suboptimal way, not good at either. So we got to fix that. That's a real problem actually. I think Jamie Dimon said it best recently where we are right now probably our own worst best enemy or we're our own worst enemy, best enemy, it's probably just the same. But in that, we have not sort of let people do things in a way that explores lots and lots of ideas, although we still have that attribute.

But at the same time, we put up tons of encumbrances and we can't even seem to get big stuff done well. And I'll wrap on that point, I promise I'm stopping here, in that I don't think there's a single naval program in the last 20 years that's been successful. The F-35 cost $1.3 trillion. We can't get a single mile of high-speed rail done. And so we can't do big things. And we're probably encumbering the development of lot of little things, which...

If you believe my framework, you go one or the other approach to prepare for the future, then right now we're not really set up well for either. So I'll stop there.

Billy Riggs (06:55)
So Vipple was always emphasizing how do we build stuff? But Ruth, one thing when I read your report after we met, you know, one particular stat always lights up for me is every, every thousand autonomous vehicles that gets deployed creates 190 new jobs. And, know, as before I spoil all your talking points and, you know, I think for me that

that creates this, this narrative that automation isn't just about displacing workers. It's about reinventing labor. And that, that really fits into this, this narrative that Bipple just described that's about how we reinvent the future of work and about how we, we, think we rebuild the

the way we build stuff from the ground floor up. And maybe you could maybe you could walk us through kind of the way you think about the future of the workforce and some of the stuff that that that you've been thinking about at the Chamber of Progress and the future of the workforce. In kind of some of your reports about automated vehicles.

Ruth Whittaker (08:11)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that what's interesting about autonomous vehicles that might be different from other forms of automation is that there is this system that's driving the car itself. And so in one sense, we don't need a human to drive the car, which is going to create all these safety benefits and benefits for other road users. But then on the other hand, you still need a physical car. You still need the physical sensors to make the car work.

and to support this operating system. You still need to build the operating system. there, so there are all sorts of other things that need to happen in order for that car to move that can't be automated and that are still going to rely on human labor and human expertise to say nothing of all of the other skilled work that goes into maintaining a car fleet, right?

So in a sense, autonomous vehicles rely on a lot of sort of traditional job models, right? Car production, particularly in the US has been a very stable source of employment for the last century. But then it's going to sort of reapply a lot of skills that already exist into building a new product, as well as bring in new skills, new designs, new...

labor requirements to reflect the future of sort where this technology is going.

Billy Riggs (09:38)
Yeah. And, and I would argue, I mean, I'd be curious what both of you have to think about this. And I would argue that, and I've talked about this in the European Union recently, that it's, also mid, mid level skills, stuff that might not require a, a four year degree. could be a, a high school degree or a, or a technical degree, stuff that like a maintenance tech or a, with it, a certificate in system diagnostics or, that has some type of,

of mechanical certificate that could do some type of fleet management or service diagnostic sensor calibration, even cleaning of vehicles will become more and more important as as wear and tear on vehicles becomes more, more common. And I think we forget like, that like

one of the most significant things that happens when vehicles are on the road more and more and more thousands and thousands of miles is they just wear out like brake pads, brake pads have to be exchanged. And you know, you still have, you still have bumpy roads that that that aren't paved. And I'd be curious kind of what you all think about like this, this notion that like, middle skilled labor may be

maybe something that we really need to invest in.

Ruth Whittaker (10:55)
Yeah, our study sort of goes into this in particular. We broke out the different industries involved in AV production and maintenance into five broad categories, which is STEM production, or sorry, STEM jobs, production jobs, sales jobs, maintenance, and then general business report. And really for three out of five of those categories, you don't really need a traditional

bachelor's degree or advanced education, particularly production and maintenance. Those have traditionally been to your point, middle skill jobs that might require certification or some specific trainings, but not a traditional bachelor's degree. And increasingly what we're seeing in STEM jobs even is that what's more important is job experience rather than traditional education. And so again, having on the job experience with

coding or with mapping software might be more useful than having a traditional educational background and getting those jobs, which means that in the future, these jobs are going to be accessible, which is really exciting.

Billy Riggs (12:02)
I love it. I used to love that show. Do you guys remember that show dirty jobs on on like cable television? It reminds me of that show where the guy used to like crawl into crawl into sewers. I feel like that's the future.

Vipul Vyas (12:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe,

Yeah. I think he, well, he's

been saying that, Mike Rowe, think has been saying that for some time. And he's actually based out here in San Francisco, funny enough. I actually, know, with, with autonomous vehicles, which you guys are actually much more bigger, significantly have significantly more expertise in. I do, you know, I think about it and go, is, we moving towards cars as a service as opposed to, you know, forcing vehicle ownership on everyone?

Billy Riggs (12:19)
It is, yeah, Mike Rowe.

Vipul Vyas (12:39)
I actually think, you know, if I step way back and look at AI and the future in general, we have structured society, our built environment for a way of living in life that may be changing significantly. And, know, I think, Billy, you're probably well aware, well aware, well aware, that I think that was going to be a tongue twister of like Euclidean zoning, right? And,

the partitioning of where you work and where you live and industrial use of land and things of that nature. And that was to optimize the efficiency of movement of labor and commercial activity and whatnot. And with AI and people having a different role, you know, to some extent in society, I think we may have to revisit that. And when we had this type of zoning, this type of built environment, you needed a car and car ownership was critical.

You probably still do, don't get me wrong, but you need to own it and all the encumbrances that car ownership brings along with it. And where I'm going with this is that what gets freed up for a person when they don't have to possess, you know, a one ton vehicle that they have to park, maintain themselves, take care of, now that's sort of more centralized potentially. And, you know, cars are built more like airplanes like a

737 well, I mean it's bad analogy a 777 is meant to be in the air almost all the time to make money and So cars will probably be built very differently. They'll probably be maintained very differently. I'm guessing but in terms of what people will be able to do with not having to spend probably several thousand dollars a year on Keeping a car and the buy versus make decision becomes

different, know, don't just buy the service. I think that's really interesting in terms of how much cash, how much, I mean, you know, kind of resources that frees up for people. But then also what is the implication on our built environment by virtue of that? And I don't know those things, but I think there's going to be implications.

Billy Riggs (14:45)
Hmm. Yeah.

Well, yeah, I mean, think you're we that there are a couple things embedded in there. And I think that's worth that's a that is a chunk of research that I look into. And it's stuff that I think that's peripheral to this dialogue. But I actually I don't know, I'm not sure if you took this on in terms of in your report, but that it is interesting when you think about the yeah, this this idea of the kind of the

I would call that the, the transportation credit or, this idea of the transportation credit mortgage.

in your, your whole package of, of living expenses. And if you could reduce one piece of that, then, or you could reduce your piece of your transportation costs, then you could actually spend more on your housing. And that was one piece that you could actually read increased housing affordability was actually reduced housing costs or you reduce transportation costs and you could actually increase the.

the total amount that people could spend more on housing. And that was actually one way people could thought thought that you could actually increase housing affordability. And so there was this idea of transportation credit mortgages for a long time where you could actually give people some type of discount on their mortgages when you gave them location efficient mortgages. I don't know if you studied this at all in your graduate when you're putting your studies.

Ruth, but I did a whole I kind of assessment of location efficient mortgages, like 10 to 15 years ago, it never took off, but there could be a whole reevaluation of this idea of transportation efficient mortgages, transportation credit mortgages in kind of the automated future.

Ruth Whittaker (16:32)
I think it does raise an interesting point. When you think about the sort of transformational effects of autonomous vehicles, when we talk about AVs, it's not just thinking about sort of a one-on-one replacement of like personal cars, right? There's a lot of other applications of this technology. We've seen it in automating public buses or shuttles that connect more people to public transit systems. And so when you think about

Billy Riggs (16:46)
Mm-hmm.

Ruth Whittaker (16:57)
AVs broadly and what autonomous vehicles can mean for how we get around. It can really expand the radius of where people can reasonably get in a day because they don't have to spend time commuting. They don't have to spend time stuck in traffic and there are going to be sort of more availability of transport options. So when you think about that, and especially, you know, to your point about sort of location and mortgage, it changes the

Yeah, the radius of a city or the jobs that are accessible, the places that you can live when you have a wider variety of transportation options, especially when AVs complement existing public transportation systems.

Billy Riggs (17:42)
And so when I heard, you know, Vipul talking to about kind of like this deeper housing affordability or this kind of this deeper idea of kind of housing and housing affordability and kind of broader societal impacts. And then I heard you talking about kind of these, these, these broader markets of like broader vocations that are, that are perhaps not deep tech. Vocations.

I started thinking locations that necessarily weren't niche Silicon Valley and locations like where we happen to be in San Francisco. And I guess maybe we can jump straight there. I, I I'm assuming that, that you're, you're making a posit that, that many of the locations aren't aren't us that, that, that we anticipate some of these skills might.

might be located don't have to be in locations that are based in deep tech hubs. could be in former Rustbell communities. They could be scattered throughout the US and be a part of a maybe of American industrial revival. Could we say that?

Ruth Whittaker (18:52)
Yeah, I think so. Your words, not mine, but I'll take them. Yeah. No. And again, this goes to the point that AVs merge tech and traditional manufacturing. So anywhere that there is traditional manufacturing expertise, especially, we're building, you have to build a car, right? In order to have an AV or you have to build a truck or a shuttle or whatever vehicle is going to be automated. You need to build that vehicle.

Billy Riggs (18:55)
I wanna own it.

Ruth Whittaker (19:18)
So when you think about the future of the American auto manufacturing industry, I think it has to include AVs and it already does, right? A lot of traditional car makers are already exploring how to incorporate autonomous technology into their cars. And so this is, know, it looks like sort of where the industry is heading, where we're still gonna be building physical cars, but the designs might be changing and the additional sensors are gonna be added.

in order to accommodate autonomous technology. And to your point, manufacturing jobs are not necessarily in traditional tech hubs. Our report found that there's particularly a lot of opportunity for those manufacturing and production jobs in places like Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, places where there have been traditional manufacturing jobs in the past that may have gone down.

in recent decades, but there's huge opportunity there because the expertise is there. And so one of the recommendations that we make to policymakers in our report is to really lean into that, encourage some re-skilling opportunities or training opportunities to take advantage of that sort of manufacturing expertise and use it and direct it towards AV production.

Vipul Vyas (20:35)
I have a contrarian view. is...

Billy Riggs (20:36)
But I thought she just dropped the mic. mean, I was like, come on. Well, I

was good. But I also also have a contrarian view. But you go with your contrarian view first.

Vipul Vyas (20:45)
My

thought is, it's not contrary to what Ruth said, but more, it's a different, a broader notion, is, I think location becomes even more important because we're gonna have to create communities that people actually wanna be part of and live in versus, I think what they had to do before was they had to kind of just go where the jobs were. And I think there's gonna be much more competition.

between cities for people in some sense in that. You can kind of do anything anywhere. And the traditional network effects of having certain industries clustered in certain places is probably going to be less critical. Like, you know, can hire technology talent. And despite the whole back to office kind of trend, think you can people pick up who they can pick up.

where they happen to be for the price they can get them for and so I think that that's going to mean people are to live or choose to live where it makes sense for them to live that's at one level another level on the the manufacturing piece and you guys are certainly have more expertise in this regard than I do but I think this is a let's just say you know in the context of blue states like California just a mistake in the sense that

You want production and engineering and design as close to each other as possible. And we've seen the benefit of that. Although Apple sort of, you know, has these shuttles between Cupertino and China all the time to, you know, kind of force the familiarity. But it's ideal. Like, for example, why did California let Rivian go to Georgia? You have half the state that lives in poverty in the Central Valley, and you couldn't figure out a way to...

wrote locate manufacturing close to Southern California where design was taking place. I think it's just a failure of execution on the government side in many of these state and local governments to actually create things that make sense for these companies. And so the point of all that is, is I actually think that the more you have coupled design, manufacturing and technology all in place, and let's be frank,

most manufacturers will be done with robots anyway. And so, or a lot of it, the more that's all integrated and coupled, I think the better off you probably are. So we traditionally move manufacturing and said, oh, let's move south or move to the Midwest because labor is cheaper. But I think is that gonna be the driver because there's not a huge amount of labor content and the labor content that is there is high-end labor.

And that high in labor does exist in the existing tech hubs. So I don't know. I'm just putting that out there as an option.

Billy Riggs (23:30)
Yeah,

I mean, Vipul, I, see the point you're making. I think in it's, it's interesting, because I think we see some, some points of friction here, even with even with like, I'm gonna put my fingers in the air now for the listening audience and quotation, big air quotation marks in the Republican conservative environment, we see like, non conservative values here in like, non free trade.

tariffs going out there because I think we interestingly like in a free trade market, we'd see we'd see costs being driven down, we'd see a total free trade market. And like true capitalism, we'd see consumer prices and we see total we'd see total cross border free trade happening. And we'd see, we'd see basically

us be able to ship raw materials from from China to the US chips back to China chips back to you know, fab fab stuff in Indiana ship it back to California. But that doesn't take it take into account externalities with regard to the environment. It doesn't take it with regard to externalities with regard to local, you know, local jobs, it doesn't take into account the complexities that you

brought up and the political, you know, anything political with regard to local communities, local values. So I hear what you're saying, but it doesn't, it doesn't take into account any type of externality. And I think that's a, or kind of this, this notion of tragedy of the commons, which we know are

other things that that that complicate traditional like this traditional notion of kind of Adam Smith, kind of traditional market capital is, you know, capitalistic economics.

Vipul Vyas (25:21)
And I'm

sorry, I'll let Ruth respond, but I just need to put a point on what I was getting at to make it concrete. I thought years ago, this is decades ago, Boeing leaving Seattle was stupid. And it was cynical. It was a move to basically get people to leave that they wanted to kind of slough off executives or whatever. And it would also be closer to DC to lobby than they eventually did go to Northern Virginia, I think.

Billy Riggs (25:24)
Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (25:44)
But they get further and further away from manufacturing and further and further away from the product and then planes start falling out of the sky. And so that is empirically what happens when you don't integrate those things that need to be integrated. So.

Billy Riggs (26:01)
But I think

here we're talking about different things. So I'll just say kind of I'm gonna pivot away from kind of what you're talking about. Because we're not talking all, we talk about this labor market and Ruth, I guess I have a follow up question here because I think I wanna make one point here is that some of the pieces of the workforce you're talking about are not.

Some of it is manufacturing and manufacturing in some of these things is distributed. It's not all centralized. And some of the manufacturing function is already a distributed manufacturing function. And so you have, for example, you already have a distributed manufacturing function that already exists, for example. And I have a good example in that my son

is going to work, go work for a factory that is already in, in Indiana that already exists. And it's a fourth generation factory that already can become a part of this new workforce. And the fact of the matter is it's like, it's retooling this factory to it's, like, it is the title of our podcast is rewiring this factory to meet the demand of this new market. And it's actually retooling, I think the new, the

it's re retooling the existing workforce to meet this new market. And I think that's the issue here is that we have an unskilled workforce and we have I think we have a certain segment of the of the economy that is underskilled for the future of what what the what what our economy

I think is underskilled for what the future of our economy will be. And I think that there, I think we have severe underemployment right now. We have a certain segment of our economy that is underemployed. And that is, I think maybe that is part of the discussion here. and so I'd maybe, maybe Ruth, you can respond to that. I have another question here too, is that you, you mentioned our OEMs are, are doing things. And I would say like,

I think our OEMs are maybe not as well prepared for the automation future. And I would say like they're taking baby steps and, I think there's a little more system shock required in the U S to like, to take broader steps towards the automation future. And I would, I would hope that there would, would be more aggressive, but I think that's a, I think that's a point I want to make and less something I want you to respond to, but,

Ruth Whittaker (28:28)
Yeah, I can respond to both, happy to respond to both. So I think on the first sort of question of the distribution of jobs and whether it's sort of realistic to think that they are actually gonna be everywhere. To Vibble's point, I think that there probably are some benefits to having the software developers and the tech in the same place and working with the physical production. But I think that that's...

Billy Riggs (28:30)
Okay.

Vipul Vyas (28:31)
Thanks

Ruth Whittaker (28:53)
I see that as an opportunity and I would hope that policymakers who read our report, who are in the Central Valley or in states that aren't traditionally seen as tech hubs, to see that as an opportunity. The transformational impact here is that increasing deployment of ADs, because it relies on both traditional sort of production knowledge as well as tech jobs.

means that states that have that competitive advantage in production and maintenance, they can compete for jobs with the traditional tech hubs that are here right now. So I think there's a perception sometimes that with new technological advancements, just means, know, California is going to get richer, right? The California residents and people living in Silicon Valley are just going to get even better jobs than the ones they have now.

But I think what's exciting about our report is that because AVs rely on such a diversity of skills and labor, it means that the entire country can really compete for AV jobs. To your second point about, sorry, can you repeat the second question that you had? I got so excited about the first question.

Billy Riggs (30:05)
And it was just, you know, our OEMs, our automakers, are we doing enough to actually innovate in this industry?

Ruth Whittaker (30:12)
Yeah.

Well, I think, you know, to that point, it's interesting that the AV companies that have launched right now are not connected to OEMs, right? So if you think about Waymo and Aurora, who I should note are both partners of Chamber of Progress, we received funding from them, but they don't have a vote or a veto over any of the positions that they take. They're not telling me to say this, but they've both launched. They're, you know, the ones that are operating commercial operations right now.

They're not traditional OEMs. Other OEMs have gotten into the game of automation, but they haven't been as successful as these independent sort of startups, or I should say startups. I think that that is a sign, right? That the transportation industry, particularly the sort of existing vehicle designs that we have right now,

was right for disruption. And I think that that is how technological progress is made, right? And that's how traditional incumbent industries get transformed. Someone else comes in with a new idea and the traditional companies have to either evolve to catch up or, you know, they'll fall away. I don't know that the entire transportation industry is going to be transformed as radically as that, right? I don't think that, you know, Ford is going to go away just because

Waymo is offering rides in California, but this is a new area for competition, right? How do we harness the fact that this technology exists? How do we incorporate it into traditional designs? How do we incorporate it into traditional businesses? And the other, to sort of frame this, when we think about AV deployment and what the potential market strategy

market share can look like for autonomous vehicles. Our report, in the most optimistic scenario, assumes that 13 % of vehicles on the road today can be replaced with autonomous vehicles in the next 15 years. So it's not even a majority of vehicles being automated. 13 % is a relatively small amount. Traditional cars, human-driven vehicles, are probably still going to be dominating, at least for the next couple of decades.

Billy Riggs (32:24)
Okay, that's a good answer. I'm gonna say one word. Well, okay. BYD, that's all I'm gonna say BYD. because I do have some, I think there are some strong counterfactuals to the innovation of the American OEM. And all you have to do is get out of your plane in the Gothenburg airport and see what's happened.

to the Swedish automotive industry and realize what happens to an OEM when they stop innovating. And you see that they get out competed really quickly. And when you get out of the airplane in the Gothenburg airport, you see nothing but BYD ads. And then you go and you meet with all the automakers.

in Gothenburg and you realize that Volvo.

Yeah, you think it's a Swedish company, but you realize all the investors are.

Geeley Automotive.

they're 100 % Chinese owned.

Yeah, they say, yeah, we have a Swedish board, but it's all Chinese money. Volvo, Polestar, Zekker, all three Swedish companies. Now, sorry, sorry to break it to you, but I mean, I think that's what happens when you don't innovate, you die. And so it's, yeah, it's just a...

Vipul Vyas (33:50)
I mean all money is green though,

isn't it? I mean it's fine, it's Fine, but where the capital comes from, yeah, until it takes control.

Billy Riggs (33:53)
All money is green until it's red. Okay, sorry it is.

Until it's driving around Europe spying on you.

Vipul Vyas (34:02)
Yeah, there's

That issue. But I think in terms of what Ruth was saying before, I do think that the forward thinking localities that think about how to integrate this stuff, how they can bring their universities to bear, how they can bring their existing tech presences, because everyone's got, look, everyone's trying to be, everyone has tried to be Silicon Valley except for Silicon Valley for decades.

And so you have some kernel of that, you know, most places at this point. And the formula has been pretty much cracked. And so I think if people can integrate, like, look, we have all the pieces you need at a compelling offering. look, California will not be able to get out of its own way in time. High labor costs, high energy costs, high, I mean, it wins despite itself, right? And so...

This has given for the last two decades other places a chance and they've taken it. That's why you have, you know, so much more opportunity in other cities like Nashville Austin, et cetera. But in terms of the vehicle, the car has been so central to our way of life for so long, I think it's not only how it's made, but how it's used as we talked about before, it's going to change. And so there's all kinds of disruption.

And I think the places in America that recognize that and at least allow for the adaptation, that means, that doesn't mean, oh, we're gonna make these big changes right now. It's more, we're just gonna let things work themselves out organically, but not get in the way. I think those are the people who are probably gonna win. And I think that would be interesting. you know, maybe just, you know, spit ball in here. Maybe, you know, people primarily use a car.

or a car as a service to go long distances and they opt for their personal vehicle to be a golf cart or an e-bike, right? Something much more manageable. But then that also means communities can't be so sprawling because you can't, you you do get to basically get in the car to go to do anything. And so I think there's a reordering that will take place if we allow it.

I think right now things are too ossified. You can't actually make changes because of zoning laws, know, all kinds of regulations that prevent real adaptation. So I don't know, Ruth, if you have any thoughts on that.

Ruth Whittaker (36:24)
Yeah. No, I I was going to say to Billy's point about, you know, whether OEMs are keeping up with innovation, putting on my hat as policy director, I think that there are a lot of regulations that are holding back the U.S. industry and innovation here that Chinese firms aren't facing, right? China has really invested heavily in their autonomous vehicle and autonomous

innovations in general and have eliminated a lot of regulatory barriers and import a lot of money into their industries. In the US that hasn't happened. There's a lot of sort of relics of regulations that were written assuming that vehicles would be driven by a person that are holding back innovation in the US industry. so, you

Part of my job, one of the things that I've been sort of calling for both at the state and the federal level is to rethink a lot of those rules because the US isn't operating in a vacuum. There are other countries, other global firms that are competing in this space. if we want to be competitive, not just if states want to be competitive with each other within the US, but if we want to be competitive in a global market, we have to really rethink a lot of the regulations that are outdated and don't reflect the way that...

vehicles are gonna move in the future.

Billy Riggs (37:43)
And that's fair. My my tact is that we just I think we aren't moving fast enough. It's it's really just kind of have to be more radical, right? And because I think that the issue here is things are too incremental. And I think you don't get from zero to one by taking incremental steps. That's it's too Lindblom asked, right? It's too we're muddling. We're muddling through, have to we can't take, we can't just take these muddling steps, we have to take radical steps. And

But I want to maybe just review because I think we talked about kind of how, you know, back of house, these kind of these back of house jobs are really important. Kind of how kind of these post-industrial cities, these middle America cities have a chance to benefit dramatically. But I want to pivot to

narrative and narrative shift, because I do think that we have a lot of language in the U S particularly about automation equals fewer jobs. And I kind of wanted to end on this because we've been talking about this and I love the language that is more hopeful.

and that's what I really took from, and I really love the language that you all use that it, that, yeah, we're not saying that, that job displacement, it doesn't exist, but, but there's something, this is a little more complex is there, there's a little more that there is dignity of work here and that there, there is.

There is a future of work that is very fertile and hopeful. so maybe Ruth, maybe you could talk to us a little bit about this change in narrative that you, what is your narrative in terms of how you talk about the future of jobs?

Ruth Whittaker (39:31)
Yeah, think, I mean, I think the summary that you, you had was great, right? There probably will be changes in how people work, right? There will be a job transition, some job displacement, but I think that focusing exclusively on the sort of types of jobs that may not be necessary anymore as a result of automation is only half of the equation. It doesn't consider that there will be new jobs opened up.

that both new jobs that use traditional skill sets that people already have and also new jobs that we haven't even conceived of yet. And I think that both of those are exciting, but people might feel a little daunted, right? By the idea that, you know, I have worked in, you know, in auto manufacturing my entire life. This is what I know how to do. I feel daunted by the prospect of having to completely retrain.

and sort of reorient my entire life around this vague new future. But I think what's exciting about AVs is that you don't have to do that, right? There are ways to re-skill and pivot jobs that already exist, expertise that already exists, and take advantage of the jobs that are opened up by this new technology. And the other thing to think about that the report really hammers home is that

Again, we're talking about long timelines. Our report looks at changes over the next 15 years. This is not all happening tomorrow. And I think especially when people see that AVs are starting to have commercial deployment, it starts to create a little bit of nervousness, right, to say like, you know, what does this mean for me tomorrow? And we talk a lot about the transformational effects of AVs and it is a really exciting technology, but we're just at the start.

There is a long way to go before we've fully fleshed out how this technology is going to be used and before it's deployed at a scale that is really going to have these transformational effects. So my message is don't panic.

Billy Riggs (41:31)
Yeah, it's like a Coldplay song.

Ruth Whittaker (41:33)
you

Vipul Vyas (41:33)
Ha ha.

Billy Riggs (41:34)
Vipple, do you have a message?

Vipul Vyas (41:36)
more just that I think there's gonna be a transition back to atoms from electrons or if you will, we're gonna go back to the physical world being more relevant than the virtual or digital world, guess is the right way to put it. yeah, bits and bytes are gonna be less important than like I said, atoms and molecules, things are real tangible substance.

Billy Riggs (41:51)
Wow.

Vipul Vyas (42:05)
because there's gonna be so much that's automated that today has been requiring. mean, look, we see it right now. You see a new layoff notice every day pretty much around here from the large tech companies. And they are unloading lots of engineers because they are replacing them with artificial intelligence. And so...

I think that...

AVs and Transportation is one of those places that you can't It's not all software. It's it's it's just not you have to bend metal You have to you know, make glass you have to shape things and fit it to fit things together And it's got to work You can't ship things with bugs because you can't grab take it back and fix it later. That's called a recall. It's not cheap and so I think that's just gonna

We're going to have another show. Over the last 50 years, we've been shifting towards this direction, and we're to see at least a bit of a pendulum swing back in the other. That's my only thought.

Billy Riggs (43:08)
Yeah, you know, if I had, if I had to do over again, I probably would have been a plumber. Cause everybody. Yeah. Everybody always needs a toilet to get unstuck. But to be honest, if we look at like careers in the US, like big pilot shortage, right? If we look at like a lot of other careers, I mean, like, um, plumbers, electricians, uh, you know, things that are

Vipul Vyas (43:13)
All the plumbers around here retiring earlier than others, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, there's

Billy Riggs (43:37)
digital thing

Vipul Vyas (43:37)
half a million unfilled manufacturing jobs right now. Half a million.

Billy Riggs (43:41)
like,

so yeah, I mean, I think encouraging jobs and in the trades, you know, I think when we think about like,

skills, workforce skills, one one of the things that maybe we should be as a as a nation investing more in is like, more high school classes that that are really investing in, in kind of really basic, you know, not even electrical engineering, like understanding circuits and understanding the way that that just just basic, you know,

electrical and and soldering and and even even ultraviolet like I was reading yesterday about some of these these crazy, you know, silicon, ultraviolet chip making processes work. I mean, this is really physical stuff at a very microscopic level. And it's it's super fascinating, but it is actual physical fabrication of a silicon chip. It is not

It is a physical fabrication, not a not a not a digital fabrication. And it's super, super fascinating. So yeah, I 100 % agree. 100 % agree. It is a super fascinating time to think about the I think the real I would say fidgetal, fidgetal future. So Ruth, maybe last question.

If you had one piece of advice to offer to a mayor or policymaker, maybe listening to us now, what would it be?

Ruth Whittaker (45:17)
Yeah, I think, I a hundred percent agreed that we need to start thinking about training now. Right. I would, my recommendations and the recommendations that we make in our report is that states, cities, towns that are looking to sort of compete for these AV jobs and the jobs, that we think are going to be available in the future. It, it will take a little bit of investment in job training programs, but that investment is.

totally achievable and I think it is gonna have a high payoff. We've already seen partnerships with community colleges to develop training programs in partnership with autonomous vehicle companies so that people who don't have a bachelor's degree or a college education can still get the specific certification that they need to sort of get these new and exciting future jobs. And so there are models to work off of and I...

I think that it will require some investment and some willingness, right, on the part of policymakers to say things might look a little different, jobs are going to change, but we want to prepare people for them. So I think there's a lot of opportunities when it comes to AV jobs that if policymakers are looking to compete for these jobs, it's going to require a little bit of investment upfront to take advantage of a lot of opportunities in the future.

Billy Riggs (46:35)
That was amazing. thank you for your time, your insight and your work, Ruth. we really, really appreciate it. And maybe, yeah, we'll, we'll hope to have you back and you can tell us more about what you're doing. It's really amazing. All right. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Appreciate it so much. Catch you next time. Everybody. Thank you so much.

Vipul Vyas (46:44)
you

Ruth Whittaker (46:46)
Yeah, absolutely. This was a great discussion. Thanks for having me.