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The fear of robots displacing workers has returned

对机器人取代工人的恐惧又回来了

But do not expect tech-induced lay-offs just yet

但现在还不要指望技术导致的裁员

Jul 30th 2020 |

COVID-19 PRESENTED employers with a simple choice: find ways for workers to do their jobs safely, or shut down. At least some have chosen a third option, of dispensing with humans altogether. Among the many breathless headlines prompted by the pandemic are those warning of a new wave of job-destroying automation. The pace of automation in some parts of the economy, like factory floors and warehouses, is almost certain to accelerate. Yet on the whole, robot-induced mass unemployment should remain near the bottom of workers’ lists of worries.

新冠病毒向雇主提供了一个简单的选择:找到让工人安全工作的方法，或者关闭工厂。至少有些人选择了第三种选择，即完全不使用人。在这一流行病引发的众多令人窒息的头条新闻中，有一些警告称，将出现新一轮破坏就业的自动化。在一些经济领域，如工厂和仓库，自动化的速度几乎肯定会加快。然而，总的来说，机器人引发的大规模失业应该仍然是工人们最担心的问题之一。

The world has only recently recovered from a bout of robophobia. In the early 2010s advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), described ominously in countless papers and books, seemed to portend a wave of job destruction. High unemployment after the global financial crisis of 2007-09 added to fears of a job scarcity. Fretting about robots in a downturn is not entirely irrational: firms appear to do most of their job-slashing during slumps. Nir Jaimovich of the University of Zurich and Henry Siu of the University of British Columbia argue that labour-market recoveries have grown weaker in recent decades as a result. Worries can be overdone, though. By the end of the decade unemployment had dropped like a stone and driverless vehicles were struggling to turn left. The earlier panic seemed a touch hysterical.

世界刚刚从一场机器人恐惧中恢复过来。在21世纪10年代初，机器人技术和人工智能(AI)的进步，在无数的论文和书籍中被不祥地描述，似乎预示着一波就业毁灭的浪潮。2007-09年全球金融危机后的高失业率加剧了人们对就业机会短缺的担忧。在经济低迷时期对机器人的担忧并非完全没有道理:企业似乎是在经济低迷时期进行了大部分裁员。苏黎世大学的Nir Jaimovich和英裔哥伦比亚大学的Henry Siu认为，结果是近几十年来劳动力市场的复苏越来越弱。不过，担心可能过头了。到90年代末，失业率如石头般下降，无人驾驶汽车艰难地左转（应该有转变行业方向的意思，或者就是转向不方便）。早些时候的恐慌似乎有点过分了。

词汇

Bout/回合；较量；发作；一阵

phobia/恐怖，憎恶；恐惧症

ominously/恶兆地；不吉利地

portend/预示；预兆；意味着

scarcity/不足；缺乏

Fret/使烦恼；焦急

Slash/大幅度裁减或削减

High rates of joblessness and eye-catching technological advances are again contributing to a new round of fears. In recent weeks, for instance, mind-boggling examples of the capabilities of GPT-3—an AI-based language-processing model developed by OpenAI, a research organisation—have zoomed around the internet. Another cause for anxiety has been businesses’ strategies for coping with the pandemic. Anecdotes of covid-motivated automation are easy to find. Many organisations have turned to software to automate paper-processing tasks that cannot be done by homebound workers. Those facing a deluge of customer enquiries, such as hospitals, are supplementing human assistants with chatbots. Employers’ interest in automating tasks in high-risk environments, such as slaughterhouses, is reportedly on the rise.

高失业率和引人注目的技术进步再次引发了新一轮的恐慌。例如，最近几周，令人难以置信的关于gpt -3效能的例子已经在互联网上迅速流行起来。gpt -3是一个基于人工智能的语言处理模型，由一家研究机构OpenAI开发。另一个引发焦虑的原因是企业应对疫情的策略。关于新冠驱使的自动化办公的轶事很容易找到。许多组织以及转变为借助软件来自动化处理纸上处理的任务，而这些任务是在家人员无法完成的。医院等面临大量客户咨询的企业，正在用聊天机器人来辅助人工助手。据报道，雇主对屠宰场等高风险环境中的自动化任务越来越感兴趣。

词汇

mind-boggling/令人难以置信的；令人惊异的

Anecdote/轶事；奇闻；秘史

Deluge/洪水；泛滥；暴雨

Slaughterhouse/屠宰场

Any effect of these on unemployment has almost certainly been swamped by stronger economic forces, such as social-distancing measures and collapsing aggregate demand. And the pace of automation is likely to be gradual rather than disruptively speedy. Many jobs, even those commonly classified as “low-skilled”, require manual and social dexterity that machines cannot yet match. Workers in face-to-face industries—in bars or restaurants, say, or hair and nail salons—are especially vulnerable to covid-19. But there is little scope for, or interest in, replacing them with robots. In New York thousands of public-transport workers caught the virus, and dozens died. Despite billions of dollars of investment in driverless vehicles, though, computers cannot yet pilot buses through chaotic city streets.

几乎可以肯定的是，这些措施对失业率的任何影响都被更强大的经济力量抵消了，比如疏远社会的措施和总需求的崩溃。自动化的步伐可能是渐进的，而不是破坏性的快速。许多工作，甚至是那些通常被归类为“低技能”的工作，都需要机器还无法匹敌的手工和社交能力。面对面工作的工人，比如在酒吧、餐馆或美发美甲沙龙，尤其容易感染新冠病毒。但用机器人取代它们的空间较小或并不感兴趣。在纽约，数千名公共交通工作人员感染了病毒，数十人死亡。尽管无人驾驶汽车已经投入了数十亿美元，但计算机还不能在混乱的城市街道上驾驶公共汽车。

词汇

collapse /【a sudden large decline of business or the prices of stocks (especially one that causes additional failures)】这就话里面应该可以理解为经济社会生活上某一层面的需求的断裂导致了大量职位空缺。

Aggregate/  合计；集合体

Dexterity/灵巧；敏捷；机敏 

Furthermore, automation is only one of the technological solutions available to firms as they weather the crisis. The pandemic’s most profound labour-market legacy will probably be a rise in remote work. About half of all Americans who were working before the arrival of covid-19 were doing their jobs remotely by May, according to one estimate. Surveys of firms indicate that some of the shift will not be reversed. If remote work slashes overheads and enables people to move to cheaper cities, it could preserve jobs, by alleviating cost pressures on struggling firms.

此外，自动化只是企业度过危机时可用的技术解决方案之一。大流行最深刻的劳动力市场后遗症可能是远程工作的增加。据估计，在新冠病毒到来之前工作的所有美国人中，约有一半到5月时正在远程工作。对公司的调查表明，一些转变将不会逆转。如果远程工作降低了管理费用，使人们能够迁移到成本更低的城市，它就可以通过减轻苦苦挣扎的公司的成本压力来保住工作。

Telework may have some job-destroying effects, though. The pandemic has sped the adoption of technology in labour-intensive sectors like education and health care. Telemedicine and distance learning might mean that fewer doctors and teachers can serve more patients and students. Their largest impact is likely to be on blue-collar workers, such as clerical and janitorial staff, whose services become less necessary as the physical footprint of education and health institutions gets lighter. In a recent essay David Autor and Elisabeth Reynolds of Massachusetts Institute of Technology warn that such a dynamic could play out more widely. Over the past half-century employment growth in cities polarised: middle-skill work declined, and employment grew in white-collar professions and the services that support them. If remote working proves a lasting shift, then the café staff, taxi drivers and cleaners who depend on their custom could find themselves out of work.

然而，远程办公可能会有一些破坏工作的影响。这一流行病加速了教育和保健等劳动密集型部门对技术的采用。远程医疗和远程教育可能意味着更少的医生和教师可以服务更多的病人和学生。它们最大的影响可能是对蓝领工人，比如文书和清洁工，随着教育和卫生机构的实体足迹越来越少，他们的服务变得不那么必要了。在最近的一篇文章中，麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)的戴维•奥托尔(David Autor)和伊丽莎白•雷诺兹(Elisabeth Reynolds)警告称，这种动态可能会在更广泛的地区上演。在过去的半个世纪里，城市的就业增长两极分化:中等技能的工作减少了，而白领行业及其相关服务的就业增加了。如果远程工作被证明是一种持久的转变，那么依赖他们的顾客的咖啡馆员工、出租车司机和清洁工可能会失业。

词汇

Telemedicine/（通过电信手段对病人诊断、治疗的）远程医疗，远距离治病

Clerical/  牧师

Janitorial/管理的；保洁的

Such severe, lasting labour-market pain in the aftermath of the pandemic may actually delay automation, by depressing wages. Developing and deploying new technologies costs money. Would-be automators deciding whether or not to make the needed investment could be swayed by the large reservoir of underemployed labour, willing to work for low pay. In America slaughterhouses—which often hire from a big pool of low-wage workers, many of them undocumented immigrants—are far less automated today than in parts of northern Europe, for example.

在大流行病的余波中，如此严重而持久的劳动力市场阵痛实际上可能会因为压低工资而推迟自动化进程。开发和部署新技术需要资金。大量未充分就业的劳动力愿意以较低的工资工作，可能会左右那些考虑实行自动化工作的人是否进行必要的投资。例如，在美国，屠宰场常常雇佣大量低薪工人，其中许多是无证移民，如今的自动化程度远不如北欧部分地区。

词汇

Reservoir/水库；蓄水池

Automatic transition

自动转换

Tech-induced mass unemployment, then, seems unlikely. But there is one scenario where covid-19 could unleash the robots—if labour costs start to drift upwards, perhaps as global supply chains break down, or minimum wages rise. The reshoring of manufacturing jobs could lead to pressure to replace cheap foreign labour with robots at home. Production could no longer take advantage of low-cost labour, as America’s meat-processing industry does.

因此，科技引发的大规模失业似乎不太可能。但在一种情况下，新冠病毒可能会放开机器人——如果劳动力成本开始上升，或许是由于全球供应链崩溃，或者最低工资上涨。制造业工作岗位的回流，可能导致用机器人取代国内廉价外国劳动力的压力。生产也许不能再像美国肉类加工业那样利用低成本劳动力。

词汇

Scenario/方案；情节；剧本；设想

Reshoring/重新支撑

Years of economic dysfunction have energised campaigns for higher minimum wages and a more generous welfare state. The economic devastation wrought by the pandemic lends them momentum; like past crises, it could lay the groundwork for a new social contract. If post-pandemic policy were to enable workers to enjoy more security on fewer hours worked, firms might then face some genuine labour scarcity. And that would really work up an appetite for disruption.

多年的经济失调，激发了要求提高最低工资和更慷慨的福利国家的运动。大流行病造成的经济破坏给他们提供了动力;与以往的危机一样，它可能为新的社会契约奠定基础。如果大流行后的政策能够让工人在更少的工作时间内享受更多的安全保障，那么企业可能会面临一些真正的劳动力短缺。这将真正激发人们对颠覆的欲望。

词汇

Dysfunction/功能紊乱；机能障碍

Wrought/ 锻造的；有特定风格的

Momentum/势头；[物] 动量；动力