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Machines and meaning of work
机器与工作的意义
July 19th was a day for help-desk heroes and support superstars. A routine software update by CrowdStrike, a cyber-security company, caused computer outages in offices, hospitals and airports worldwide.
7月19日是属于帮助台英雄和技术支持超级明星的日子。网络安全公司“群体攻击”的一次例行软件更新导致全球办公室、医院和机场的计算机出现故障。
Most white-collar workers looked disconsolately at their screens and realised just how useless they are if they cannot log in. People in IT came to the rescue of helpless colleagues and stranded passengers.
大多数白领工作者沮丧地看着屏幕，并意识到如果无法登录，他们是多么无用。IT部门的人员前来营救无助的同事和滞留的乘客。
Their work that day was full of stress—but also full of meaning. If machines can add purpose to some jobs when they fail, what about when they work properly?
他们那天的工作充满了压力，但也充满了意义。如果机器在出现故障时可以为某些工作增添意义，那么当机器正常运行时，又会怎样呢？
This is not an idle question. Discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) in particular easily get lost in hypothetical debates about wholesale job losses or, worse, the nature of consciousness.
这不是一个无聊的问题。关于人工智能的讨论尤其容易迷失在关于大规模失业，或者更糟糕的，关于意识之本质的假设性辩论中。
But technologies tend to spread in less dramatic ways, task by task rather than role by role. Before machines replace individuals, they change the nature of the work they do. That is likely to affect job satisfaction.
但技术的传播往往不是那么突然，是一项任务一项任务地传播，不是一个角色一个角色地传播。在机器取代个人之前，机器会改变它们所做工作的性质。这可能会影响工作满意度。
A paper from 2011 by Michael Barrett of the University of Cambridge and his co-authors found that the introduction of drug-dispensing robots into hospital pharmacies had disparate effects.
2011年，剑桥大学的迈克尔·巴雷特及其合著者发表的一篇论文发现，将配药机器人引入医院药房会产生完全不同的效果。
Pharmacists felt the quality of their jobs had improved because they had more time for patient counselling. Like the IT administrators rolling back the CrowdStrike update, technicians enjoyed the enhanced status that came with knowing how to fix the robots.
药剂师认为他们的工作质量有所提高，因为他们有更多的时间为患者提供咨询。就像IT管理员恢复“群体攻击”的更新一样，技术人员享受着知道如何修复机器人所带来的地位提高。
Pharmacy assistants had a more miserable time of it, however, as their role shrank to loading medicine into the machines. A technology that cuts down on boring tasks is fine; one that threatens your sense of identity is not.
然而，药房助理的日子不太好过，因为他们的职责缩减为将药品装入机器。能减少无聊任务的技术是好的；但威胁到你身份认同感的技术则不好。
It is still too early to know how AI will affect the quality of work. The thing for managers to remember is that machines can make employees feel differently about their work.
要知道人工智能将如何影响工作质量，现在还为时过早。管理者要记住的是，机器会让员工对工作产生不同的感受。
So it matters whether new technologies are introduced in collaboration with employees or imposed from above, and whether they enhance or sap their sense of competence. Bosses who ignore these issues are missing something meaningful.
因此，新技术是与员工合作引入还是由上而下强加的，以及新技术是增强还是削弱了员工的胜任感，这些都很重要。老板们如果忽视这些问题，就会错过有意义的东西。
