当今的技术必然会给未来的工作产生巨大的影响。但迄今为止尚未有任何一个国家做好这方面的准备。
Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition
1. INNOVATION, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artisan weavers were swept aside by the mechanical loom. Over the past 30 years the digital revolution has displaced many of the mid-skill jobs that underpinned 20th-century middle-class life. Typists, ticket agents, bank tellers and many production-line jobs have been dispensed with, just as the weavers were.
作为进步的灵丹妙药，创新始终都在让人类付出失去工作的代价。在工业革命时期，手工织布的工作被纺织机挤到了一边。在过去的30年中，数字革命又取代了众多的曾支撑了20世纪的中产阶层的生活的中等技能工作，打字员、票务代理、银行出纳员以及许多在生产线上工作的人都遭遇了同当年的织布工一样的命运。
2. For those, including this newspaper, who believe that technological progress has made the world a better place, such churn is a natural part of rising prosperity. Although innovation kills some jobs, it creates new and better ones, as a more productive society becomes richer and its wealthier inhabitants demand more goods and services. A hundred years ago one in three American workers was employed on a farm. Today less than 2% of them produce far more food. The millions freed from the land were not consigned to joblessness, but found better-paid work as the economy grew more sophisticated. Today the pool of secretaries has shrunk, but there are ever more computer programmers and web designers.
在坚信技术进步会让这个世界变得更加美好的人（包括本报在内）看来，这种冲击是的走向富足一个必经之路。创新的确会让一些工作消失，但是随着生产力的提高、社会财富的增加以及富裕起来的人们对获得更多商品和服务的要求的增加，创新也能带来新的而且是更好的工作。100年前，在每三个美国工人中就有一个人在农场中干活，如今虽然这个比例已经下降到不足2%，但是他们生产的食物却比之前多了很多。这数百万从农活中解放出来的人没有因经济的细化而沦为失业者，他们反而找到了收入更高的工作。如今，从事秘书工作的人越来越少，而计算机程序员和网页设计师却越来越多。
Remember Ironbridge
记住铁桥
3. Optimism remains the right starting-point, but for workers the dislocating effects of technology may make themselves evident faster than its benefits (see article). Even if new jobs and wonderful products emerge, in the short term income gaps will widen, causing huge social dislocation and perhaps even changing politics. Technology's impact will feel like a tornado, hitting the rich world first, but eventually sweeping through poorer countries too. No government is prepared for it.
开始的时候保持乐观是正确的。但是，对于工人而言，他们可能在还未享受到技术冲击效应所带来的好处之前就已经明显受到了冲击。即便是新的工作和完美的产品能够不断涌现，但是，从短期来看，收入的差距会越拉越大，并进而引发巨大的社会动荡，甚至还有可能造成权力的更迭。从长远来看，技术的影响力就像是一场风暴，它的第一个打击目标是富裕国家，但最终也会席卷穷国。目前还尚未有任何一个政府做好应对的准备。
4. Why be worried? It is partly just a matter of history repeating itself. In the early part of the Industrial Revolution the rewards of increasing productivity went disproportionately to capital; later on, labour reaped most of the benefits. The pattern today is similar. The prosperity unleashed by the digital revolution has gone overwhelmingly to the owners of capital and the highest-skilled workers. Over the past three decades, labour's share of output has shrunk globally from 64% to 59%. Meanwhile, the share of income going to the top 1% in America has risen from around 9% in the 1970s to 22% today. Unemployment is at alarming levels in much of the rich world, and not just for cyclical reasons. In 2000, 65% of working-age Americans were in work; since then the proportion has fallen, during good years as well as bad, to the current level of 59%.
为什么要为此而担忧呢？这不过是历史上曾经多次发生过的事情罢了。在工业革命早期，为提高生产力而投入资金的人收获了与其投入不成比例的好处。但是，随着时间的推移，最终享受绝大多数好处的人却是普通的劳动者。当前的模式与此相类似。数字革命带来的繁荣大都被投资者和技能最好的工人所享受。在过去的30年间，从全球范围来看，劳动力在产出中所占的比例已经从64%降至59%。与此同时，占美国人口1%的最富有的人群的收入在总收入中的比例却从上世纪70年代的9%左右上升到如今的22%。大多数富国的失业率正处于令人担忧的水平，其原因不能仅仅用周期性来解释。在2000年时，在美国适龄劳动人口中，65%的人是有工作的；但是，从那以后，不论是年景好坏，这个比例一直都在下降，如今已经降至59%。
5. Worse, it seems likely that this wave of technological disruption to the job market has only just started. From driverless cars to clever household gadgets (see article), innovations that already exist could destroy swathes of jobs that have hitherto been untouched. The public sector is one obvious target: it has proved singularly resistant to tech-driven reinvention. But the step change in what computers can do will have a powerful effect on middle-class jobs in the private sector too.
更糟的是，当前这一波对就业市场具有冲击效应的浪潮似乎是才刚刚开始。已有的创新——无论是无人驾驶汽车还是具有人工智能的家居产品——可能会“消灭”一大批至今还尚未有人从事过的工作。事实证明，此前一直对由技术推动的再发明持异常抵触态度的公共部门是这波浪潮的一个明显的目标。但是，这种由计算机带来的突变也会给私营部门中的由中产阶层所从事的工作造成巨大影响。
6. Until now the jobs most vulnerable to machines were those that involved routine, repetitive tasks. But thanks to the exponential rise in processing power and the ubiquity of digitised information (“big data”), computers are increasingly able to perform complicated tasks more cheaply and effectively than people. Clever industrial robots can quickly “learn” a set of human actions. Services may be even more vulnerable. Computers can already detect intruders in a closed-circuit camera picture more reliably than a human can. By comparing reams of financial or biometric data, they can often diagnose fraud or illness more accurately than any number of accountants or doctors. One recent study by academics at Oxford University suggests that 47% of today's jobs could be automated in the next two decades.
在此之前，最容易受机器影响的主要是那些单调乏味的日常工作。但是，随着处理能力的指数级上升和数字化信息（即所谓的“大数据”）的日渐普及，计算机完成复杂任务的能力也正在日渐提高。在这种情况下，使用计算机比使用人力更加划算，更加有效。聪明的工业机器人能快速地“学会”一连串的人类动作。服务可能会更容易受到伤害。计算机早就能够从闭路摄像头拍摄的画面中识别出入侵者，而且其结果比人类的判断更加可靠。在辨识欺诈或者诊断疾病方面，由于计算机能对大量的金融或者生物计量数据进行比较，因而它们的判断经常比一大帮会计或者医生所作出的判断还要准确。据牛津大学专家的一项最新研究显示，在今后20年中，47%的现有工作可能会实现自动化。
7. At the same time, the digital revolution is transforming the process of innovation itself, as our special report explains. Thanks to off-the-shelf code from the internet and platforms that host services (such as Amazon's cloud computing), provide distribution (Apple's app store) and offer marketing (Facebook), the number of digital startups has exploded. Just as computer-games designers invented a product that humanity never knew it needed but now cannot do without, so these firms will no doubt dream up new goods and services to employ millions. But for now they are singularly light on workers. When Instagram, a popular photo-sharing site, was sold to Facebook for about $1 billion in 2012, it had 30m customers and employed 13 people. Kodak, which filed for bankruptcy a few months earlier, employed 145,000 people in its heyday.
与此同时，正如我们在本期专题报道中所言，创新进程本身也在因数字革命而发生改变。多亏了那些能够提供服务（如亚马逊的云计算）、发布软件（如苹果的APP应用商店）和进行营销的互联网和各种平台的已有代码的存在，才使得众多的数字创业企业如雨后春笋般地涌现出来。就如计算机游戏开发者发明了人类从未想到而今却又偏偏离不开的产品那样，这些企业无疑正在梦想着有朝一日也能够成为一个为其新产品和新服务而雇佣数百万员工的大公司。但奇怪的是，到目前为止，它们还只是一些员工很少的企业。比如说，在2012年以10亿美元的价格把自己卖给脸谱公司的Instagram就是一个例子。这是一个颇受欢迎的图片分享网站，客户有3000万人之多，但是却只有13名员工。相比之下，在此之前几个月破产的柯达公司在其全盛期时拥有145000名员工。
8. The problem is one of timing as much as anything. Google now employs 46,000 people. But it takes years for new industries to grow, whereas the disruption a startup causes to incumbents is felt sooner. Airbnb may turn homeowners with spare rooms into entrepreneurs, but it poses a direct threat to the lower end of the hotel business—a massive employer.
这只是一个早晚的问题罢了。如今的谷歌就雇佣了46000名员工。但是，就新兴产业而言，虽说创业企业从小到大的成长过程需要历时数年的时间，但是它们所形成的冲击是很快就能够被现有企业感受到的。Airbnb可能会把有空闲房屋的房主变成一位企业家，但同时也对拥有大量员工的旅馆业形成了直接的威胁。
No time to be timid
没有时间去犹豫了
9. If this analysis is halfway correct, the social effects will be huge. Many of the jobs most at risk are lower down the ladder (logistics, haulage), whereas the skills that are least vulnerable to automation (creativity, managerial expertise) tend to be higher up, so median wages are likely to remain stagnant for some time and income gaps are likely to widen.
倘若这种分析有一半是正确的话，其社会效应将会是巨大的。最有可能消亡的工作大多处于社会阶梯的底端（如物流和仓储），而最不容易受自动化影响的技能（如创造力和管理经验）往往都处于高端。因此，收入的中位数有可能在今后一段时间内停滞不变，而收入的差距可能会越拉越大。
10. Anger about rising inequality is bound to grow, but politicians will find it hard to address the problem. Shunning progress would be as futile now as the Luddites' protests against mechanised looms were in the 1810s, because any country that tried to stop would be left behind by competitors eager to embrace new technology. The freedom to raise taxes on the rich to punitive levels will be similarly constrained by the mobility of capital and highly skilled labour.
随着不平等的加剧，愤怒也会随之而增长。这对政客们来说是一个难以解决的问题。如今，再像卢德派分子在19世纪头十年反对机械织布机那样有意回避进步是徒劳的。因为，试图阻挡进步的国家会被渴望接受新技术的竞争对手抛在身后。同样，惩罚性地调高富人税率的自由也会因资本的流动性和高技能劳动力而受到约束。
11. The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers’ fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to educate them—a dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them apart from computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking. Technology itself will help, whether through MOOCs (massive open online courses) or even video games that simulate the skills needed for work.
政府应该因势利导，帮助民众渡过难关，而达到这一目的的主要方式是教育。工人的财富之所以能在工业革命后期得到增加，其中的一个原因就是政府开办了可以让他们在其中接受教育的学校，这在当时是一个极大的转变。如今，这些学校也已经到了需要变革的时候。它们应当把重点放在学生的培养创造性方面，因为这是人类同计算机的根本区别。它们应当减少死记硬背，增加批判性思维。其实，技术本身就能够提供这种帮助，无论是通过开放式网络课程，甚或是通过能够模拟工作所必须的技能的电子游戏。
12. The definition of “a state education” may also change. Far more money should be spent on pre-schooling, since the cognitive abilities and social skills that children learn in their first few years define much of their future potential. And adults will need continuous education. State education may well involve a year of study to be taken later in life, perhaps in stages.
政府还应当对“国家教育”做出新的的定义。他们应当把资金更多地投入到学前教育中去，因为孩子在人生初期掌握的认知能力和社会技能会决定他们今后的潜力。他们还需要对成人进行继续教育，应该让成人在离开学校以后再接受为期一年的国家教育，这可以通过分阶段进行的办法来实现。
13. Yet however well people are taught, their abilities will remain unequal, and in a world which is increasingly polarised economically, many will find their job prospects dimmed and wages squeezed. The best way of helping them is not, as many on the left seem to think, to push up minimum wages. Jacking up the floor too far would accelerate the shift from human workers to computers. Better to top up low wages with public money so that anyone who works has a reasonable income, through a bold expansion of the tax credits that countries such as America and Britain use.
然而，就算是人们接受了再多的教育也改变不了个人能力之间的差距；再者，当今的世界是一个经济极化的世界，对于大多数人来说，不仅工作前景日渐暗淡，而且薪水也总是不见增加。因此，帮助他们的最佳方式不是去推动提高最低工资——就像是左派所主张的那样。最低工资提得过高反而会加快计算机取代人力的过程。与之相比，最好还是采用以政府收入来补贴低收入者薪水的办法——如英美正在采用的大胆的税收抵免政策——来达到凡是有工作的人都能够获得合理收入的目标。
14. Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would want to return to the world of handloom weavers. But the benefits of technological progress are unevenly distributed, especially in the early stages of each new wave, and it is up to governments to spread them. In the 19th century it took the threat of revolution to bring about progressive reforms. Today's governments would do well to start making the changes needed before their people get angry.
人类一直都在享受创新所带来的巨大好处。但凡是思维正常的人都不想再回到依靠人力来织布的那个时代。不过，并不是所有的人都能享受到技术进步所带来的好处，尤其是每一次新浪潮的初期。因此，政府有责任把这些好处传播开来。在19世纪的时候，政府是因为担心革命才进行了进步性的改革。如今，政府必须在民众对他们变得日益不满之前开始变革。
From the print edition: Leaders
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