TFGL2021 - S1 - Ep8 - Uber Legislation and the Gig Economy

Welcome to this episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast.

On this week’s episode we’re talking about the big existential questions in tech today. Should Artificial Intelligence be used to read our emotions? Can the law keep up with the ever-growing gig economy? Are we all destined to end up as space dust on a barren, rocky planet someday?

Ankur Asthana is on hosting duties this week, and he’s joined by Greg Ashton and Marium Navid.

Transcript

Ankur: Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast. Another space rover has landed safely on Mars but we're still stuck on earth trying to figure out how to use the mute button on zoom. On today's episode, we'll be talking about the big existential questions in tech today. Should artificial intelligence be used to read our emotions? Can the law keep up with the ever growing gig economy? Are we all destined to end up as space dust on a barren rocky planet some day? All that and more coming right up. Joining me today we have Greg Ashton. Greg, what do you think, will there be fine signs of ancient life on Mars?

Greg: I don't know. I feel like they'll find some kind of enzyme thing that says there was life but they don't exactly find life and we'll all be really disappointed but the scientists will be like, you know, crazy about it. 

Ankur: Cheering and yeah. 

Greg: And we'll be like, wow. Alright.

Ankur: Not a very optimistic prediction but I'll take it. Marium Navid is back as well. It's very early for Marium. Good morning. Thank you for being on. Same question for you. Do you think you'll find signs of ancient life on Mars?

Marium: Hello, good morning. I think they will. I think this has been a long time coming. Although I did see some articles online of some scientists not being happy about it. I didn't actually click on it so it might have been clickbait. So I  might be pulling like a stay here. [laughs] But, yeah, I think they'll find life. Yes. It's been a hypothesis a long time in the making. 

Ankur: Wait, the scientists weren't happy, why?

Marium: Well, I mean, like I said, I actually did not read the article. So this is me being like a bad, like, you know, person. But, I mean, it's from the Sydney Morning Herald. This Oxford University philosopher actually, it was the head of the wrong headline, scientist. Well, he is a scientist, but a scientist in a different field. Oxford University philosopher said that I would find it interesting, certainly, but a bad omen for the future of the human race. I hope that our Mars pros discover nothing. It would be good news if we find Mars to be sterile. Dead rocks and lifeless sand would lift my spirits.

Greg: Speaking about the intersection of science and philosophy, did anybody see MC Hammer's tweet the other day? 

Ankur: Oh, no. I missed it. What was it? 

Greg: It was fantastic. It was basically challenging someone's comment about intersections between science and philosophy and truth and facts, and basically said that there is an intersection and that we need both to cooperate. And I was just like, wait what. What happened to MC Hammer?

Ankur: Yeah, wow. That's some knowledge. That’s incredible. And you have me, Ankur Asthana, your host for today. And personally, I am hopeful they'll find evidence that actually links human life on Earth back to Mars, so that when we go back, it'll actually be like, we're going back to our home planet. Because we're all descended from Martians. I think that would be mind blowingly cool.

Greg: You've been watching Battlestar Galactica.

Ankur: I have. Exactly, exactly. [laughs] Greg, do you want to kick us off with stat of the week?

Greg: Yeah, so Sart of the Week is jumping into AI. And shockingly, again, AI can’t do something. So this was an interesting article that I came across, which was talking about a new rise of systems that are supposedly able to work out a person's emotions based on their expression. And as the science shows, a person's expression only links to their emotional state about 20 to 30% of the time. And you've got examples of organisations like solution AI, or a Hong Kong based company who are selling their technology to schools and colleges to basically scan students within the classroom and work out their emotional state while they're studying. So yeah, just really invasive things for science that doesn't exist.

Ankur: It's such a classic example of garbage in. garbage out. The research that this is all based on right, has shown to be so incorrect and faulty. It is wild to me that it's being touted as this, like, you know, technology that works when it's just not based on any real science. 

Greg: Yeah, I suppose that's part of the issue really, is they claim that it's based on science, but that science has already been kind of debunked anyway. So it comes from someone called Paul Ekman, who is a psychologist who basically created a popular work that said, there's seven universal emotions. And since he's done that everybody's kind of said, no, that's nonsense. What's interesting, in this article they mentioned that the TSA actually tried to implement it to kind of spot terrorists, and in their work, they were like, yes, this doesn't work. In practicality it’s not real. So I thought that was really, really interesting, and great from the TSA, that they've kind of identified that it’s bullshit and said, right, we're not going to use this. 

Marium: Yeah, I always think there's interesting implications with AI, and how it interacts with race, and like, basically, just, I mean, there's been so much evidence of how racist AI can be, just because of the fact that the coders themselves, like, there's no way for AI to be objective and the characters that you're putting into it to remain objective, because whoever's creating it, their subjectivity leaks in. I don’t know if you all remember that Twitter account, the racist Twitter account that…. was tt Google or Microsoft that put out there, and it naturally, like, just by picking up what was actually going on, like, on Twitter itself, it just naturally became a white supremacist. I mean, I think that's like, just like a prime example of like, how dangerous like AI can be, and how I mean, I don't know what the line is right now, between where we allow AI to exist in our lives, and what social decisions that we're gonna let it make, you know. But there’s huge evidence of like, how dangerous it is, and I don't know if that will ever be figured out tbh. Yeah, maybe humans are just inherently evil. 

Greg: Yes, we are. 

Ankur: It's also, that's a really good point. I mean, in some ways, it's already happening, right? The examples in China have this kind of AI facial recognition being used as a tool of oppressing and cracking the weaker community and imprisoning. I think the recent estimates were over a million people at this point. It is, in some ways, it's already happening. And that's the scary part. And there was an interesting part of that article, where they talked about the researcher at Microsoft, who kind of was trying to debunk some of the so called signs around it. And in her tweet, she said that COVID is being used as a pretext to bring this into schools, which I thought was really interesting, right? It's kind of like that old, I think, Churchill quote that says, never let a good crisis go to waste. And it's interesting to me to think about how this moment or these crises, whether it's COVID or climate change, or whatever we're going to be facing over the coming years, can be used or will be used as a way to push forward these technologies. And, you know, in some ways get buy in, in these moments when people are feeling uncertain. 

Greg: Isn't that the argument of many American tech companies at the minute as well, though. So oh, God, the Chinese are doing it, we need to, you know, we need to protect ourselves by doing it first. It's like they’re kind of framing that as the latest crisis. 

Ankur: The only way I can think of it is, how do you as an individual deal with this, right? So the kind of small example is, everyone or a lot of people I think after COVID, who are working from home, you know, on their laptops, they got the little camera protectors. I don't know if y'all had that before. But I got that after I started working from home more and it becomes a personal thing that you have to try to figure out to see how do you protect yourself from this basic technology. And I wonder what other technologies or like approaches we'll have to come up with  to be able to protect us individually, because the companies aren't going to do that. 

Greg: I'd really like to see them trying to implement this in airports, under the guise of like, we're going to spot terrorists. So we're going to look for people that are really stressed at airports, and then it will fail miserably. 

Ankur: [laughs]

Greg: Because who the hell is not stressed in an airport? You're just going to have just constant pings. Everyone there is a terrorist because everybody is just stressed out of their mind. 

Ankur: Yeah, this is the kind of thing where and actually it's a funny point, because the fact that it's being used on children, right. is particularly interesting to me.  I'm assuming a lot of the research that supposedly went into this was not even necessarily done on the population they're using it on by. And so kids’ emotions from minute to minute, might display very differently. I don't know, this is a guess. But I imagine as you grow older, you learn how to hide your emotions or at least temper down your emotions that you express facially. And so yeah,  I'm just curious whether this is based on any kind of reality at all. I think the other thing I just wanted to talk about here briefly was the piece around the Microsoft researcher just a little bit more. Because I thought it is interesting, correct to your point about tech companies here in the US, for example, using this as a moment to try to make claims about what we should be doing. And I'm curious whether you view that as, you know, someone who was pushing back kind of truly and saying, no, we need to take a step back and not implement this or whether the critique is really, they're not doing it well and we need to do it better. Because I think those are two different two different kinds of things. 

Greg: Yeah, I totally agree on that. They are two very different things. And I think there is a bit of a habit of the minute with tech companies to be like, yeah, they're what they're doing is totally wrong. But we're doing something so like, like, we're doing something different, when actually, it's basically the same thing, but done in a slightly different way to kind of protect patents and things like that. They're actually like, yeah, they're criminal. But, you know, what we're doing is, is great, it's fine. It's pretty worrying, because it's not necessarily that  they're not defending it on the basis of the ethics of the issue. So I think that the next thing we want to talk about was this really interesting story in Charity News of the Week around the now over $5 million that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has raised in under a week for Texas relief, which is just a super exciting mix of tech news and charity and all of that. Greg, you want to talk about that? 

Greg: Yeah. So I wanted to include this because I think it's interesting from a charity perspective, because she said herself, that this kind of relief fundraising is no replacement for good governance, obviously making a dig at somebody. But I think that one of the reasons I wanted to include it here is because I mean, we have some, you know, disasters in the UK, flooding has become fairly regular, but you guys tend to have, you know, much bigger, grander disasters, obviously. Yeah, just go big.  And I wonder about, you know, this idea of this kind of funding to help in those situations and what you guys think about that, and what, you know, I don't want you to speak for the whole of the US but what is the kind of attitude towards that? And is it, you know, acceptable that we're doing these little bits of funding every time something happens or whether there's a drive for mor, better governance, more funding to kind of prevent these things happening in the first place? 

Marium: Yeah, I don’t ever think fundraising is a solution for the government or what the government should be doing. And we know, like, the reason a lot of the failure happens with the scale of disasters doesn't just happen because it's like a really intense weather storm or a really big earthquake. It happens because the United States infrastructure and the investment of the government in maintaining the infrastructure has slowly been going down over time. I think like in Texas, they were talking about how unprepared, the reports are on every disaster as always, we were always unprepared every single time. But it's ridiculous, because it's not that they're unprepared. I mean, even with the COVID crisis, it's not that they're unprepared. It’s that policymakers are choosing to intentionally not fund what the experts are saying needs to be funded around maintaining infrastructure around just like social or any type of funding that's supposed to like protect social good in general. It's like, it's a decision that they make every single time. And I think what really pisses me off personally is just like, the media's been on thing, it's like a natural disaster that we weren't prepared for. It's a natural disaster that we intentionally made worse. And we had people in office who decided to make it worse and knew exactly what they were signing on to. So I think that's my perspective on it. I think in general, places that I'm connected to, are used to fundraising. You know, it's like a natural response of like, we're not gonna depend on the government to help us because we have to pull ourselves up from the bootstraps, and we're gonna dig ourselves out of this hole that’s called American. And I think it does connect like this American ideal. One other thing I wanted to add, which I also get frustrated by, like the COVID stimulus checks for example, the first round, everybody got like $2,000> It's like this whole idea around universal services. Same with like free college and, you know, giving everybody in the country the same access to something. And I think that is the most inefficient way for us to actually be solving the problem. And the only reason we do it is because the history of this country, which is like rooted in like racism and also just looking down at the poor, we're not used to letting the poor have something, or just like underprivileged folks have something without justifying it by giving it to everybody else. Like means based policy is not supported in the US.  We can't even get policy passed when it's like, oh, let's give people in the lower quartile of income. Let's look at let's give them like $3,000, right. And we won't give anything to like the upper two quantiles of income, right? We just can't get it passed. It's politically infeasible. It has nothing to do with economics or like the numbers don't add up, or it's going to be logistically hard to execute this, because it's not logistically hard. We still use the same tax records. And so it's just, I think that's another thing I'm very frustrated with, is the like the United States, we have this like culture in a way. I think, if you don't go back to like, like the 1970s, when Reagan was like in office, the whole caricature of the welfare queen, and how, like, there's this character distributor of like the poor, basically, stealing from the government, you know, and taking advantage of it, where we've come to this point where this huge income inequality in the US, and like the tax breaks, that people are getting the property, you know, the stuff that like, basically all of the upper quarter tiles of the US, the benefits they get, but they're all coming from the government with like the number of taxes they don't pay, right. So anyways, that's my rant on how stressful it is. I think I've just repeatedly become obsessed with the US’ tendency to just one, no tfund things and and number two, thinks that not funding things is an efficient thing to do. 

Greg: Before I just give you a chance to speak, I just wanted to ask Mariu , so on that topic of decisions and planning. So I've listened to a couple of things and read some stuff about what happened in Texas and a big part of it is down to they have a statewide infrastructure. A lot of other states will share energy resourcing but they believed because they had a really good mix. So there's been a lot of talk about renewables, and you know, oil and gas, and actually, they have a really good mix. So in most situations, they should be able to handle it. But what's happened is, climate change has resulted in these freak weather incidents, where you've got a situation that potentially nobody could have planned for, but now what they're saying is, with these becoming more regular, there needs to be future planning around these kind of freak instances. Do you think that's going to work with any state where you kind of say, well, you need to plan for any situation? So you could be looking at snow in some of the hottest states, heatwaves in some of the coldest states. Like, how do you think that's going to pan out with the decision makers? 

Marium: I mean, I think it depends on who gets elected. Honestly, I feel like a lot of these issues always just come back to who’s in office and who we get into the office like during the midterms that are coming up in like two years and who just got elected now. It really does depend on the state and I think what the legislator legislature makeup looks like. I basically just think just because it depends on that. I'm not 100% hopeful that these types of policies are actually going to be passed. Like the thing. The thing with policymaking is that it's not just a matter of a crisis happening and then everyone wanting to stop it in the future. Everybody does want to stop in the future. But getting the actual policy passed is like a whole different monster, in a way. And so it's not just that it's also thinking about where the cost is going to come from. A lot of the things that these legislators will have to start making decisions on is whether they want people, like how they want people to see those costs. So I think it's such a nuance. Like from state to state, it really depends on what is your funding situation? What is your legislature look like? What is the political climate on the ground? Like? How are people feeling and then how intense was the most immediate crisis and then putting it all together? If there's usually a tiny little window that will pop up, where you can pass that policy through? I think that's why I think it's so hard, especially with how polarised The country is, in general. I'm not expecting much policymaking to be happening, like at all, because of how divided people are and how a lot of legislators even across the state, they're just trying to get more partisan, and less collaborative. Yeah, that's my perspective, though.

Ankur: I think that that's a really good point around focus of where policymaking can actually happen and what's actually realistic. I think one thing that was interesting about the Texas situation is that there was an example from El Paso, who had experienced this kind of winter weather crisis, I think, a decade ago, and as a city, at least, was able to build up a lot of the infrastructure that they needed to be able to prepare for something like this. And so I think the number I was seeing was that they had, I think, under a 5000 people that lost power for mostly around five to 10 minutes. It was actually a very short outage, because they had prepared, you know, their infrastructure, because I think they were getting some power from out of state as well. So they had built a lot of these contingencies. And so to me, that does point towards I think what you're saying, which is, if you can't rely certainly on the federal government, you can't rely, you know, even on your state government, it does start to become, you know, more and more, in some ways a local policy fight. I think that to me, also ties to one of the things that AOC said on Twitter, about the charity piece, which I thought was interesting, and kind of goes to your point, Marium. I think what she said was charity can’t replace policy. But solidarity is how we'll face climate change and build a better world. And so I think that is, you know, in some ways, there's the two realities of both needing to be prepared from, from a policy level for these kinds of crisis events that will only continue to happen. You know, I think what was interesting was that AOC and her team talked about this as being the second time they've done something like this. In some ways, they piloted a lot of their fundraising strategy and direct aid stuff, during the COVID crisis in their own district, so that then they could kind of implement this when it happened somewhere else, which I thought was interesting. So there's a need for us to be ready to be able to respond in these moments because they will continue to come. And at the same time, we also know that  out at the same time. We know that time, we know that. Along with the policy change, the charity piece is also needed because policy change may not happen fast enough. And we need moments like this. So I think this is a really, really interesting case study. And it's obviously devastating for folks in Texas, on both the policy and the charity peacefully, I think that's what's really good.

Greg: So I have a question on that. What do we think a New York representative is doing in Texas? 

Ankur: [laughs] Yeah. Marium, I’m curious for your thoughts but I would say just from living in the New York area, I do think there's this moment now of politicians, at least in the US being connected to their communities that they're from, and also representing so much more, by the way AOC responds versus Ted Cruz,who is the senator there. Their response to be shown as and in some ways, reflective of the values of the two parties that they've come from. And so there is a battle for the soul or the values of the culture of America, like you were saying, Marium , that is represented by these responses. And so ideally, that wouldn't need to happen right in the Texan senators and Congress people would be doing their jobs. But in lieu of that, there is this need for solidarity  think that that is positive and also like, pushes forward a broader values and narrative conversation. I'm curious what you think, Marium.

Marium: Yeah. I mean, I also do think AOC is unique because of the strong social following that she has. We know the fundraising was possible because of like, it was digital fundraising and so she actually does the ability to raise that much money. I highly doubt a lot of other elected officials in Congress have that same ability too, so I think she's just a very unique player in our current political landscape. And there are a couple other people than are kind of like her, who have pretty strong followings. I think this speaks more to the power of social media and the power of digital organising, honestly, and I think what AOC was doing was really recognising the power that she has. And then using it for something that she thought was like an opportunity. She knows that if she put the tweet out, she's gonna get, like X number of responses. And so, I mean, there was definitely a strategic decision there of like, I am choosing to use the power that I have to do this. And I think I mean, it's kind of like a big like, F U in a way, like Ted Cruz too. Especially considering, like, the history that they have. And also like, I mean, I don't know if y'all remember but I think I mean they've had a very long history anyway. Ted Cruz has consistently attacked her. So this is like, I think the best way to respond to a bully. Go to the bullies and be like, I'm going to help your people. I think those are some other things that I think are also going on. Yeah, I think

Greg: You're right. It is a really good way of kind of hitting back without actually hitting back so that you're not getting into this constant slanging match. One thing that does worry me with that, though, is, you know, she is very much a personality now and people are just completely unforgiving when it comes to heroes, figures that they put on a pedestal and it does worry me that in the future, if she stumbles or fails in some way that she will just get eviscerated by the public who currently are all on her side. But then, you know, people very easily turn and turn viciously. 

Ankur: Yeah, though she is from the Bronx and she has the style of the Bronx. I think she can. She has a team of people in a style that definitely can handle it. But I think she would say, but, yeah, I think that's true. So speaking of culture, we have this interesting story out of the UK, talking about the new ruling from the Supreme Court on Uber and the gig economy. You want to talk about that? 

Greg: Yeah. And I particularly wanted to talk about this with you guys because I do think there is a culture clash here. Because, you know, in my mind, the whole of the US has three jobs. You work like 120 hours a week, you've got a what is it, a side hustle on the side as well, just to keep things ticking over. Or at least that's the image that we're given. But in the UK, it's a little bit different. So this idea of, what's now called the gig economy used to be, you know, freelancing, but we now call it the gig economy has kind of had its first major setback in the UK. So this has been going on for about six, seven years with some of the Uber drivers taking Uber to court. And the Supreme Court has basically pushed back the appeal from Uber and has basically said that they need to treat their workers as workers rather than self employed. And there's a couple of things that they said, kind of fed into that judgement. So Uber set the fare, which meant they can dictate how much the driver earns. They set the contract terms and the drivers have no say in them., so it's not a negotiation like a freelancer would normally. The request for rides is constrained by Uber and they can penalise drivers if they reject too many rides.  And they monitor a driver’s service through the star rating and they've got the capacity to terminate the relationship if things go wrong. So basically, in a nutshell, what they were saying was that the power balance isn't there in order for Uber drivers to be classed as self employed, because they have no power over making decisions about the work and the way that they work. So I don't know what's going to happen next but obviously, Uber was like, well, it's going to start costing more and all these kinds of things. I won't get into the whole VAT thing. So there's like a VAT tax conversation that apparently by not having workers, they avoid paying a certain level of tax. But yeah, I'm just really curious about what the US’ view of the gig economy is and the idea that this huge organisation that's kind of spread out across the globe, is now jutting up against cultures of different places and working patterns and what you guys think about that.

Marium: So the US has a very interesting story around the efforts to hold like gig companies, I guess accountable. So interestingly, we had a ballot initiative in California called prop 22, that was on the ballot. It was a very complicated history. It was a ballot that was put on by Uber and Lyft and Doordash and like all the other companies and coalition to repeal and just make ineffective a law that was passed in California, which would essentially be doing what your law just passed. And on top of that, there was also a Supreme Court decision in 2019, that kind of gave a couple more rights to workers. So there were two things that this ballot initiative was trying to undo. The Supreme Court 2019 as well as I think it was HR or something five. It was the fifth bill in the California legislature. So it was trying to undo those two things. And it passed in California. So basically, it passed by 58%. And the only reason it really passed, I think is because of the huge amount of spending that these companies did. I mean, I live in California, and the ads were ridiculous. We were seeing commercials about Uber basically saying, you all should make sure that this initiative passes because if it doesn't, all of you are going to lose your job. Anyone who's a gig worker is just going to be completely steeped in financial distress. And Uber is actually doing this to help you. And it was the most disgusting messaging I've ever seen. My dad actually is transitioning to doing Postmates during the COVID crisis, just because we all need to get extra flow of income. And he was getting emails from Postmates with flyers and explainers of how this ballot initiative was going to change his life and if you didn't vote for it, then you know. And I can only imagine what all of the other workers were feeling too. And so what I think had  happened in California was unique because it was a mix of this problem with the ballot initiative system where there's no funding cap. So actually, Uber, Doordash and all these other companies broke the record for how much money was spent, for the amount of money that's spent on a ballot initiative at all in the history of the United States. Like, validations have been going on since like, beginning of the 1900s. They broke the record. And so I think that's an interesting story of just how  the policy has been moving. I think that it iis disappointing. I think there is also the layer of just the understanding of like, what, whether or not like an extra job is necessary. It should be something that you have or not is very different than the US versus UK like what you just said, but I just wanted to share that policy story, just to kind of give a little bit more background. That's been the history of the fight. Like we have had legislation passed, we have had a Supreme Court decision. But the company they're trying their hardest to hit back. But I also do think there's a strong organising side to like there, you know, people are still organised. So this is going to be a battle that we see for years to come. And it's like one side, it's just going to be fluctuating. So yeah, I wanted to share that background.

Ankur: I'm really glad you brought up the Prop 22 fight because I think California is often a bellwether for the rest of the country when it comes to any kind of legislation. I'm curious from what you were seeing in California, what you're feeling is about the strength of the organising that exists there and, you know, obviously this was a difficult fight but like is there a foundation now that you think can grow and become stronger? Because it seems like in the UK part of the victory was also driven by Uber drivers in particular, kind of coming together and demanding respect on the job. So I'm curious if you feel like that organising has started to happen already and there's a lot there or are we still kind of at the beginning stages?

Marium: I think we're still at the beginning stages.  I mean, you could tell that the organising popped up in response. Oftentimes we're usually seeing a slow buildup of like people building community and oftentimes, it is those communities that put stuff like the ballot initiative system in California specifically is often used by those types of organisations. Like smaller orgs that are trying to get onto the policy agenda somehow and so I think people were kind of caught off guard honestly by this huge movement, huge coalition of multi billion dollar companies, choosing to overrule the state legislature and using this other tactic and so that's why I do think we're in the beginning stages. But what I think it did is, it did spark a fire. So I think that a lot of people saw what had In the UK and realised they messed up in California. I'm just thinking back to all the group chats and all the Twitter feeds right now of people responding when they saw the UK news. And even my parents were like why are we such idiots.  Most of the people's reflection was that the ballot and initiative itself was just very confusing. I don't know. California is very well known. During election years, our ballots are ridiculous. I think in New York, there are no ballot initiatives right so you all get to go in, you vote. You can literally vote on party lines and leave. But with California, there was seventeen ballot initiatives on the ballot and the wording itself is so confusing and it's the most obscure stuff. Like one of the ballot initiatives was about stem cell research.  I don't know anything about stem cell research, how am I going to legislate around this and so just adding that I think also just kind of helped confuse people more. And so people are kind of just realising, I think, how they were duped in the past election with this ballot initiative so I do think that will be a motivator for building up some stronger grassroots, organising and just like supporters. But again, I do think it's in the beginning stages. 

Ankur: Yeah. I’m curious. In the UK, I mean do you feel like Greg, how much of this came from public pressure and the court decision reflecting where the country is at and how much of it was like the legal piece and the legal framework that allowed this to happen?

Greg: I don't think there was a huge amount of pressure because so I don't know if you heard but in London, Uber was banned because there’s kind of safety legislation and they basically weren't doing it and there were some really bad cases of drivers, you know, and just having no checks done. Then it went through a process and it came back. So there's not really a positive or a negative kind of tone towards Uber across the country. But where I think they’ve hit this wall is that culture. Yes, we have freelance workers. Bex is a freelance worker herself. But that idea of the side hustle just isn't a thing in the UK. There’s not like I've got you know, several little jobs on the side to make a little bit of extra money. It's just not a cultural thing. And then when you mix that into the employment law, although it's not perfect here, it is an aspect of it and there is an aspect of control and we've had and still have much stronger unions here. So there's certainly you know, that kind of pressure and the kind of laws that are built up around that pressure, that kind of protect and drive that agenda. But yeah, that's why I referenced this as a cultural clash because I just think Uber is built on the idea of, like, I mean, it was originally called ride sharing. The idea of sharing a ride with somebody in the UK is just like, insane. You just wouldn't get into a tax with somebody else. 

Ankur: [laughs]

Greg: You just wouldn't do it.

Marium: Yeah, no, I think the main thing I'm just worried about is how normalised the gig economy has become in the United States. Like there was a time where having one job was normal, but I'm slowly starting to even see among people who have pretty stable income, just culturally, they feel like they need to compensate by making their hobbies their side hustle. And I totally support doing that but I'm just seeing, especially during COVID, it's just become a cultural phenomenon where everyone has to have a side hustle. If you have a hobby, monopolise it, find a way to get money out of it, you know, and I think for me, I find it very frustrating because we're getting further and further to this understanding that you can have one job and just be fine. Because it's like higher income folks are starting to, like make that a norm, that means the folks on the lower end of the economic spectrum don't just have one other job, they have two to three other jobs, and that's now going to be normal. And so that is what I'm extremely worried about how wild it's been, I guess that's how big of a shift it's been. If you even look at COVID, I'm sure like if you've pulled out, like some studies of how many side gigs have popped up during COVID. Like, I think that's actually something to be worried about for like the future after COVID. Like, if this is gonna be like our set, COVID has essentially accelerated this culture, honestly, in the United States. I don't know if you've seen that, if you've seen side gigs. I mean, I guess in the UK, you all don't have that culture so it's been like a mitogen. But it's been wild to see people who are well-off feel like they also need to have a side gig as well. 

Greg: Yeah, in the UK, we just leave them as hobbies. So you know, through COVID we had like the great flour shortage of 2020, because everybody decided they were a baker. You've had shortages of sewing and knitting equipment, because everybody's decided they're going to start, you know, creating their own clothes during lockdown. But yeah, there's probably a few people that are trying to sell this shit on Etsy and eBay, but mostly they've kept it to themselves. 

Ankur: Yeah, it comes down to the safety net, right. And the fact that here, there's such fear of, you know, even if you're having a higher income of having medical bills, for example, that you can't afford on any kind of reasonable salary.  Or, you know, being able to save for retirement.  There's kids’ education, college education, just all these different expenses that are part of the cultural piece, again, of individualism and capitalism here that are so ingrained. And I think the UK victory to me, is hopeful because I think it does provide a reminder for us in the US that, yes, you should be able to work one job and be treated as an employee and have the benefits that come with that and that should be enough to be able to take care of yourself and your family. So I hope more people will look at that and use that as inspiration to demand better. So we're almost wrapping up here, but I want to link up this story that you had, Greg, about well I'm not gonna even to.  Why don’t you take it away?

Greg: Yeah, so I originally had a, so this is the and final, isn't it? I originally had an article here about Jeff Bezos building a ridiculously expensive 10,000 year clock in Texas and I always thought that’s not really a great and final. It’s a bit of a rant. So actually, I've spotted this yesterday. So now we have wireless charging and we're starting to see some interesting uses of wireless charging and someone has created a Pikachu statue that charges a phone with it's cheek. So it holds the phone, obviously audio, so I can't show you a picture of it. But it holds the phone in it's paws. Does Pikachu have paws? So I guess paws. And it's like he's hugging it against his cheek which charges the phone. It's the most ridiculously cute thing. And it also is logical because there's an electric type Pokemon, so of course he would be able to charge your phone. 

Ankur: Exactly. I do have to make a correction for the Pokemon fans out there. It's actually a Picchu. 

Greg: Oh sorry. 

Ankur: Not Pikachu. I know. The Pokemon fans will get very upset by this. Picchu is, I think, the little brother of Pikachu. 

Greg: Right. 

Ankur: But these Pokemon fans get very, very upset. So we’ll keep them happy. No, I think it's absolutely adorable. But it doesn't look like you can actually buy it right? It's a prototype or something because the, I guess the Pokemon Company or whatever, I’m sure would have to license it. 

Greg: And they hate doing that. They hate doing that.

Ankur: That's all we have time for today. Thanks for listening listeners. What did you think? We'd love to hear your thoughts get in touch on Twitter at Tech For Good Live or over email at hello@techforgood.live. We'd love it if you gave us a nice iTunes review and told your friends about this podcast. Thank you to our producers Chris, Shannon and Paul and thank you to Podcast.co for hosting us. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.