The Future of Human Work Is Imagination, Creativity, and Strategy
人类未来的工作是想象，创造和战略规划
It seems beyond debate: Technology is going to replace jobs, or, more precisely, the people holding those jobs. Few industries, if any, will be untouched.
这似乎是不争的事实：科技将取代工作，或者更准确的说，取代工作岗位上的人。几乎没有哪个行业能不受影响。
Knowledge workers will not escape. Recently, the CEO of Deutsche Bank predicted that half of its 97,000 employees could be replaced by robots. One survey revealed that “39% of jobs in the legal sector could be automated in the next 10 years. Separate research has concluded that accountants have a 95% chance of losing their jobs to automation in the future.”
脑力劳动者也难以幸免。最近，德意志银行的CEO预计，97000名员工中可能会有一半被机器人代替。一项调查显示，“在未来10年中，将有39%的法律工作由机器完成。另一项研究也表明，未来95%的会计将会因机器人而失业。”
And for those in manufacturing or production companies, the future may arrive even sooner. That same report mentioned the advent of “robotic bricklayers.” Machine learning algorithms are also predicted to replace people responsible for “optical part sorting, automated quality control, failure detection, and improved productivity and efficiency.” Quite simply, machines are better at the job: The National Institute of Standards predicts that “machine learning can improve production capacity by up to 20%” and reduce raw materials waste by 4%.
对于制造或生产类公司的员工来说，这种改变可能会更早发生。同样的研究报告中提到了“机器砖瓦工”的出现。机器学习算法也将取代一些目前由人工完成的工作，例如“光学元件分拣、自动化质量管控、故障检测、提高生产率”等等。简而言之，机器更擅长这类工作：美国国家标准与技术研究院预计，“机器学习能提高20%的产能”，并降低4%的原材料损耗。
It is easy to find reports that predict the loss of between 5 and 10 million jobs by 2020. Recently, space and automotive titan Elon Musk said the machine-over-mankind threat was humanity’s “biggest existential threat.” Perhaps that is too dire a reading of the future, but what is important for corporate leaders right now is to avoid the catastrophic mistake of ignoring how people will be affected. Here are four ways to think about the people left behind after the trucks bring in all the new technology.
很多报告都预测，到2020年将有500~1000万工作岗位流失。航空与汽车业巨头埃隆·马斯克表示，机器取代人力是人类面临的最大生存危机。这个观点可能过于悲观，但对于现在的公司领导者来说，忽视科技对于人力的影响将会产生灾难性的后果。当新技术把人类远远甩在后面的时候，我们要从以下4个方面来思考。
The Wizard of Oz Is the Wrong Model
绿野仙踪模式不可取
In Oz, the wizard is shown to run the kingdom through some complex machine hidden behind a curtain. Many executives may think themselves the wizard; enthralled by the idea that AI technology will allow them to shed millions of dollars in labor costs, they could come to believe that the best company is the one with the fewest people aside from the CEO.
在童话绿野仙踪中，男巫通过某种复杂的机器在幕后操纵王国。很多公司管理层可能会把自己想象成男巫，认为人工智能可以帮他们甩掉上百万美元的人力成本，他们相信最好的公司是除了CEO之外，只雇佣最少的员工。
Yet the CEO and founder of Fetch Robotics, Melonee Wise, cautions against that way of thinking: “For every robot we put in the world, you have to have someone maintaining it or servicing it or taking care of it.” The point of technology, she argues, is to boost productivity, not cut the workforce.
然而，Fetch Robotics 公司的创始人兼CEO麦罗尼·威瑟对这种想法提出警示：“我们推出的每一种机器人，都需要人工来维护、保养和照看。科技的目的在于提高生产力，而非裁减员工岗位。”
Humans Are Strategic; Machines Are Tactical
人类是战略策划；机器是战术执行
McKinsey has been studying what kind of work is most adaptable to automation. Their findings so far seem to conclude that the more technical the work, the more technology can accomplish it. In other words, machines skew toward tactical applications.
麦肯锡一直在研究哪种工作最容易实现自动化，目前为止的研究结果表明，越是技术性的工作，越容易由科技来完成。换句话说，机器更倾向于执行层面的应用。
On the other hand, work that requires a high degree of imagination, creative analysis, and strategic thinking is harder to automate. As McKinsey put it in a recent report: “The hardest activities to automate with currently available technologies are those that involve managing and developing people (9 percent automation potential) or that apply expertise to decision making, planning, or creative work (18 percent).” Computers are great at optimizing, but not so great at goal-setting. Or even using common sense.
另一方面，需要想象力、创造性分析、战略思维的工作则难以被机器取代。麦肯锡最近公布的一份报告指出：“以目前的科技来看，最难被自动化的工作包括人才的管理和开发（潜在自动化程度9%），或者那些需要运用专业技能进行决策、规划、创造的工作（潜在自动化程度18%）”。计算机擅于优化，但不擅于设定目标，更不用说运用常识进行判断。
Integrating New Technology Is About Emotions
是否采用新技术关乎员工情绪
When technology comes in, and some workers go away, there is a residual fear among those still in place at the company. It’s only natural for them to ask, “Am I next? How many more days will I be employed here?” Venture capitalist Bruce Gibney explains it this way: “Jobs may not seem like ‘existential’ problems, but they are: When people cannot support themselves with work at all — let alone with work they find meaningful — they clamor for sharp changes. Not every revolution is a good revolution, as Europe has discovered several times. Jobs provide both material comfort and psychological gratification, and when these goods disappear, people understandably become very upset.”
当技术进步导致部分员工失业，仍留在公司里的员工不免心有余悸。他们自然会问：“下一个会不会是我？我还能在这个公司再干几天？” 风险投资家布鲁斯·吉布尼解释说：“看上去工作似乎无关乎生存，但事实上它是，当工作——尤其是那些人们认为有趣的工作——完全无法支撑生活时，人们会强烈呼吁进行巨大的变革。并不是所有的革命都是好的，欧洲已经多次证明了这个道理。工作能够为人提供物质上的支持和心理上的满足，当这些好的方面消失时，人们变得心烦意乱就不难理解了。”
The wise corporate leader will realize that post-technology trauma falls along two lines: (1) how to integrate the new technology into the work flow, and (2) how to cope with feelings that the new technology is somehow “the enemy.” Without dealing with both, even the most automated workplace could easily have undercurrents of anxiety, if not anger.
明智的公司主管会认识到要从以下两个途径解决“后技术创伤”：一是将新技术融入工作流程；二是处理好将新技术视为“敌人”的心理。如果不能同时处理好这两者，即便是高度自动化的工作场所也会很容易出现焦虑甚至愤怒的暗流涌动。
Rethink What Your Workforce Can Do
重新审视员工能做什么
Technology will replace some work, but it doesn’t have to replace the people who have done that work. Economist James Bessen notes, “The problem is people are losing jobs and we’re not doing a good job of getting them the skills and knowledge they need to work for the new jobs.”
新技术会取代一部分工作，但并不必然取代从事这些工作的人。经济学家詹姆斯·贝森写道：“问题在于人们正失去工作，但社会没能帮助他们获得从事新的工作所必须的知识技能。”
For example, a study in Australia found a silver lining in the automation of bank tellers’ work: “While ATMs took over a lot of the tasks these tellers were doing, it gave existing workers the opportunity to upskill and sell a wider ranges of financial services.”
举个例子，澳大利亚的一项研究发现，银行柜员工作自动化后的“乌云背后的幸福线”：“自动取款机取代了很多银行柜员的工作，这使得柜员得以提升工作技能，并且提供更广泛的金融服务。”
Moreover, the report found that there is a growing range of new job opportunities in the fields of big data analysis, decision support analysts, remote-control vehicle operators, customer experience experts, personalized preventative health helpers, and online chaperones (“managing online risks such as identify theft, reputational damage, social media bullying and harassment, and internet fraud”). Such jobs may not be in your current industrial domain. But there may be other ways for you to view this moment as the perfect time to rethink the shape and character of your workforce. Such new thinking will generate a whole new human resource development agenda, one quite probably emphasizing those innate human capacities that can provide a renewed strategy for success that is both technological and human.
此外，该研究还发现，在大数据分析、 决策支持分析师、远程汽车操作员、客户体验专家、私人保健助手以及网络监护（协助解决 ID 被盗、名誉受损、社交媒体霸凌和骚扰以及网络诈骗等网络风险）领域存在越来越多的就业机会。也许你的公司所处的产业领域尚未出现这些岗位，但这可能正是一个绝佳的机会让你重新审视公司的人力构成形态和特点。这种审视会产生全新的人力资源发展规划，更注重人类所独有的天赋能力，从而产生一种全新的兼具技术性和人文关怀的成功策略。
As Wise, the roboticist, emphasized, the technology itself is just a tool, one that leaders can use how they see fit. We can choose to use AI and other emerging technologies to replace human work, or we can choose to use them to augment it. “Your computer doesn’t unemploy you, your robot doesn’t unemploy you,” she said. “The companies that have those technologies make the social policies and set those social policies that change the workforce.”
正如机器人专家Wise所强调的，科技本身只是一个工具，领导者可以将其用于自己认为合适的地方。我们可以用人工智能以及其他新技术取代人类的工作，或是反之利用它们来增强人类的工作能力。Wise认为：“你的电脑没有让你失业，你的机器人也不会让你失业，是使用了这些技术的企业做出并制定了改革人力资源的决策。”
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