Glimpses of an AI-enabled future经济学人官方双语阅读

2016 经济学人补充译文20

Conclusion

Answering the machinery question

Glimpses of an AI-enabled future

结论

回答机器问题

拥有人工智能的未来一瞥

THE ORIGINAL MACHINERY question, which had seemed so vital and urgent, eventually resolved itself. Despite the fears expressed by David Ricardo, among others, that “substitution of machinery for human labour…may render the population redundant”, the overal l effect of mechanisation turned out to be job creation on an unprecedented scale. Machines allowed individual workers to produce more, reducing the price of many goods, increasing demand and generating a need for more workers. Entirely new jobs were created to oversee the machines. As companies got bigger, they required managers, accountants and other support staff. And whole new and hitherto unimagined industries sprang up with the arrival of the railways, telegraphy and electrification.

最初的机器问题曾看似那么地重要和紧迫，最终自己解决了。曾有很多人，如大卫·李嘉图（David Ricardo）表达过担忧，“机器替代劳动力……可能会让人变得冗余无用。”然而机械化的总体结果实际上创造了史无前例的大量就业机会。机器让每个工人的产量提高，降低了众多商品的价格，从而提升了需求，需要的工人也更多了。人们为管理机器创造出了全新的岗位。随着企业规模变大，需要更多管理者、会计和其他支持人员。铁路、电报和电气化的到来也催生了众多以前从未想象过的全新行业。

To be sure, all this took time. Industrialisation caused pervasive labour-market upheaval as some jobs vanished, others changed beyond recognition and totally new ones emerged. Conditions in factories were grim, and it took several decades before economic growth was reflected in significant wage gains for workers—a delay known as “Engels’ pause”.

Worries about unemployment gave way to a much wider argument about employment conditions, fuelling the rise of socialist and communist ideas and creating the modern labour movement. By the end of the 19th century the machinery question had faded away, because the answer was so obvious. In 1896 Arthur Hadley, an American economist, articulated the view of the time when he observed that rather than destroying jobs, mechanisation had brought about “a conspicuou s increase of employment in those lines where improvements in machinery have been greatest”.

诚然，这些都非一日之功。工业化导致了广泛的劳动力市场剧变，一些工作岗位消失，另一些岗位完全改头换面，还有一些全新岗位出现。工厂条件堪忧，经济增长的成果在数十年后才体现为工人薪酬的大幅提高——这一延迟被称为“恩格斯停顿”。

对失业问题的担忧转而让位于对就业条件更广泛的争论，这刺激了社会主义和共产主义理念的兴起，也造就了现代工人运动。到19世纪末，机器问题已逐渐淡化，因为答案显而易见。1896年，美国经济学家亚瑟·哈德利（Arthur Hadley）对当时的观点做了明确的阐述，他观察到机械化不仅没有削减就业机会，反而“在机械带来改变最大的行业里”带来了“就业机会的显著增加”。

What does all this tell us today? Historical analogies are never perfect, but they can be informative. Artificial intelligence is now prompting many of the same concerns as mechanisation did two centuries ago. The 19th-century experience of industrialisation suggests that jobs will be redefined, rather than destroyed; that new industries will emerge; that work and leisure will be transformed; that education and welfare systems will have to change; and that there will be geopolitical and regulatory consequences. 这在今天对我们有什么启示呢？历史从来都不完全相似，但仍可资镜鉴。人工智能在今天所引发的很多担忧与两个世纪前人们对机械化的担忧如出一辙。19世纪工业化的进程显示，工作岗位将被重新定义，而不是被毁灭；新行业将会诞生；工作与休闲方式将脱胎换骨；教育和福利体系必将随之改变；地缘政治和监管也都会受到影响。

In many ways, the two big debates about AI—whether it will destroy jobs, and whether it might destroy humanity—are really arguments about the rate of change. If you believe that AI is improving so rapidly that human-level artificial general intelligence (AGI) is just around the corner, you are more likely to worry about unexpected and widespread job losses and the possibility that the technology may suddenly get out of control. It seems more probable, however, that AI will improve steadily, and that its impact over the next decade or two, while significant, will not be on the same scale as the epochal shift from a mostly agricultural to a mostly industrial economy.

AGI is probably still a couple of decades away, perhaps more, so the debate about what it might or might not be able to do, and how society should respond to it, is still entirely theoretical. This special report has therefore focused on the practical effects