Human jobs vs automation: Endgame? | 黑科技时代如何继续骄傲地过劳动节？
With a background in artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive science, a developer named Xiao Chen from a leading game company in China, knew that one day AI would disrupt industries. But when he was told that his colleagues were laid off because AI could now do their jobs, he was still taken back.
Last year, Xiao found that a large number of the personnel at the customer service division were redirected into other departments. The staff, whose primary role is to receive calls from players and then submit the complaints or requests to developers, were replaced by chatbots. Xiao requested not to disclose the name of the company since he is not authorized to speak about internal operations within the company. Neither had his company announced the layoff decision to the public.
As automation and AI are gradually applied to various industries, it can take a toll on some workers, especially those on the lower level of the value chain. At the same time, it may also create entirely new industries that humans haven't conceived of.
肖晨（化名）出身人工智能和认知科学——光圈和金钱环绕的专业。面对新科技“革命”传统行业的“饿狼传说”，他相信自己早已做到处变不惊。不料，当身边运营部门和用户研究中心的同事因工作被AI取代而转岗时，肖晨还是惊到了。
去年，肖晨所在的一家国内领先的游戏公司经历了一波动荡。接听游戏玩家电话、收集诉求的工作被智能客服取代，原来负责接听电话的员工不得不面临转岗。
放眼全球，因为技术，一些工作正在消失。
不知不觉，人工智能不再只是手机里那个人人得以调戏的“Siri”。当作曲、写作这些人类引以为傲、创意性极强的 “铁饭碗”，也在大数据、智能学习应用面前无险可守时，处在价值链的底层的工作更显的岌岌可危。第一次工业革命时“手工Vs机器”留给人类的那种无奈，在“第四次工业革命”时再次若隐若现。
但是，正如被蒸汽机和流水线解放的双手、最终又创造出了新的工作门类，人工智能和自动化也在不断拓展我们对工作的定义。问题的关键在于取代和创新并不总是同步。与科技的较量中，总有人会先败下阵来。正是这种“时差”的存在，让更为完善的培训体系显得格外重要——
失败不要紧，“大侠请重新来过”。
1.
Disruption at the call center
It is not rare to see Internet companies outsourcing customer service to third-party contractors, but in Xiao's company, call center staff members are still full-time employees.
This is because many complaints or requests are related to game design and development, explained Xiao. Typically, people working in that department would collect this information and submit it to the game studio, after which developers will take charge.
"Since many requests or complaints are the same, the job is highly repetitive and can be easily replaced," said Xiao. The automated customer service system that Xiao's company installed is based on natural language processing and most of the frequently asked questions like "what to do when my account was locked" can be easily answered on the platform.
“你试过重启电脑吗？”
这是知名英剧《IT狂人》中的名句。如果一份工作的核心是为不同的客户提供同样的答案，从老板的角度，这样的工作很有可能最先消失。
在肖晨的公司里，“重启电脑”这种现象级的问题是“账号被锁”。
内蒙古的一家客服中心 照片来源：视觉中国
“鉴于很多诉求是相同的，这份工作的重复劳动很多，也确实容易代替”，肖晨说到。肖晨公司新上线的智能客服可以进行自然语言处理，一些最常见的问题，比如“我的账号被锁了怎么办？”可以非常简单地就通过智能客服解决。
Even before AI started to disrupt the industry, the turnover rate in the call center was 40 percent, Xiao said. A regulatory overhaul in the gaming industry last year led to an all-out disruption in the industry.
In a new report published by the World Economic Forum called "The Future of Jobs," it indicates that in the next five years, as many as 7.1 million jobs can be lost through redundancy, or automation but 2.1 million new jobs are expected to be added.
More importantly, the skills required for jobs are likely to change as technological disruption takes place, the report writes. Social skills, such as persuasion, emotional intelligence and teaching others, will be in higher demand across industries over narrow technical skills.
在智能客服应用之前，运营部门和用户研究中心的离职率已经高达40%，肖晨说这是因为客服工作的门槛低，就业培训又少。去年，公司陷入运营难关，降低成本引发了智能客服的大规模应用。
世界经济论坛在2018年新发布的一份名为《工作的未来》（下文称《报告》）报告显示，在未来的五年，有710万职位将因自动化的广泛应用而消失，新增岗位210万个。
下一个问题是，什么样的工作才安全？报告认为，如果你的职业以劝说、教学、为人处世等社交技能为主，新技术还不会把你的工作送进博物馆。
2.
Changing requirement
for skills
As the AI disruption swept through the call center in Xiao's company, a few still have a hold on their jobs, namely, those serving the VIP clients – players who spend at least 100,000 yuan on the game.
"These people can engage with 20 VIP clients at the same time and make all of them happy – that is a skill," said Xiao. The people not only help players deliver their requests to the developers; they use tactics to encourage players to be more invested in the game and increase their loyalty to the game.
Zeng Qingxi, an AI industry insider, says that challenges presented by AI overwhelmingly fall upon the younger, inexperienced staff members in each industry. "Fresh graduates, before they move up the career ladder, may find their jobs taken by AI," Zeng said. "The question thus becomes, how to give young graduates a development path so that they can get over the time most susceptible to AI replacement."
肖晨的公司似乎可以为《报告》的这种结论提供佐证。并不是运营部门和用户研究中心的每一个人都败给了“机器”。服务于充值十万以上大客户的员工就还没有那么草木皆兵。
“这些客服人员能同时处理20个大客户的诉求，但同时能让他们都满意，这是一种技能”，肖晨说。他们的工作内容不仅包括将大客户的诉求反馈给研发部门，还包括采用各种技巧，增强客户忠诚度。
人工智能行业的从业者曾庆熹表示，人工智能的挑战给年轻人带来的影响更为严峻，“刚毕业的学生，可能刚入行，就发现饭碗被人工智能抢了。”因此公司要考虑的问题是，如何给初入职场的年轻人提供成长通道，让他们跨越技术的鸿沟。
But not all fear the rise of AI and broad application of automation. Some argue that part of the promise of AI has always been to liberate humans from repetitive and easy tasks.
In the north China logistics center of e-commerce site Vip.com, we saw warehouse workers sorting packages not by hand, but with an automated sorting system. Once the worker puts the product on the conveyor belt, the system, by scanning the bar code on the products, sorts the products based on the region they need to be shipped to.
"Humans can get tired. Workers, if walking in the warehouse for a long time on a single day, will experience a sharp drop in productivity," said Men Shuguang, director of operations for north China at Vip.com. "If the warehouse is large and product variety is huge, you need to have an automated system."
He argued that automation would not result in loss of jobs, since corporations are still in the process of development, and thus the demand for labor persists.
An employee at Vip.com who preferred to stay anonymous also concurred, saying rather than worrying about being displaced by automation, they often send suggestions to the company on how to improve the automated system.
唯品会华北物流中心的自动分拣系统 照片来源：CGTN
也并非所有人都担心人工智能和自动化的普及。重复劳作是一些工作的“基础”，但也可能是桎梏 。
“人是会疲劳的，行走路程长，就会让你的作业效率下降”，唯品会华北运营总部、品骏华北大区负责人门书光表示。“仓库足够大，品类多了，产品繁琐了，就需要靠自动化。”他认为自动化并不会对就业及岗位数量带来影响，“企业还在发展，还是需要更多的人。”
一名受访的唯品会员工也表示，员工本身也很需要自动化，他们一般不会担心被自动化取代，反倒是经常给公司如何优化自动化系统提出建议。
3.
What does it take for
companies to retrain workers?
It takes time to transition to the age of automation and AI. Not only do those who experience displacement need to find something meaningful to do, but those who stay on the job have to be retrained to learn the new skill sets required for the job, e.g., how to work along with robots.
In Vip.com's north China logistics center, warehouse workers all have a mobile portal which gives them detailed instructions on how to use the automated system.
适应人工智能可能是一个漫长的过程。被人工智能取代的员工需要找到新的工作，而留在岗位上的员工也必须学会与新的技术共处。
在唯品会华北物流中心，每一个员工手里都有个手持终端，给他们如何利用自动化系统提供具体的指示。
手拿终端的仓库工作人员 照片来源：CGTN
Go to the shelf to pick up product 1011. Press "done" on the portal. Put the product on the conveyor belt. Press "done." Each time one finishes the task shown on the portal, one press "done," and the next task pops up.
"Here we want to make the task as simple as possible for our workers… You follow the direction given by the automation system and that is all," said Men. He said the company updated the system several times to make it easier to use, and thus the training required for workers would not be much.
“我们希望给员工（的任务）越简单越好……员工只需按照系统的指令操作即可”，唯品会华北运营总部负责人门书光说。
比如，从货架上取货时，只需要员工把货品放到传送带上，在终端上点击确认，完成一个指令之后，再点击确认，终端会展示下一项要做的工作。
门书光表示，操作系统简单，是因为公司此前曾系统地做了很多次优化和改进，使得它们在使用上更加人性化，因此给员工的前期培训也并不会繁琐。
一名员工在给货物进行二次质检 图片来源：CGTN
But it is still rare for companies in China to offer training, Zeng Qingxi, the AI industry insider said. Since China still enjoys a demographic dividend – companies can always find new recruits and the willingness to offer training is low.
On top of that, many tech and Internet companies' priority are still focusing on the short term, e.g. getting venture capital funding and filing for IPO, long-term concerns such as adapting to the AI age is not being considered, Zeng added.
但并不是每一家公司都能给员工提供系统性的再培训，人工智能行业从业者曾庆熹说。当人口红利让劳动力仍处在买方市场时，招人并不困难，熟练员工跳槽则是另外一个忧虑。因此，不少企业对提供再培训的意愿并不高。
此外，如何能够尽快在资本市场上有所斩获仍是一些企业的短期目标，适应人工智能时代这样的长久考量，还不被纳入考虑范围之中，曾庆熹表示。
But he is less pessimistic when it comes to the difficulty of making that transition. He argued that from a business sense, companies would make it as easy as possible for employees to learn to work with machines and robots. Because if it is not, the cost of a new recruit will skyrocket.
"The impact will be similar to that brought by the Industrial Revolution – hard to say if the total number of jobs will go up or down – but structural changes will come to the labor market."
但是，对于这个适应过程是否将极为痛苦这个问题，他持乐观的态度。因为从一个商业角度考虑，如果适应的成本过高，员工操纵自动化及机器人的难度过大，那公司的用人成本——也就是员工收入——就会增加。
“业界普遍认为，人工智能带来的影响与历次工业革命将非常相似。很难说就业岗位的数量会增长或下降，而是整个行业将会面临结构性的变革。”