The number of jobs lost to more efficient machines is only part of the problem...In the past, new industries hired far more people than those they put out of business. But this is not true of many of today’s new industries.”“更加高效机器导致的工作萎缩数量只是问题的一部分……过去，新的行业聘请的员工数量相比之下多达这些行业砸掉的饭碗。但如今很多新的行业却并非如此。

”This sentiment, from Time magazine, dates from the early weeks of John Kennedy’s presidency. Yet it would slot nicely into many a contemporary political speech. Like any self-respecting remorseless killer robot from the future, our techno-anxiety just keeps coming back.来自《时代周刊》杂志(Time)的这种观点可回溯到约翰肯尼迪(John Kennedy)兼任总统最初几周。然而，把它放入当今许多政治演说中也丝毫会变得高耸。与所有来自未来的那些有自尊心、冷酷无情的杀人机器人一样，我们对科技的忧虑也于隔年一段时间就又回去。

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator was science fiction — but so, too, is the idea that robots and software algorithms are guzzling jobs faster than they can be created. There is an astonishing mismatch between our fear of automation and the reality so far.阿诺德施瓦辛格(Arnold Schwarzenegger)主演的《终结者》(Terminator)是科幻电影，而这种观点也是科幻、而非现实：机器人和软件算法挽救低收入的速度快于建构低收入的速度。我们对于自动化的忧虑与目前的现实经常出现了难以置信的相符。

How can this be? The highways of Silicon Valley are sprinkled with self-driving cars. Visit the cinema, the supermarket or the bank and the most prominent staff you will see are the security guards, who are presumably there to prevent you stealing valuable machines. Your computer once contented itself with correcting your spelling; now it will translate your prose into Mandarin. Given all this, surely the robots must have stolen a job or two by now?怎么会这样？硅谷的高速公路上行经着不少无人驾驶汽车。去影院、餐馆或者银行的时候，你看见的最醒目的员工将是保安，他们不存在的原因大约是为了避免你盗窃价值高昂的机器。你的电脑曾多次符合于缺失你的拼法；如今电脑不会把你写出的文章翻译成普通话。鉴于这一切，这些机器人现在认同早已盗取了一两份工作了吧？Of course, the answer is that automation has been destroying particular jobs in particular industries for a long time, which is why most westerners who weave clothes or cultivate and harvest crops by hand do so for fun. In the past that process made us richer.当然，答案是长期以来，自动化仍然在毁坏某些特定行业的某些特定工作，这就是为什么如今多数西方人临死前纺纱或栽种和收成农作物是为了冷笑话。

过去，做到这些能为我们带给收益。The worry now is that, with computers making jobs redundant faster than we can generate new ones, the result is widespread unemployment, leaving a privileged class of robot-owning rentiers and highly paid workers with robot-compatible skills.现在人们担忧，考虑到电脑挽救低收入的速度快于我们建构新的低收入的速度，不会经常出现大规模失业，可谓一个由享有机器人的食利者以及享有相容机器人技能的高薪员工构成的特权阶级。This idea is superficially plausible: we are surrounded by cheap, powerful computers; many people have lost their jobs in the past decade; and inequality has risen in the past 30 years.表面上显然，这种观点是合理的：我们被廉价且强劲的电脑围困；过去10年，很多人失业；过去30年，不公平程度仍然下降。

But the theory can be put to a very simple test: how fast is productivity growing? The usual measure of productivity is output per hour worked — by a human. Robots can produce economic output without any hours of human labour at all, so a sudden onslaught of robot workers should cause a sudden acceleration in productivity.但我们可以用一个非常简单的测试来检验这一理论：生产率增长速度有多慢？取决于生产率的一般来说标准是一个人类的每小时生产量。机器人可以在丝毫不减少人类劳动时间的情况下建构经济生产量，因此机器人劳动者的大量肆虐不应不会带给生产率快速增长的忽然公里/小时。

Instead, productivity has been disappointing. In the US, labour productivity growth averaged an impressive 2.8 per cent per year from 1948 to 1973. The result was mass affluence rather than mass joblessness. Productivity then slumped for a generation and perked up in the late 1990s but has now sagged again. The picture is little better in the UK, where labour productivity is notoriously low compared with the other G7 leading economies, and it has been falling further behind since 2007.然而，事实上生产率仍然令人沮丧。在美国，1948年至1973年，劳动生产率增长速度平均值为每年2.8%，这很真是。结果是大规模富足，而非大规模失业。

接着，生产率下降了一代人时间，在上世纪90年代末回落，如今又再度陷于下滑。英国的情况也没好到哪里去，众所周知，英国的劳动生产率高于七国集团(G7)其他成员国，自2007年以来双方差距还仍然在拉大。Taking a 40-year perspective, the impact of this long productivity malaise on typical workers in rich countries is greater than that of the rise in inequality, or of the financial crisis of 2008. In an age peppered with economic disappointments, the worst has been the stubborn failure of the robots to take our jobs. Then why is so much commentary dedicated to the opposite view? Some of this is a simple error: it has been a tough decade, economically speaking, and it is easy to blame robots for woes that should be laid at the door of others, such as bankers, austerity enthusiasts and eurozone politicians.以40年的时间段来看，富国普通劳动者生产率长年下滑的影响要多达不公平程度下降或者2008年的金融危机。在经济领域诸多事情令人沮丧之际，最令人沮丧的事情就是机器人仍然没能夺去我们的工作。

那么，为何有如此多言论致力于阐述忽略的观点？部分原因在于一个非常简单的错误：从经济的角度来看，过去这十年是艰苦的十年，我们很更容易将本不应怪罪于其他人（比如银行业人士、极力主张削减的人士以及欧元区政治界人士）的困境归咎于机器人。It is also true that robotics is making impressive strides. Gill Pratt, a robotics expert, recently described a “Cambrian explosion” for robotics in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. While robots have done little to cause mass unemployment in the recent past, that may change in future.机器人产业于是以获得不错进展，这也是事实。机器人专家吉尔渠拉特(Gill Pratt)最近在《经济未来发展期刊》(Journal of Economic Perspectives)中写到机器人科学经常出现“寒武纪大爆发”。

尽管最近机器人完全没导致大规模失业，但未来这点可能会发生变化。Automation has also undoubtedly changed the shape of the job market — economist David Autor, writing in the same journal, documents a rise in demand for low-skilled jobs and highly skilled jobs, and a hollowing out of jobs in the middle. There are signs that the hollow is moving further and further up the spectrum of skills. The robots may not be taking our jobs, but they are certainly shuffling them around.此外，自动化毫无疑问转变了低收入市场的状况，经济学家戴维攠塙尔(David Autor)在同一份期刊中记录了低技能和高技能工作市场需求的下降以及中等技能岗位的萎缩。

有迹象指出，岗位萎缩现象于是以越发向更高技能的岗位蔓延到。机器人也许没夺去我们的工作，但它们认同于是以对我们的工作新的配对。Yet Mr Autor also points to striking statistic: private investment in computers and software in the US has been falling almost continuously for 15 years. That is hard to square with the story of a robotic job-ocalypse. Surely we should expect to see a surge in IT investment as all those machines are installed?然而，奥托尔还认为难以置信的数据：美国电脑和软件领域的私人投资已完全持续地下降了15年。

如果说机器人不会带给低收入末日的话，这很难说得通。既然那么多机器早已所在之处，我们认同不会预计IT投资不会攀升，不是吗？Instead, in the wake of the great recession, managers have noted an ample supply of cheap human labour and have done without the machines for now. Perhaps there is some vast underground dormitory somewhere, all steel and sparks and dormant androids. In a corner, a chromium-plated robo-hack is tapping away at a column lamenting the fact that the humans have taken all the robots’ jobs.然而，在大萧条之后，管理者注意到廉价人类劳动力供应充裕，仍然符合于继续不用于机器人。

也许，在地下某个地方有一个极大的宿舍，里面都是晕着金属光泽、正处于休眠状态的钢铁机器人。在一个角落里，一个镀铬的机器人雇工正在敲击键盘编写一篇专栏，感叹人类已夺去所有机器人的工作。

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