THE ECONOMIST · Business | Bartleby

If AI displaces human workers, they will lose more than just pay

若人工智能取代人类工作，人们失去的不仅是薪水

Work has value beyond the income it provides
工作的价值远不止于其提供的收入

Sometimes you embark on a project and realise that you have misjudged things. To your horror you realise it’s too late to turn back. So you plough on and hope to avoid catastrophe. But enough about Mark Zuckerberg drinking Guinness. Other artificial-intelligence bigwigs harbour deep misgivings of another kind—about the potential effects of the technology they are developing. On October 18th Anthropic, an AI lab, said it plans to put 5% of its shares into a public-benefit fund that might end up distributing cash to people affected by economic upheaval. A day later Elon Musk pledged to give one share in SpaceX to every child in America.
有时当你投身于一个项目，却意识到自己判断失误，惊恐之下发现为时已晚，无法回头。于是你只能硬着头皮继续，祈祷能避免灾难。不过，关于马克·扎克伯格喝健力士黑啤的话题就说到这里。其他人工智能大佬们则怀有另一种深刻的忧虑——担心他们正在开发的技术可能带来的后果。10月18日，人工智能实验室Anthropic宣布计划将其5%的股份放入一个公共福利基金，该基金最终可能会向受经济动荡影响的人们发放现金。一天后，埃隆·马斯克承诺向美国的每个孩子赠送一股SpaceX股票。

There is no sign yet of an AI jobs apocalypse. But if the technology were to destroy many more jobs than it creates, the question of how much paid employment matters, not just to people’s income but also to their happiness and dignity, would become salient indeed.
目前尚无迹象表明会爆发人工智能引发的“就业末日”。但如果这项技术摧毁的工作岗位远多于其创造的岗位，那么有偿就业对于人们的收入、幸福感及尊严究竟有多重要，这个问题便会变得极其突出。

There are Pollyanna-ish answers to this question. Some point out that history is full of societies that were not organised around paid work. Survey data show that most retired Americans report being satisfied with their lives. Solve the piddling problem of how to fund a life without work, in other words, and everyone could merrily spend their days growing prize-winning tomatoes or going on river cruises.
针对这个问题，有一些过于乐观的回答。有人指出，历史上不乏并非围绕有偿工作来组织的社会。调查数据显示，大多数美国退休人员表示对生活感到满意。换句话说，只要解决了如何资助无工作生活这一琐碎难题，每个人都可以愉快地度过余生，种植获奖番茄或去乘内河游船。

The truth, inevitably, is a lot more complicated. A review of the academic literature on well-being and work, published last month by Stephanie Chan and other researchers from Google DeepMind, another AI lab, is a helpful reminder that paid employment provides benefits that go well beyond income, and that the path to a good outcome in the event of real economic upheaval would be a narrow one.
事实难免要复杂得多。谷歌DeepMind（另一家人工智能实验室）的研究员斯蒂芬妮·陈（Stephanie Chan）及其他学者上月发布的一项关于福祉与工作的文献综述提醒我们：有偿就业提供的益处远超收入本身；若真的发生经济剧变，通往理想结果的道路将十分狭窄。

Consider what work provides. Marie Jahoda, an influential academic, identified five latent benefits of employment: the structure it imposes on people’s days; the social contact it entails; the sense of collective purpose; the status afforded by being in work; and the nudge it gives away from idleness and towards activity. (There are others, too: a recent paper by Noah Kouchekinia of the University of California, Irvine, and his co-authors found evidence that cognitive decline accelerates among adults who leave the workforce before retirement age.)
试想工作能提供什么。颇具影响力的学者玛丽·雅霍达（Marie Jahoda）确定了就业的五种潜在益处：它为人们的日常生活强加了结构；它带来了社交接触；它提供了集体目标感；它赋予了工作者社会地位；它还促使人们告别闲散，投入活动。（此外还有其他益处：加州大学尔湾分校的诺亚·库切基尼亚（Noah Kouchekinia）及其合著者近期的一篇论文发现，在退休年龄之前离开职场的成年人，认知能力下降的速度会加快。）

Even people with plenty of options seem to be wary of a life of leisure. There aren’t that many Silicon Valley billionaires who pack it all in to focus on their hobbies. In a similar vein, a paper by Bengt Furaker and Anna Davidsson of the University of Gothenburg looked at how lottery winners in Sweden responded to their good fortunes. A larger windfall did make it more likely that winners would take a chunk of unpaid leave and reduce their working hours, but only a small share of them quit work entirely.
即使是那些拥有诸多选择的人，似乎也对闲暇生活保持警惕。硅谷并没有多少亿万富翁放下一切去专注于自己的爱好。同样，哥德堡大学的本特·弗拉克（Bengt Furaker）和安娜·大卫森（Anna Davidsson）在研究瑞典彩票中奖者如何应对横财时发现：奖金越多，中奖者确实越有可能请一段无薪假并减少工作时间，但真正彻底辞职的人却寥寥无几。

Some jobs are much less enjoyable than others, of course. And it is possible to derive latent benefits elsewhere, from caregiving, say, or being a stay-at-home parent. A paper by Michelle Jongenelis of the University of Melbourne and her co-authors looked at the effects of volunteering on the well-being of Australian retirees. Even a very small amount—as little as an hour a week—yielded notable improvements in scores for life satisfaction and purpose.
当然，有些工作远不如其他工作令人愉悦。而且，人们也可以从其他方面获得这些潜在益处，比如照顾他人或成为全职家长。墨尔本大学的米歇尔·琼格内利斯（Michelle Jongenelis）及其合著者的一篇论文研究了志愿服务对澳大利亚退休人员福祉的影响。即使是很小的投入——哪怕每周仅一小时——也能显著提升他们的生活满意度和目标感评分。

But this is cold comfort for people who want and expect to work. In another paper, Clemens Hetschko of the University of Leeds and his co-authors traced German adults’ self-reported well-being as they entered retirement. Life satisfaction for employed people did not change much after they left the workforce. But people who had been long-term unemployed when they hit retirement age reported a big jump in well-being.
但这对于那些希望并期待工作的人来说，不过是杯水车薪。在另一篇论文中，利兹大学的克莱门斯·赫奇科（Clemens Hetschko）及其合著者追踪了德国成年人在步入退休阶段后的自我报告福祉。对于在职人士而言，退休后的生活满意度变化不大。但对于那些在退休前长期失业的人来说，退休后的福祉水平却出现了显著提升。

On the face of it, this seems odd. The people who had been in work would almost certainly have experienced greater upheaval to their daily routines and incomes. The authors’ theory is that unemployed people have switched social categories, from an unwanted one when they are of working age to a respectable one when they reach retirement age.
表面上看，这似乎很奇怪。按理说，曾有工作的人在步入退休时，其日常生活规律和收入所受到的冲击应该更大。作者的理论是：失业人群经历了社会身份的转换，从劳动年龄时不受社会待见的群体，转变为退休后受人尊重的群体。

In other words, anyone who blithely says that people can substitute other activities for paid employment is wishing away the evidence. Some jobs are dismal. But at the moment nothing else brings the same bundle of psychological and monetary benefits in such a socially acceptable form. Making sure people have enough money to live on if AI takes away their jobs is a big problem. Giving them a sense of self-worth would be just as difficult.
换言之，任何轻率地说人们可以用其他活动来替代有偿工作的人，都是在罔顾事实。有些工作确实枯燥乏味，但目前没有任何其他事物能以如此社会可接受的方式，带来同样集心理价值与金钱收益于一体的综合回报。若人工智能取代了工作，确保人们有足够的钱维持生计是一个巨大的挑战，而要给予他们自我价值感，难度恐怕有过之而无不及。