【英语生活】机器人将淘汰哪些工作？ Work survival in the era of automation

Roy Harold Scherer Jr worked as a truck driver on the long haul to the top of his chosen profession. He later found film stardom under the name of Rock Hudson. Michael Dell, founder of US company Dell Computers, washed plates and was a waiter in Chinese and Mexican restaurants before he landed on a career in technology.

Such humdrum tasks once allowed ambitious people to earn cash en route to the top. For others, they were full-time jobs. But such low and semi-skilled jobs are increasingly in danger of being wiped out by the coming robotics age. Dish washing has long been automated and truck driving may be consigned to the rear-view mirror when driverless vehicles hit the streets.

This month’s Connected Business asks what workers will need to do to make their careers robot proof. But it is open to debate what this technological revolution will mean, especially for employers and workers in sectors requiring what are seen as a lower order of skills.

Tourism, traditionally viewed as a provider of low-paid, part-time, customer-facing jobs, is one industry experimenting with robots in human roles, such as receptionists.

Stephen Page, a professor of tourism management at Bournemouth university in the UK, says wide adoption of robots will depend on how and where in the world they are used. A survey by TravelZoo, an online media company, found regional variations in human acceptance of robots. Chinese tourists were the most comfortable with the idea of their use in travel, French and Germans were the least at ease.

Prof Page says: “We already know planes are flown by computer, so to a certain degree you can say a robot is flying it with human interaction to provide the safety element.”

Transport is another sector where jobs are at risk. Rachel Aldred, senior lecturer in transport at Westminster university in London, says driverless buses could improve life for staff and passengers. Past welfare studies found bus driving was stressful and unhealthy because drivers are sedentary. Being a bus conductor, however, was better for health and a less stressful occupation.

“Since then we’ve got rid of conductors but kept bus driver jobs,” Ms Aldred says. “So if you’re looking at employee health it is the wrong way round.

“Potentially, having driverless buses opens the opportunity to reinstate those conductor jobs, and to improve service quality to passengers,” she says. “It will also improve employee health.”

She says a more negative outcome would be to get rid of the driver as well as the conductor.

That choice could come down to how much money companies can save by employing robots and how unions and workers respond to such changes.

But Ms Aldred says automation may even provide more work for people. “Jobs do change all the time, just because you have a technological change doesn’t necessarily lead to a shrinkage in jobs, it is just different skills are required.”

Prof Page is also optimistic: “There is a role for human creativity, to create more forms of human employment so you’re constantly generating new areas in the job market.”

Ms Aldred adds that the way some jobs are classified as low skilled and low waged may need to change. Roles in call centres, shops and care require complex skills, for instance. “We need to improve the quality of these jobs, particularly if we’re going to have more of them.”

States and education systems, meanwhile, may need to better prepare young people for the future. Infosys, a multinational technology company, last month published a study of youngsters aged 16-25 from nine developed and emerging economies. This found that a third of millennials thought that artificial intelligence would be a big cause of change in their future careers.

As Carl Benedikt Frey, co-director of the Oxford Martin programme on technology and employment, told the FT in a recent interview: “Any loss of equality [through fewer jobs] would be a failure of policy, not technology.”

当过卡车司机的小罗伊?哈罗德?谢勒(Roy Harold Scherer Jr)，经过长期奋斗，最终登上了自己选择的职业的巅峰。他化名罗克?赫德森(Rock Hudson)，成为家喻户晓的电影明星。美国计算机公司戴尔(Dell)创始人迈克尔?戴尔(Michael Dell)在踏入科技业之前，曾在中餐馆和墨西哥餐厅洗过盘子、当过服务生。

这些枯燥乏味的工作，曾经使那些雄心勃勃的年轻人在成功之前得以赚钱糊口。对其他人而言，这是他们的全职工作。但这些低端、不需要多少技能的工作越来越面临被即将到来的机器人时代淘汰的危险。洗盘子很久之前就实现了自动化，而等到无人驾驶汽车大量上市之时，卡车司机的工作可能也会被历史淘汰。

FT英文网站（ft.com）本月出版的特别报道《互联商业》(Connected Business)提出了一个问题：劳动者需要做什么，才能让自己的职业不被机器人取代？但当下的科技革命意味着什么——尤其是对那些被认为只需较低阶技能的行业里的雇主和工人而言——仍有讨论的余地。

传统上被视为提供低薪、兼职、面向客户工作的旅游业，正在尝试利用机器人取代人工岗位，比如前台接待员。

英国伯恩茅斯大学(Bournemouth university)旅游管理专业教授斯蒂芬?佩奇(Stephen Page)表示，机器人的广泛采用将取决于这个世界如何使用它们、将它们用在哪里。在线媒体公司旅游族(TravelZoo)所做的一项调查发现，不同地区的消费者对机器人的接受程度存在差异。中国游客最能接受旅行中由机器人提供服务的想法，而法国和德国游客感到最不适应。

佩奇教授表示：“我们早已知道飞机是由电脑操纵飞行，所以在某种程度上，你可以说是一个机器人在驾驶飞机，同时由人类驾驶员的介入提供安全保障。”

另一个工作机会面临淘汰风险的行业是交通运输业。位于伦敦的威斯敏斯特大学(Westminster university)高级讲师蕾切尔?奥尔德雷德(Rachel Aldred)表示，无人驾驶巴士可以造福巴士公司员工和乘客。先前在福利方面的研究发现，驾驶巴士是一项充满压力的工作，而且对身体健康有害，因为驾驶员需要久坐。巴士售票员反倒是一个更有益于健康、压力不那么大的职业。

“自那以来，我们已经淘汰了售票员，但却保留了巴士司机的工作，”奥尔德雷德说，“因此，从有益于员工健康的角度来看，这样做恰恰搞反了。

“无人驾驶巴士有可能让售票员岗位得到恢复，同时提升对乘客的服务质量，”她说，“也可以改善员工的健康状况。”

她说，更为不利的结局是司机和售票员双双被淘汰。



这种选择将取决于使用机器人能为巴士公司省下多少资金，以及工会和劳动者对这些变化作出的反应。

但奥尔德雷德表示，自动化甚至可能为人们提供更多工作。“工作的确无时无刻不在发生变化，仅仅是出现了一项技术变革未必会导致工作机会的减少，只是所需的技能不同了。”

佩奇教授也持乐观看法：“人类的创造力可以为自身创造出更多就业形式，因此，可以在就业市场不断开辟新领域。”

奥尔德雷德补充说，一些工作被归类为低技能、低薪水的情况可能需要改变。例如，呼叫中心、商场及护理的工作就需要复杂的技能。“我们需要提升这些工作的质量，特别是如果要增加这方面就业的话。”



与此同时，各国政府以及教育系统可能需要让年轻人对未来做出更充分的准备。上个月，跨国科技公司Infosys发布了一项针对9个发达和新兴经济体16-25岁的年轻人的研究，结果发现，三分之一的千禧一代年轻人认为，人工智能将成为影响他们未来职业生涯的一大变数。

牛津大学(Oxford)马丁学院技术与就业项目联席主任卡尔?贝内迪克特?弗雷(Carl Benedikt Frey)在最近一次采访中对英国《金融时报》表示：“（工作机会减少带来的）任何不公平都将是政策而非科技的失败。”

译者/隆祥