the five years after merging with your 90's continental airlines, we will look at what happens. can high-tech influence gun control? smart weapons that could be a game changer. >> challenges that women directors face in hollywood on bloomberg businessweek on bloomberg television.

carol: another great issue. one thing that struck me was it interesting article about dov los. thethey are looking at fourth industrial revolution and technology, drones, all of the things we are excited about, if it will improve life and increase productivity. david: i was reading the article about the divide among people who think technology will change productivity. another thing is what is going on in china. we have been focused on the volatility in the market. pointing our finger at the circuit breaker. david: when there has been such a decline, 5% to 7%, a provocative piece says there is more at play. carol: also focusing on running

an airline. david: running united airlines is tougher. there have been a lot of ceo changes. a 2.8 million dollar fine from passengers using wheelchairs, flight delays, lost baggage -- you get the idea. david: we are joined in new york with more horror stories. this is a company that was in the news after a colossal merger. the merger was not a success from the get-go? >> there was a lot of optimism. united, the size of their network, and continental's management. they will will run and their employees were happy. the idea was you would have a powerhouse. that hasn't happened. get the different ways to measure performance, this

airline has done poorly. think that you have bad stories about airlines. they all have problems. with united, there are extreme problems. non-discount airlines, looking year after year and quarter after quarter, they finish at the bottom of the barrel. customers are set. customer satisfaction has been poor at united for a long time. about someonete that had cerebral palsy and there was not a wheelchair for them to get off the airplane. drake: crawling off of the airplane. he was a disability rights activist. he was coming home to d.c. there was not an i/o wheelchair to take you to the jetway. was because of a misunderstanding. it was one more instance where

you ninth it find ways to vividly to solve -- vividly piss off. david: around the time of about howger, talking the airline will be doing better. can you attribute this to him exclusively, or was it a bigger problem? drake: it wasn't just his fault. there were issues from legacy united. they had a very bitter work force. they had not invested in planes and infrastructure. there were poor decisions. thesions about how to merge 2 technology systems. how to handle labor issues. a focus on cost cutting. that is what they promised wall street. it ends up being

unpleasant for consumers and employees. also ultimately -- broughtn terms of what him down, it was not problems going on at the airline? you look at the fortunes of the airlines from the wall street standpoint, they turned around last year. then, in the fall, it's my sick -- isaac stepped down. in april, there had then a sopranos-style new jersey political influence battle. of the investigation and united's internal investigation, he had to step down. david: he was replaced by the interim ceo. i was struck by the stylistic differences. get-go, he was

focused on changing the public perception of the airline. consumers and employees. he went out of his way to meet as many employees as he could. there is an open letter to consumers. he called up the much a loved ceo that turned around continental in the mid-1990's to meet in chicago and talk about how to rebrand the airline. those a push under munoz. and the acting ceo now. carol: munoz had a heart attack? aske: it was a commercial follow. last week it turned out it was not just a heart attack. he had a heart transplant which is a serious operation. still recuperating. united is sticking to their timeline for his return. we will see. the cost outlook

for united? i fly because it is convenient, but there are problems. drake: if you look at things like on time and mishandled baggage, there pulled themselves into the middle of the pack. in terms of customer satisfaction, they are doing better. they are not people's favorites. they have done well financially during a time when jet fuel was cheap. there were favorable factors. going into next year it will be harder. delta passed them to be number two in terms of traffic. it will be tough. david: you started your piece talking about how much united surveys its customers. there is a perception these airlines are tone deaf to what the customers like and do not like. how often, every time i

fly united i get a survey. david: either assigns united and others are paying more attention to customers? drake: i think so. some of the changes were put in place under jeff's miser -- jeff miser. they listen. they have a customer experience department looking at what customers think. they changed the coffee. carol: they looked at the boarding process. i wrote a cover story three years ago about the merger. i opened talking about coffee. the process of figuring out what coffee they would serve was detailed and labor-intensive. they settled, then changed. years later, they're doing it again. there is a little getting back to zero, but heading in the right direction.

carol: they're integrating to huge companies, it wasn't easy. any m&a processing, it isn't easy. ,rake: it is not just airlines ceos always overpromise. optimism. what will come out of the mergers. it is hard to deliver. david: it is easy to forgive them when you are not in the terminal. carol: still to come -- david: leery of models you can unlock with fingerprints. when bloomberg businessweek returns. ♪

carol: can technology shape the gun control debate in the and finance states? asked president obama this question during his address at the white house. president obama: if we can set it up or you can not unlock your phone unless you have the right fingerprint, why can't we do the same thing for guns? carol: the answer is a little complicated. why can't we? how complicated is it? >> it isn't the technology that is complicated. we have put back or chips in weapon since the 1990's. you can have a biometric communication system. so that the person wearing a ring or wrist piece has to be the person pulling the trigger. the complicated part is the politics. gun rights activist for 20 plus years have been resisting any move toward so-called smart guns. group if a gun rights

wanted more people to embrace the second amendment and gun ownership, you'd think this would be a way to get people who may be hesitant at way ticket safer guns. paul: that is the argument entrepreneurs who have been developing these guns had in mind. it is outweighed, at least in the inner circles of the gun rights movement, the nra and elsewhere, by the fear that a move toward smart guns is the first step down the proverbial to they slope confiscation of firearms in the government tracking who owns which firearms by means of microchips. that is the argument. carol: president obama came out with a directive to do research. is that going to make a difference? paul: it may make a difference in money will be spent ticket prototypes built. the prototypes are already out

there. people have been trying to get this off the ground. the question is if there are demand. if gun owners want to buy these things. the paradox is the biggest fans of smart guns are people who are gun skeptics. opposed to firearm ownership. the key would be to win over the gun owning circle in this country. gund: what you year from rights groups is yes, we have fingerprint technology on our iphones. it doesn't work all the time. if you are buying a gun for self-defense, do you want to chance it that the fingerprint sensor won't work when you need it? paul: there's something unusual about the firearm. it works very well without digital technology, unlike your phone, which has been improved by the addition of computerization.

unlike her car, your refrigerator, and your dishwasher. a firearm accomplishes its lethal purpose with the same basic mechanics used since the late 19th century. putting a microchip in the gun doesn't make it more deadly. that is the argument from some people. tinkeringo point in with success. guns work the way they are. after selling in the first session of the new year, chinese authorities combed the market. david: a circuit breaker stops the stock from declining 5% in one day. carol: a cut off trading in 29 minutes into trading. david: talking more about the circuit breaker. how did it get put in? who put it in? >> last summer chinese investors were unhappy the market was volatile.

compared to our market, there is is totally nuts. great idea.ke a regulators decided, let's let people come down. -- calm down. they said after 5% we will take a 15 minute break to reconsider. sell did not want to anyway. if things david call him and stocks continued declining, at seven minutes they would halt for the day. equity markets have become front and center. been not -- we have blaming circuit breakers for the volatility, but that is not the only thing we should be focusing on? zeke: some people said circuit breakers were designed poorly and it scared investors. that could the the case.

managing the market is almost impossible because stocks have gone up so much in the past year from last summer to the year before, they increased 154%. on the shanghai and shenzhen exchange are the highest in the world. the median is 55. double or triple most other exchanges. it is like internet double level. .- internet bubble level they are trading the average company like it was facebook. they are not all future alibaba s. you cannot say we are tech company. we were a restaurant chain, now we arotech company, and the stock goes up. david: and they are renaming themselves to sound more techie. the market has been

manipulated very successfully. upfound one ipo that went .200% in two months a few months later they said we are restructuring. we will halt trading. in china, companies can suspend trading in their own stock if they say there is news pending. they can suspend it indefinitely. of this week's etc. section. carol: the first feature of sundance was unveiled 20 years director. if you haven't heard of her, it is because of the dynamics in hollywood. ♪

david: the theme of the economic forum in davos, switzerland is economich revolution. we're joined to tell us why some economists think it could cause economic harm. shape the contours of this debate for us. some think there is a hope for a future where robots are doing our laundry and making dinner. some say that might not be the best thing. will basically automate a lot of low-skilled labor. there is a lot of on the quality of around the world. especially on the lower end of the manufacturing sector. if robots permeate the way that we think they might, that will eliminate a lot of jobs. one estimate coming out of the u.k. central banker things 80

million u.s. jobs might be destroyed in the next 50 years by robots. robertyou talked about gordon at northwestern university who played a game called find the robot. where is he? does he think robots help the way we live and make us more productive? matthew: he is pessimistic. he is of the notion that all of the productive gains of the last one hundred years through the system, we have picked the low hanging fruit. the next 100 will be less productive. enthusiasmpite the over machine-learning and artificial intelligence, it is difficult to teach a robot to do simple tasks like folding laundry. he is of the camp there is too much optimism around the potential for a fourth industrial revolution to make a

game changing leap into the way that we live and boost productivity. david: we had the steam engine, electrification, and computers. i was struck by a line in the story, you said it took 30 years between electrification starting and making a difference in factories? takes years or generations. history proves for these advancements to work through the system -- we went through the records of american factories 100 years ago as they were electrifying and it basically took a new generation of plant managers to realize we need to reorient plants around electricity as opposed to the steam engine. even those who are optimistic about the impact that these digital technologies will have on our lives, think we are years

away from this impacting productivity. data dax that up. the place you would think this most, labore productivity, we are in a slump. carol: there are statistics you pointed out. you'd expect to see single gains but when you, compare data to post the room cycles, we aren't saying that kind of returned? .atthew: without a doubt we have had numeral two blooms in 100 years, post-world war ii to the middle 1970's with three point 5% annual growth and productivity. for 30nt down to 1.5% years. then from 1996 to 2003, jumping to 3.5%. we're back to 1.5%. that suggests it wasn't that 1990 six was the year we got

computers. we had computers before that. it was that and being connected through e-mail etc., working in a way to allow us to do more with less, essentially. smart phonei have a in my pocket, it is difficult for that to translate into official statistics and boost productivity. there is hope we might see a boost in the next 10 years. now, it is nowhere to be seen. carol: time to look at the etc. part of the magazine. let's bring in jillian goodman. to have you great back. the first page of the section. attractedhart attention at a festival and might have had success, but has been under the radar for two decades. quiet came with a very

film, and it has taken her longer than her peers to make a career for herself. carol: it talk about kelly and what she has done over the last years. it has not been easy for her to get the recognition you see of male directors. , she makes intimate, quiet films that are not star-driven or part of a franchise. even to get that level of support and money to make her movies, it has been hard. david: i was looking at her career trajectory thinking about what we heard about the disparity and what women make -- carol: the hacking of the sony e-mails -- david: jennifer lawrence making less than her male counterparts. this are thrilled to make story on her and bring this conversation to business week.

she doesn't mind those discussions, but does not want that to be the only discussion. she just wants to do the work and make the movies. david: i was looking at the stats from the top 10 biggest grossing movies out of hollywood . not a single female director in the mix. are we seeing hollywood doing anything to change that? >> there are some investigation underway. it is hard for any of us to say what will change that. attitudeds to be shifts and systemic changes if these artists are going to be able to make the work they deserve to make. carol: what does it for this week's bloomberg "businessweek." i am carol massar. david: the latest cover story featuring united airlines is online and in newsstands now. ♪

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