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Bartleby
巴托比专栏
Machines and meaning of work
机器与工作的意义
Robots and AI might not take your job. But they could make it worse.
机器人和人工智能可能不会抢走你的工作，但可能让工作变得更糟。
July 19th was a day for help-desk heroes and support superstars.
7月19日是属于帮助台英雄和技术支持超级明星的日子。
A routine software update by CrowdStrike, a cyber-security company, caused computer outages in offices, hospitals and airports worldwide.
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.
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。
People in IT came to the rescue of helpless colleagues and stranded passengers.
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.
他们那天的工作充满了压力，但也充满了意义。
If machines can add purpose to some jobs when they fail, what about when they work properly?
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.
这不是一个无聊的问题。
Discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) in particular easily get lost in hypothetical debates about wholesale job losses or, worse, the nature of consciousness.
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.
但技术的传播往往不是那么突然，而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。
Before machines replace individuals, they change the nature of the work they do.
在机器取代个人之前，机器会改变它们所做工作的性质。
That is likely to affect job satisfaction.
这可能会影响工作满意度。
Many employees put a higher premium on non-monetary than monetary rewards.
许多员工认为非金钱奖励比金钱奖励更有价值。
A recent Federal Reserve discussion paper by Katherine Lim and Mike Zabek surveyed American workers who had switched jobs to find out whether and why they thought their new positions were better; they found that interest in the work mattered more to people than pay and benefits.
最近，凯瑟琳·里姆和迈克·扎贝克在美联储发表的一篇讨论论文中，对那些换过工作的美国工作者进行了调查，以了解他们是否认为新工作更好，以及为什么这么认为；他们发现，对工作的兴趣对人们来说比薪酬和福利更重要。
Which is why another recent paper, from Milena Nikolova and Femke Cnossen of the University of Groningen and Boris Nikolaev of Colorado State University , makes for sobering reading.
这就是为什么格罗宁根大学的米莱娜·尼科洛娃和费姆克·克诺森，以及科罗拉多州立大学的鲍里斯·尼古拉耶夫最近发表的另一篇论文读起来令人清醒。
The authors looked at the prevalence of robots in industrial settings and how that affected workers.
作者们观察了工业环境中机器人的普及情况，以及这对工人产生了怎样的影响。
Robots reduced the perceived meaningfulness of jobs across the board, irrespective of age, gender, skills and the type of work.
无论年龄、性别、技能和工作类型如何，机器人全面降低了工作的意义感。
In theory, machines can free up time for more interesting tasks; in practice, they seem to have had the opposite effect.
从理论上讲，机器可以为更有趣的任务腾出时间；但在实践中，机器似乎产生了相反的效果。
In a separate paper, Ms Nikolova and Ms Cnossen, along with Anthony Lepinteur of the University of Luxembourg, explore why this might be.
在另一篇论文中，尼科洛娃和克诺森与卢森堡大学的安东尼·勒平特尔一起探讨了这背后的原因可能是什么。
They find that industrial robots make jobs less physically taxing.
他们发现工业机器人使工作对体力的要求降低了。
But the number of tasks that remain open to humans dwindles, hurting both the variety of work and people’s understanding of the production process.
但是人类仍然可以从事的任务数量在减少，这既损害了工作的多样性，也损害了人们对生产过程的理解。
Work becomes more routine, not less.
工作变得更加常规，而不是更少。
Machines need not have a dulling effect.
但机器不一定会产生令人迟钝的效果。
In their research Ms Nikolova and her co-authors found that people did not perceive a loss of autonomy if they were working with computers, where they have more control of the machine than the other way round.
在他们的研究中，尼古洛娃及其合著者发现，如果人们与计算机一起工作，他们不会感觉到自主权的丧失，因为他们对机器的控制比机器对人的控制更多。
(Presuming, of course, you can turn it on.)
（当然，前提是你能打开计算机。）
And automation may well have a different impact on service industries like health care, where less time spent on drudge work might indeed mean more time with patients.
而且自动化很可能会对医疗保健等服务行业产生不同的影响，在这些行业中，花在苦差事上的时间减少可能确实意味着与患者相处的时间增加。
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不同的效果。
Pharmacists felt the quality of their jobs had improved because they had more time for patient counselling.
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。
Like the IT administrators rolling back the CrowdStrike update, technicians enjoyed the enhanced status that came with knowing how to fix the robots.
就像IT管理员解决“群体攻击”的更新问题一样，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.
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。
Consumer reactions to automation can also vary.
消费者对自动化的反应也可能各不相同。
An experiment conducted by Eugina Leung, now of Tulane University, and her co-authors tested how customers reacted to different descriptions of a cooking set.
由尤金娜·梁（现任职于杜兰大学）及其合著者进行的一项实验测试了顾客对一套炊具的不同描述有何反应。
People who prided themselves on being skilled chefs really didn’t like products that promised to do everything at the touch of a button.
以自己的精湛厨艺而自豪的人，真的不喜欢那些承诺只需按一下按钮就能完成一切的产品。
A technology that cuts down on boring tasks is fine; one that threatens your sense of identity is not.
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.
要知道人工智能将如何影响工作质量，现在还为时过早。
Some will surely enjoy using a bot to brainstorm ideas and take care of menial tasks.
有些人肯定会喜欢用机器人来进行头脑风暴和处理低级任务。
Yet research by Pok Man Tang of the University of Georgia and his co-authors also suggests that workers who interact more with AI assistants feel lonelier and crave more social contact.
然而，佐治亚大学的邓博满（音译）及其合著者的研究也表明，与AI助手互动更多的员工会感到更孤独，并渴望更多的社交接触。
The thing for managers to remember is that machines can make employees feel differently about their work.
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.
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。
Bosses who ignore these issues are missing something meaningful.
老板们如果忽视这些问题，就会错过有意义的东西。
