譯/王麗娟 Who is winning the race for jobs between robots and humans? Last year, two leading economists described a future in which humans come out ahead. But now they've declared a different winner: the robots.
The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as three-fourths of a percent, according to a new paper by the economists, Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University. It appears to be the first study to quantify large, direct, negative effects of robots.
機器人與人類競逐工作機會，究竟誰是贏家？去年，兩位知名經濟學家描繪了一個人類領先的未來，但現在他們宣布了不同的贏家：機器人。
受自動化影響最大的行業是製造業。根據兩位經濟學家，麻省理工學院的達倫．艾斯摩格魯與波士頓大學的帕斯庫爾．雷斯特雷波所完成的一份新報告，每千名工人配備1個機器人，最多會使6名工人失業，薪資也會下跌0.75%。這似乎是把機器人既大又直接且負面的影響加以量化的第一份研究報告。
The paper is all the more significant because the researchers, whose work is highly regarded in their field, had been more sanguine about the effect of technology on jobs. In a paper last year, they said it was likely that increased automation would create new, better jobs, so employment and wages would eventually return to their previous levels. Just as cranes replaced dockworkers but created related jobs for engineers and financiers, the theory goes, new technology has created new jobs for software developers and data analysts.
But that paper was a conceptual exercise. The new one uses real-world data — and suggests a more pessimistic future. The researchers said they were surprised to see very little employment increase in other occupations to offset the job losses in manufacturing. That increase could still happen, they said, but for now there are large numbers of people out of work, with no clear path forward — especially blue-collar men without college degrees.
這份報告所以顯得特別重要，主要是因為原先這兩位研究人員對科技對就業的影響始終較為樂觀，而兩人的專業表現在他們的領域深受重視。去年兩人在一份報告中說，自動化程度提高很可能會創造新的、更好的就業機會，所以就業和工資最終將恢復到先前的水平。正如同起重機取代了碼頭工人，同時也為工程師和金融家創造了相關的就業機會，他們的理論指出，新技術已為軟體開發人員和數據分析師創造新的就業機會。
不過，那份報告僅是一個概念練習。新的報告使用了現實世界的數據，並得出一個較悲觀的未來。這兩位學者表示，他們驚訝地發現其他職業的就業機會增加極少，無法抵消製造業的就業機會損失。他們表示，前述就業機會增加還是可能發生，不過，就眼前而言，失業者人數眾多，且前方沒有明確道路可行，特別是沒有大學學歷的藍領階級。
"The conclusion is that even if overall employment and wages recover, there will be losers in the process, and it's going to take a very long time for these communities to recover," Acemoglu said.
"If you've worked in Detroit for 10 years, you don't have the skills to go into health care," he said. "The market economy is not going to create the jobs by itself for these workers who are bearing the brunt of the change."
艾斯摩格魯說：「結論是：即使整體就業情況和工資恢復，過程中仍有輸家出現，且這些群體需很長時間才能復元。」
他說：「若你在底特律工作10年，你不會有能進入醫療保健領域工作的技能。市場經濟本身不會為這些在變革中首當其衝的工人創造就業機會。」
The paper's evidence of job displacement from technology contrasts with a comment from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who said at an Axios event that artificial intelligence's displacement of human jobs was "not even on our radar screen," and "50 to 100 more years" away.
The study analyzed the effect of industrial robots in local labor markets in the United States. Robots are to blame for up to 670,000 lost manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2007, it concluded, and that number will rise because industrial robots are expected to quadruple.
這份報告提供了科技取代人類就業機會的證據，但它與美國財政部長米努勤發表的談話大相逕庭。米努勤在美國新媒體Axios的一項活動中說，人工智慧取代人類工作，「甚至不在我們雷達螢幕上」，是「50或100年後的事」。
上述研究分析了工業機器人對美國當地勞動力市場的影響。研究結論是，1990年至2007年期間，機器人是製造業減少67萬個就業機會的元凶，這一數字還會上升，因為工業機器人的數量預計將增至四倍。
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文/王麗娟
文中指出根據研究人員的報告，對藍領階級而言，自動化（automation）是比貿易（trade）和委外生產（offshoring）更大的就業長期威脅。自動化技術取代人力，一直是就業者的一大恐懼。不過，機器最終是否能完全取代人類，迄今仍是見仁見智的議題。許多人認為，機器人（robot）因為缺乏自我意識，只能輔助（complement），無法取代（replace）人類。
美國財政部長米努勤說人工智慧（artificial intelligence） 取代人類工作，「甚至不在我們雷達螢幕上」（not even on our radar screen）， 意為人工智慧取代人類，不是財政部特別關切的當務之急。俚語on （one's） radar （screen）意為一切都在雷達監視範圍內，都在掌控中，如：This year's new fashion trend is definitely on my radar.（今年的新時尚趨勢，我毫無疑問瞭若指掌。）如果on換成under/off/beneath ，意為不在注意或重視的範圍中。
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