Artificial intelligence will spur economic growth and create new wealth. Machines that “think” like humans will help solve huge problems, from curing cancer to climate change. Yet millions of human workers will need to retrain, as robots make their existing jobs redundant.

人工智能将刺激经济增长和创造新的财富。从治疗癌症到气候变化，像人类一样“思考”的机器将帮助解决巨大问题。然而，随着机器人使大量现有工作岗位变得多余，数以百万计的工作者将需要重新培训。

These are the contrasting messages provided by the world’s leading technologists during the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, as political and business leaders ponder how best to respond to the rise of smart machines.

这些是世界领先的技术专家本周在达沃斯传递的一些反差鲜明的信息。在这里举行的世界经济论坛(World Economic Forum)上，政治和商界领袖思索如何最好地回应智能机器的兴起。

Sebastian Thrun, the inventor of Google’s self-driving cars and an honorary professor at Delft University of Technology, in the Netherlands, said “almost every established industry is not moving fast enough” to adapt their businesses to this change.

谷歌(Google)自动驾驶汽车发明者、荷兰代尔夫特理工大学(Delft University of Technology)名誉教授塞巴斯蒂安史朗(Sebastian Thrun)表示，在推动企业适应这种变化方面，“几乎每一个老牌行业的动作都不够快”。

He suggested self-driving cars would make millions of taxi drivers redundant and planes running solely on autopilot would remove the need for thousands of human pilots.

他提出，自动驾驶汽车将使数以百万计的出租车司机失去工作，只靠自动驾驶仪运行的飞机将使成千上万人类飞行员变得多余。

One of the central themes of this year’s conference is the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” referring to how technological breakthroughs are expected to transform industries across the world. Delegates argued that advances in robotics and artificial intelligence would have the transformative effect that steam power, electricity and ubiquitous computing achieved in previous centuries.

今年世界经济论坛的中心主题之一是“第四次工业革命”，它指的是技术突破预计将在世界各地转变各行各业的面貌。与会代表们提出，机器人和人工智能技术的进步将产生变革性的影响，就像过去几个世纪的蒸汽动力、电力以及无处不在的电脑运算能力那样。

“[Artificially-intelligent machines] can look at a brainscan better than most radiologists, but they can also weld better than any human,” said Illah Nourbakhsh is a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, the institution partnering with taxi app group Uber to build driverless cars. “It’s affecting white collar and blue collar jobs. Nobody is inherently safe.”

“（人工智能机器）能够比多数放射科医生更擅长看懂脑部扫描，它们也能够比任何人类焊接工更好地焊接，”卡内基梅隆大学(Carnegie Mellon University)机器人学教授伊拉蘒巴卡西(Illah Nourbakhsh)表示。该校正与打车应用优步(Uber)合作研制无人驾驶汽车。“这影响到白领和蓝领的工作。没有人是绝对安全的。”

But Prof Thrun was optimistic that redundant roles would quickly be replaced.

但史朗教授乐观地认为，多余的角色将很快被替换。

“With the advent of new technologies, we’ve always created new jobs,” he said. “I don’t know what these jobs will be, but I’m confident we will find them”

“随着新技术的出现，我们总是在创造新的就业机会，”他表示。“我不知道这些工作具体会是什么，但我相信我们会找到它们。”

Not all are convinced. According to a study released by WEF this week, increased automation and artificial intelligence in the workforce will lead to the loss of 7.1m jobs over the next 5 years in 15 leading economies, while helping create just 2m new jobs over the same period.

并非所有人都深信这一点。根据世界经济论坛本周发布的一份研究报告，提高自动化程度和在劳动力队伍中引入人工智能，未来5年期间将使15个主要经济体失去710万个就业岗位，而同期技术进步将仅带来200万个新工作岗位。

Across industries, leading executives worried about the effect of job displacement.

在各行各业，领先高管们纷纷表示担心工作替代的影响。

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman at Nestlé, warned some countries would become unstable if businesses could not replace jobs taken by machines.

雀巢(Nestlé)董事长包必达(Peter Brabeck-Letmathe)警告，如果企业不能帮助被机器取代的工人找到新工作，一些国家将变得不稳定。

“Other industrial revolutions cost a lot of people their heads,” he said. “I’m not sure we have the time for the wonderful markets to fix all these problems.”

“过去几次工业革命使很多人失去了生计，”他说。“我不肯定我们有时间让神奇的市场力量来解决所有这些问题。”

Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, said: “This challenge of displacement is a real one, [but] I feel the right emphasis is on skills, rather than worrying too much about the jobs [which] will be lost. We will have to spend the money to educate our people, not just children but also people mid-career so they can find new jobs.”

微软(Microsoft)首席执行官萨提亚纳德拉(Satya Nadella，见上图)表示：“人被机器取代的这种挑战是真实的，但我认为正确的重点是技能，而不是过于担心那些将会失去的工作。我们将不得不花钱来教育人们，不只是孩子，也包括职业生涯中途的人们，使他们能够找到新的工作。”

For workers to adapt, Prof Thrun argued that the way people approach their professional lives would require change.

史朗教授主张，要让工作者适应，人们对待自己职业生涯的态度将需要改变。

The robotics pioneer is also the founder of Udacity, a Silicon Valley start-up that enrols high-earning professionals into six-month online courses, retraining them in order to switch jobs. Due to growing automation, he predicted it would become the norm for workers to change jobs every few years.

这位机器人领域的先驱还创立了Udacity，这是一家硅谷初创企业，招收高收入专业人士参加六个月的网上课程，对他们进行再培训，使他们能够换工作。他预测，随着自动化越来越普及，工作者每隔几年更换工作将成为常态。

“In the United States, in 2012, figures from Department of Labour Statistics show the average tenure [in a job] was 4.6 years and it’s shrinking,” he said.

“美国劳工部劳动统计局(Department of Labour Statistics) 2012年数据显示，美国一份工作的平均任期为4.6年，而且还在缩短，”他表示。

Erik Brynjolfsson, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and co-author of The Second Machine Age said: “We’re moving to a world where there will be vastly more wealth and vastly less work. That shouldn’t be a bad a thing, and shame on us if we turn it into a bad thing.”

麻省理工学院(MIT)教授、《第二个机器时代》(The Second Machine Age)合著者埃里克布林约尔松(Erik Brynjolfsson)表示：“我们正进入一个财富大幅增加、而工作大幅减少的世界。这不应该是一件坏事；如果我们把它变成一件坏事，那将是我们的耻辱。”