机器人革命不会殃及人类子孙

The fact that the Financial Times special series on robots has been framed around the question “Robots: friend or foe?” is fascinating to me. I understand that change is scary, and that the cyborg from The Terminator is really scary. But my reading of the evidence is that the rapid changes we are seeing in artificial intelligence, sensor development and many other fields are not sending us hurtling towards a future in which the machines become self-aware and take over. Worrying about that future is so misplaced that, as the AI pioneer Andrew Ng puts it, it is like worrying about overpopulation . . . on Mars.

英国《金融时报》关于机器人的特别系列报道一直围绕着这样一个问题：机器人是敌是友？这让我很感兴趣。我知道变化是可怕的，我也知道《终结者》(Terminator)中的半机器人确实可怕。但我读到的证据表明，我们在人工智能(AI)、传感器开发以及其他很多领域看到的快速变化，并没有在把我们快速推向一个机器产生自我意识并接管一切的未来。担心这种未来毫无意义，就像人工智能先驱吴恩达(Andrew Ng)所说的那样，这就好像担心……火星上人口过多。

A much more proximate and real threat, and hence a scarier one, is that of economic dislocation. Robots (a term I am using here as shorthand for the modern, rapidly expanding toolkit of digital technologies) are quickly learning lots of skills — everything from understanding natural language to diagnosing disease to driving cars — that used to be the preserve of human beings alone. These skilful machines are going to spread throughout the world’s economies in the years to come, and they are going to automate some people, perhaps many of them, out of their jobs.

一种更紧迫且更切实（因此也更可怕）的威胁是经济可能出现混乱。机器人（我姑且使用这个词代指快速扩张的现代数字技术工具）正快速学习大量曾经是人类专属的技能——从理解自然语言到诊断疾病、再到驾驶汽车。未来数年，这些技术高超的机器将出现在全球各个经济体中，他们将用自动化取代人工，致使一些（或许多）人失业。

Surely this means that robots are our foes? No, it absolutely does not. To believe otherwise is to reduce us humans to the status of mere labourers — and that is an offensively reductive view of our species.

这当然意味着机器人是我们的敌人喽？不，完全不是这样。认为答案是肯定的，就是把人类贬低为只不过是体力劳动者，这未免太小瞧我们这个物种了。

For one thing, many people are not workers at all; they are children or pensioners, the sick or infirm. For these groups, technological progress is a virtually unalloyed good. It will allow the elderly to lead more autonomous lives (think of a self-driving car that will let them visit friends and relatives, for example), while letting their families closely monitor them and intervene if they fall or become disorientated. It will let children learn what they want, at their own pace. It will let us tailor medical treatments to individuals, rather than simply doing what works best on average.

首先，很多人根本不是劳动者；他们是儿童或退休人士、病人或残障人士。对于这些人而言，技术进步是近乎纯粹的福音。它将让老年人能过上更自立的生活（比如，设想一下无人驾驶汽车带着他们探亲访友），同时让他们的家人能密切监控他们的状况，在他们摔倒或迷路时进行干预。它将让孩子们能按照自己的进度学习他们想学的知识。它将让患者能获得最适合自己的医学治疗，而不是仅仅获得通常而言最有效的治疗。

I struggle to see how technological progress could be negative, on balance, for any of these groups. Yes, children can spend too much time staring at their smartphones, and parents should ensure their screen time is limited. But we survived the advent of television, a technology perfectly designed to turn us into zombies who cease to engage with each other in any way. I am confident, therefore, that the kids will be all right.

总的来说，我想不出对所有这些群体而言，科技进步何以会是一件不好的事情。确实，儿童可能会花费太多时间盯着他们的智能手机，父母应控制他们玩手机的时间。但电视这种原本足以让我们变成彼此不进行任何互动的僵尸的技术诞生了，我们安然无恙；因此，我相信，孩子们会没事的。

But what about those of us who actually do work for a living? Even for us, robots are not our enemies — for two important reasons. First, they are not going to put us all out of work any time soon. There are still a lot of things that technology cannot do — from clearing a table to coaching a team to writing a novel. And even the biggest techno-optimists do not think that these things will be 100 per cent automated in the near future.

但我们这些真正在为生计工作的人呢？即便对于我们，机器人也并非敌人，原因有两个。首先，他们不会很快让我们都失业。仍有很多事情是机器做不了的——从收拾桌子到教一个班的学生写小说。就连对技术发展最乐观的人也不认为，这些工作将在不远的未来实现100%自动化。

It is true that a lot of the jobs that technology cannot do today do not pay very well (largely because lots of people can do them, and this large supply of potential labour keeps wages down). The best way to address this challenge, I believe, is with a negative income tax that provides low-income workers with an earnings boost.

确实，机器现在做不了的很多工作都薪水不高（这主要是因为可以做这些工作的人很多，大量的潜在劳动力供应让薪资高不起来）。我认为，解决这一挑战的最佳办法是将收入所得税降至负值，为低收入员工增加收入。

The second and much more important reason that robots are not our foes is that they make us richer overall. By increasing our capabilities and productivity, they create more bounty and abundance. We like to communicate, learn, entertain ourselves, travel and consume goods and services. Technological progress lets us do more of all of these things for a given amount of money (or, increasingly these days, for no money at all), and at higher levels of quality.

机器人并非敌人的第二个也是更为重要的原因在于，他们让我们总体变得更为富有。通过提高我们的能力和生产率，他们创造了更富足的生活。我们喜欢交流、学习、娱乐、旅行以及消费产品和服务。技术进步将让我们能用同样的钱（乃至免费——按照如今的趋势），以更高的质量做更多我们喜欢的事情。

It is true that the way most of us gain access to much of this bounty is by getting paid for our labour. It is also true that this “labour bargain” is becoming a tougher one for more and more people as their skills become less valuable, because of both globalisation and technological progress. We need to figure out how to deal with this situation This will be one of the most important policy arenas over the coming decades.

确实，我们多数人享受到这种富足的方式是通过获取劳动报酬。此外，确实，对于越来越多的人而言，这种“便宜劳动力”正变得愈发难以消受，因为由于全球化和技术进步，他们的技能变得不那么有价值了。我们需要弄清楚如何应对这种情况。这将是未来数十年最重要的政策领域之一。

But we also need to keep in mind that this is a situation brought about by the fact that technology is letting us do and create much more with much less drudgery and toil. If we cannot figure out how to deal with this, and how to make sure that the fruits of robots’ labour are shared in a way that reflects our shared values and protects our most vulnerable, then shame on us. In that case, we will have met the real foe in that case, and it will be us.

但我们还需要记住，这种情况源于这一事实：技术让我们得以费少得多的力气创造多得多的价值。如果我们无法弄明白如何应对这种形势，如何确保以反映我们共同价值观、保护弱者的方式分享机器人的劳动成果，那么我们应该感到羞愧。如果是那样的话，我们已遭遇真正的敌人，那就是我们自己。