机器人将取代我们的工作，我们现在不先做好打算就来不及了！ [英国媒体]

Robots will take our jobs. We’d better plan now, before it’s too late

机器人将取代我们的工作，我们现在不先做好打算就来不及了！



The opening of the Amazon Go store in Seattle brings us one step closer to the end of work as we know it

在西雅图新开的亚马逊无人便利店让我们离已知的丢掉工作的终点又近了一步。

A new sort of convenience store opened in the basement of the headquarters of Amazon in Seattle in January. Customers walk in, scan their phones, pick what they want off the shelves and walk out again. At Amazon Go there are no checkouts and no cashiers. Instead, it is what the tech giant calls “just walk out” shopping, made possible by a new generation of machines that can sense which customer is which and what they are picking off the shelves. Within a minute or two of the shopper leaving the store, a receipt pops up on their phone for items they have bought.

一月份的时候，西雅图亚马逊总部地下室开设了一种新型便利店。顾客走进来，在商店入口用手机扫码成功后，从货架上挑选他们想要的东西，然后再次离开。在亚马逊无人便利店没有结账处也没有收银员。取而代之的是，这家科技巨头所称的“拿了就走”式购物，使这种购物成为可能的是一种新型机器，这种机器可以区分顾客个体并能感知他们从货架上拿了哪些商品。在顾客离开商店的一两分钟内，他们的手机上就会出现一张他们刚才买东西的收据。

This is the shape of things to come in food retailing. Technological change is happening fast and it has economic, social and ethical ramifications. There is a downside to Amazon Go, even though consumers benefit from lower prices and don’t waste time in queues. The store is only open to shoppers who can download an app on their smartphone, which rules out those who rely on welfare food stamps. Constant surveillance means there’s no shoplifting, but it has a whiff of Big Brother about it.

这就是食品零售业未来的发展趋势。技术变革正在迅速发生，它具有经济、社会和伦理方面的衍生影响。不过，即使更低的价格能让消费者从中获益，也不用浪费时间排队，但是亚马逊无人便利店也有缺点。这家商店只对那些有智能手机可以下载亚马逊应用的购物者开放，而排除了那些依赖福利食物券的人。持续不断的监控意味着没有入店行窃发生，但是实际情况可不一定呢。

Change is always disruptive but the upheaval likely as a result of the next wave of automation will be especially marked. Driverless cars, for instance, are possible because intelligent machines can sense and have conversations with each other. They can do things – or will eventually be able to do things – that were once the exclusive preserve of humans. That means higher growth but also the risk that the owners of the machines get richer and richer while those displaced get angrier and angrier.

变化总是有破坏性的，但是这种巨变的起因可能跟下一次自动化浪潮有关。例如，无人驾驶汽车是有可能的，因为智能机器可以彼此感知并进行对话。他们现在可以做，或者最终可以做一些曾经是人类专属的事情。这意味着经济更快的发展，也意味着一种风险，机器的所有者将越来越富有，而那些被机器替代掉的人将变得越来越愤怒。

The experience of past industrial revolutions suggests that resisting technological change is futile. Nor, given that automation offers some tangible benefits – in mobility for the elderly and in healthcare, for instance – is it the cleverest of responses.

过去工业革命的经验表明，抵制技术变革是徒劳的。考虑到自动化给老年人和医疗保健带来的一些实际好处，抵制也不是最明智的反应。

A robot tax – a levy that firms would pay if machines were taking the place of humans – would slow down the pace of automation by making the machines more expensive but this too has costs, especially for a country such as Britain, which has a problem with low investment, low productivity and a shrunken industrial base. The UK has 33 robot units per 10,000 workers, compared with 93 in the US and 213 in Japan, which suggests the need for more automation not less. On the plus side, the UK has more small and medium-sized companies in artificial intelligence than Germany or France. Penalising these firms with a robot tax does not seem like a smart idea.

机器人税，即如果机器人取代了人类，拥有机器人的公司将支付的费用。这将使机器变得更昂贵从而减缓自动化的速度，但这也有代价，特别是对于像英国这样投资低、生产率低、工业基础萎缩的国家。英国每1万名工人中就有33个机器人，而美国的数据为93人，日本为213人，这意味着对自动化的需求只多不少，而不是更少。从积极方面来看，英国有更多中小型人工智能公司，数量比德国或法国多。通过机器人税来惩罚这些公司似乎并不是一个聪明的主意。

The big issue is not whether the robots are coming, because they are. It is not even whether they will boost growth, because they will. On some estimates the UK economy will be 10% bigger by 2030 as the result of artificial intelligence alone. The issue is not one of production but of distribution, of whether there is a Scandinavian-style solution to the challenges of the machine age.

最大的问题不是机器人是否会到来，因为这是一定的。甚至也不是机器人是否会促进经济增长，因为这也是一定的。据估计，单纯由人工智能带来的影响将使英国经济在2030年增长10%。关键问题不是生产问题，而是分配问题，关乎是否有一种像北欧国家那样的解决方案（丰厚的福利）以应对机器时代的挑战。

In some ways, the debate that was taking place between the tech industry, politicians and academics in Davos last week was similar to that which surrounded globalisation in the early 1990s. Back then, it was accepted that free movement of goods, people and money around the world would create losers as well as winners, but provided the losers were adequately compensated – either through reskilling, better education, or a stronger social safety net – all would be well.

在2018达沃斯论坛上，高新技术行业、政界人士和学者展开了有关这个问题的辩论。这在某些方面与上世纪90年代初围绕全球化的辩论类似。那时全球化的辩论上，人们普遍接受世界各地货物、人口、金钱的自由流动会产生输家和赢家，但是前提是通过再培训、更好的教育或者一个更强大的社会保障体系，输家将得到充分的补偿。一切都会好的。

But the reskilling never happened. Governments did not increase their budgets for education, and in some cases cut them. Welfare safety nets were made less generous. Communities affected by deindustrialisation never really recovered. Writing in the recent McKinsey quarterly, W Brian Arthur put it this way: “Offshoring in the last few decades has eaten up physical jobs and whole industries, jobs that were not replaced. The current transfer of jobs from the physical to the virtual economy is a different sort of offshoring, not to a foreign country but to a virtual one. If we follow recent history we can’t assume these jobs will be replaced either.”

但所谓的再培训并没有发生过。政府并没有为教育增加预算，在某些情况下还削减了预算。社会保障体系不那么慷慨了。受工业化影响的地方也并没有真正恢复过来。在最近的麦肯锡季刊上，W Brian Arthur这样写道：“在过去几十年里，离岸外包已经消灭了体力工作和整个行业。目前从体力工作到虚拟经济工作的转变是一种不同类型的离岸外包，这种离岸外包不是相对外国来说的，而是虚拟的。如果我们遵循最近的历史，我们就不能假设这些工作会不会也被取代。”

The Centre for Cities suggests that the areas hardest hit by the hollowing out of manufacturing are going to be hardest hit by the next wave of automation as well. That’s because the factories and the pits were replaced by call centres and warehouses, where the scope for humans to be replaced by machines is most obvious.

（英国独立研究机构）城市中心表示，受制造业空洞化打击最严重的地区将受到下一波自动化浪潮最大的冲击。这是因为工厂将被呼叫中心和仓库所取代，在那里人类被机器取代是最为明显的。



But there are going to be middle-class casualties too: machines can replace radiologists, lawyers and journalists just as they have already replaced bank cashiers and will soon be replacing lorry drivers. Clearly, it is important to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Any response to the challenge posed by smart machines must be to invest more in education, training and skills. One suggestion made in Davos was that governments should consider tax incentives for investment in human, as well as physical, capital.

但自动化也将使中产阶级遭受损失：机器可以替代放射科医生、律师和记者，正如机器已经替代掉银行出纳员并且很快将替代掉卡车司机一样。显然，避免重复过去的错误是很重要的。对智能机器带来的挑战所作出的任何回应，都必须在教育和技能培训方面投入更多。达沃斯论坛提出一个建议是，政府应该考虑税收激励政策，以鼓励对人类的物质投资和资本投资。

Still this won’t be sufficient. As the Institute for Public Policy Research has noted, new models of ownership are needed to ensure that the dividends of automation are broadly shared. One of its suggestions is a citizens’ wealth fund that would own a broad portfolio of assets on behalf of the public and would pay out a universal capital dividend. This could be financed either from the proceeds of asset sales or by companies paying corporation tax in the form of shares that would become more valuable due to the higher profits generated by automation.

这仍然是不够的。英国智库公共政策研究所指出，需要建立新的所有权模式，以确保自动化的红利得到广泛分享。公共政策研究所的建议之一是设立公民财富基金，代表公众持有广泛的资产组合，并支付给公众资本红利。公民财富基金的获利可以是出售资产的收益，也可以是公司以股票的方式支付的公司税，因为由于自动化带来的利润更高，这些公司的股票会变得更值钱。