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

Elise Hu (0:03)

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh.

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.

Sal Khan (0:41)

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.

Elise Hu (0:56)

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.

Esther Perel (1:23)

Optimizing is when people embrace romantic consumerism.

Sal Khan (1:28)

Oh, yes.

Esther Perel (1:29)

When they commodify each other. Well, yeah. And they go with a shopping list looking for a life partner.

Elise Hu (1:35)

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.

And now, our TED Conversation of the day.

Esther Perel (2:00)

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.

Sal Khan (2:35)

Where should we begin?

Esther Perel (2:38)

You want to go first? No, no, no.

Sal Khan (2:39)

Okay.

Esther Perel (2:40)

Okay.

Sal Khan (2:40)

Let me see. Let me, I'll shuffle it up a little. Well, it's not, okay, I'll pick this, just in case they rigged it. If you could redesign one system from scratch, what would it be and why?

Esther Perel (2:52)

I actually, if you give me that card, I would put it back in the bowl.

Sal Khan (2:59)

No, no, no, no, no. You don't want to answer that?

Esther Perel (3:00)

No, because I actually don't think that I have, there is no system that I would redesign from scratch, there is 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. Institutionally, 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 micro systems. What would you say is one system that you would redesign from scratch?

Sal Khan (3:50)

Oh, well, probably the one...

Esther Perel (3:51)

It's an enormous question. It's a big one. Well, you had a good answer.

Sal Khan (3:54)

You had a good answer. You know, the one people would expect me to answer, and this would be the system, is the education system.

You know, I talk a lot about that we've always known that the ideal education system is one that's very personalized. We 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 two, 300 years ago, we have a very utopian idea, mass public education, but we had to make compromises. We had 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. So 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 you would do today if you're learning a musical instrument or a sport, becoming Olympian. So, 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.