你的工作终将被机器人取代？

Is a robot going to steal your job? Posed like this, the “fourth industrial revolution” looks relentlessly negative. We are all familiar with the dystopian scenario. Mass unemployment, accelerated inequality, widespread redundancies and workers left without purpose as the machines take over. This bleak picture troubles those who look beyond short-term political cycles at how technological trends will shape our society and our economy in the decades to come.

机器人会偷走你的工作吗?面对这样的问题，“第四次工业革命”看起来百害而无一利。我们熟知反乌托邦的情景。大规模失业，不平等加剧，到处裁员，机器接手了工作从而使劳动者变得无所事事。这种黯淡的画面，让那些会思考科技发展趋势在未来几十年里将如何塑造我们的社会和经济、而不是只着眼于短期政治周期的人感到担忧。

But let me ask a slightly different question. Whatmundanetasks would you willingly pass off to a friendly robot helper? What don’t you like doing at work — organising your calendar? Checking for meeting rooms? Filling out forms? And what would dumping these tasks — on to an artificial intelligence underling — free you to do more of in your work? The stuff you enjoy, probably, and the bits that are actually productive.

但让我来问一个稍有不同的问题。你愿意将哪些琐碎小事交给友好的机器人助手去做?你不喜欢工作中的哪些事务——制定工作日程?检查会议室?填写表格?把这些杂事丢给一个人工智能下属，你能腾出时间更多地做什么事?大概是那些你喜欢做的事，还有确实更有价值的事。

The truth is that automation and AI are coming (indeed, they are here) whether we like it or not. We don’t really have a choice. But that is not to say that we lack all agency about when it comes, how work will change or the impact of the coming revolution. Whether the inevitable robots replace us at work or make our work happier and more rewarding — that is in our hands.

事实是，不管我们喜欢还是不喜欢，自动化和人工智能正在到来(其实它们就在身边)。我们其实没有选择。但这并不是说，我们对它们会在什么时候到来、工作会有什么变化以及这场革命的影响都无能为力。必然到来的机器人是将在工作中取代我们，还是会让我们的工作变得更愉快和更有意义——这掌握在我们手中。

At the Institute for the Future of Work, we are not very interested in the question of whether new technology is utopian or dystopian — because it tends to be what you do with it that really counts. We are engaged in building the tools and the processes to help employees collaborate in identifying how automation can make work better and more productive, ensuring the jobs we have are good for boss and worker alike.

在未来工作研究所(Institute for the Future of Work)，我们对新技术是乌托邦还是反乌托邦的问题不是很感兴趣——因为往往是你用它来做什么才是真正重要的。我们致力于开发工具和流程，以协助员工合作发掘自动化如何使工作变得更好、更高效，确保我们的工作对老板和雇员都一样有利。

This means designing the technological augmentation of tasks with the experience of workers as the priority; asking how automation can improve workers’ lives and enhance productivity, not how it can simply replace human work or create new processes that alienatehuman beings from the world of work. We think this will be crucial in helping Britain cope with the double disruption of Brexit and the AI revolution.

这意味着在设计如何以技术“强化”(augment)工作的过程中，要优先考虑雇员体验;思考自动化应如何改善雇员生活并提高生产力，而非简单地考虑它将如何取代人类工作，或开启一个新的过程使人类远离职场天地。我们认为这对于帮助英国应对脱欧和人工智能革命的双重干扰至关重要。

Companies that get this right have a huge amount to gain. The Sony UK technology centre in Wales managed to increase productivity by automating some of its production lines and redeploying workers to upskilled roles. Research published last year by a team led by Chris Brauer at Goldsmiths, University of London, showed that organisations augmented by automation technologies are 33 per cent more likely to be human-friendly, and have employees who are 31 per cent more productive. That’s an astonishing double-win: happier employees, assisted by technology to get a third more done with their time.

能处理好这一点的公司将获得巨大收益。威尔士的索尼英国技术中心(Sony UK technology centre)就通过将其一部分生产线自动化并把员工转到高技能岗位，而成功地提高了生产力。去年由伦敦大学金史密斯学院(Goldsmiths, University of London)的克里斯•布劳尔(Chris Brauer)领导的研究小组发表了一项研究，表明通过自动化技术强化自己的组织，成为员工友好(human-friendly)机构的可能性会增加33%，员工的工作效率也会提高31%。这是一个了不起的双赢：更快乐的员工，在技术的帮助下，在他们的工作时间内完成了比以往多三分之一的工作。

All this requires a change of mindset. If we are to harness automation for human ends, and avoid driving people out, we must think in systems from the outset. This means looking at work within organisations from all angles — involving workers, employers and other stakeholders, such as consumers, in designing technological augmentation.

这一切都需要改变思维方式。如果我们想要利用自动化来实现人性化，并避免将人们排除在职场外，则必须从一开始就系统化地思考。这意味着在技术强化的设计方面，要站在各方——包括员工、雇主和其他利益相关者，如消费者——的角度审视组织内部的工作。

Recognising the inputs and outputs of a particular job, carving out elements where automation would be welcome, can set workers free to achieve more. Conducting this process in reverse — working out what we can automate quickly and leaving the remainder for humans to do — is a recipe for misery, alienation and social decay.

确定在一项特定工作中需要投入的因素和所能产生的成果，找出在哪些方面自动化会受到欢迎，就能让员工放开手去实现更大成就。如果将这个过程倒着来——找出我们在哪些方面可以快速自动化，将剩下的留给人类去做——将造成痛苦、不容于职场和社会衰退。

We are focused on building the tools to help employers do this right. Our Good Work Charter helps to define the principles of what a good job looks like. Bodies such as EUnited Robotics — the trade body for the European robotics industry — are adopting the charter to create practical guidance to help engineers think about the impact of their designs on people.

我们专注于开发工具，以帮助雇主做好这方面的事情。我们的“优秀工作章程(Good Work Charter)”有助于确立有关“什么样的工作是好工作”的原则。包括欧洲机器人行业组织EUnited Robotics在内的多家机构正在采用该章程以制定一个实用指南，来帮助工程师思考其设计对人的影响。

In the end, the fourth industrial revolution will bring with it massive new automation. It will not drive humans from the labour market entirely. But the choice will be between human workers left to sweep up after robots and robots who are there to boost happiness and productivity for workers. This will not happen organically; it needs us to be vigilant and to design the tools and the processes to tell the difference between these two approaches. But the prize is real and hugely exciting. I, for one, welcome our new robot underlings.

第四次工业革命最终将带来大规模的新式自动化。它不会将人类彻底赶出劳动力市场。但是人们将在两种情况中做出选择：是让人类为机器人洒扫，还是让机器人的到来增进员工的幸福感和生产力?这不会自然地发生，而是需要我们保持警醒，并设计出相应的工具和流程来区分这两种情况。但其效果将是实实在在的、令人万分振奋的。就我来说，我欢迎我们新的机器人下属。