八大职业将遭机器人“抢饭碗”

Soon you could be competing with a robot for a job.
人们可能很快会跟机器人抢饭碗了。

Economists are sharply divided over the exact timing of the threat from robots and other forms of futuristic technology. Some see an imminent threat, others believe it won't happen until later this century -- if at all.
机器人和其他形式的未来技术可能对人类产生威胁，而对于这个威胁来临的确切时间，经济学们家站成两派，各执一词。一派认为威胁迫在眉睫，另一派认为如果威胁真的存在，那最早也将在本世纪晚些时候发生。

Yet Amy Webb, a digital media futurist and founder of Webbmedia Group, predicts at least eight career fields are "ripe for disruption" very soon -- like in the next 10 to 20 years.
然而，网络媒体集团创始人、数字媒体未来主义者艾米·韦伯预测，在约10到20年后，至少八种职业将很快“面临洗牌”。

"You should be quite worried," Webb said at the Milken Global Conference in Los Angeles last month. She points to these eight careers, in particular:
“你们应该有危机感。”韦伯上个月在洛杉矶米尔肯会议上说。她指出了将要受到机器人威胁的八种职业：

1) Toll booth operators and cashiers: People who work in the transactional space shouldn't be big fans of the Apple Watch or Apple Pay.
1）收费站工作人员和收银员：在交易领域工作的人们可不该迷恋苹果手表和苹果支付。

That's because the rise of wearable technology and mobile payment systems may make jobs like toll booth operator and grocery store cashier virtually obsolete.
因为可穿戴技术和移动支付系统的普及可能会使收费站工作人员和杂货店收银员再无用武之地。

"There is no real need for a person to be there every step of the way," Webb said.
“没必要有人时时刻刻守在那里收费了。”韦伯说。

2) Marketers: Powerful advertising tools of the future may allow brands to fashion their messages to customers with precision accuracy.
2）营销人员：未来的广告工具会将品牌信息精准地传递给消费者。

Webb pointed to new experiments with technologies that study customer behavior to identify what kind of ads will be most effective.
韦伯指出，新的技术实验通过研究消费者行为，能够确定哪种广告是最为有效的。

"This is pretty much unlike anything we've seen before," she said.
她说：“这是我们之前见所未见，闻所未闻的。”

If these tools work, they may translate to smaller creative and strategic teams at marketing and ad firms.
如果这些工具确实有效，它们将变身为未来市场营销和广告公司的小型创造性和战略性团队。

3) Customer service: Many customer service jobs have been shipped overseas to India and other lower-paying countries. New technologies like predictive analytics could kill off more of these jobs.
3）客户服务：很多公司都将客户服务工作设在印度和其他劳动力成本较低的国家。预测分析等新技术将会使这些工作的工人需求量大大减小。

Look no further than Watson, the friendly IBM supercomputer that won millions of fans by defeating former Jeopardy champions.
在美国著名智力竞赛节目《危险边缘》（Jeopardy）中，IBM公司的超级计算机沃森（Watson）击败了之前的冠军选手，赢得了相当的人气。这就是眼前的例子。

Webb warns that one of the things Watson can do, though it's not positioned that way right now, is to replace everybody in the customer service department of a company.
韦伯警告称，沃森能够取代公司客户服务部的任何一名员工，虽然现在我们并没有利用其这一功能。

4) Factory workers: Get ready for robots to steal more manufacturing jobs from humans -- at a cheaper price and without taking breaks to text their friends.
4）工厂工人：做好准备，机器人们马上就要来抢工人们的饭碗了。机器人们在工资上与人类相比有优势，其次，这些机器人不会在工作期间休息，用手机和朋友闲聊。

The next wave of disruption is likely to be led by haptics, a sensor-based technology that allows people to virtually feel what they are working on even when the actual task is taking place far away.
下一次大洗牌则可能是由触觉学引发的，触觉学是一个以传感器为基础的技术，利用此技术，即便真正的工作在千里之外，人们也可以真实感觉到他们的工作。

5) Financial middle men: Don't knock Bitcoin -- Its underlying technology may steal your job.
5）金融中介：别再诟病比特币了，比特币背后的技术或许就会成为导致你失业的罪魁祸首。

Blockchain, Bitcoin's computer program, is able to automatically process transactions and create a perfect, reliable digital record.
比特币的计算机程序“区块链”（blockchain）能自动处理交易，并创建出一份完美可靠的数字记录。

Webb believes blockchain will disrupt the middle men in the banking, escrow, insurance and mortgage sectors.
韦伯认为“区块链”技术可以取代银行业，委托付款，保险和抵押领域的中介。

"Whether or not Bitcoin ever takes off is beside the point. It's the underlying infrastructure that will dramatically change the work that's being done," Webb said.
韦伯说：“比特币今后是否有着光明的前景，这并不是我们讨论的重点。其背后的技术足以使我们现在的工作发生天翻地覆的变化。”

We may have received a sneak preview of that this week when Nasdaq said it will use blockchain to keep transaction records in its pre-IPO market.
当纳斯达克表示将要将“区块链”技术应用于其首次公开筹股前市场交易记录时，我们就可见一斑了。

6) Journalists: The Internet wiped out countless newspapers, and new technology could kill even more journalism positions.
6）记者：网络的出现已经使不少纸媒受到冲击，而新技术将可能使更多记者失业。

Webb, a former journalist at Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal, said the next culprit will be algorithms that allow news outlets to automatically create stories and place them on websites without human interaction. Robot journalists (fedora optional) are already writing thousands of articles a quarter at The Associated Press.
韦伯过去也是名记者，她曾供职于美国《新闻周刊》和《华尔街日报》。她说，未来新闻媒体可利用算法自动撰写新闻，并可在无人工干预的情况下发布到网络上。美联社的机器人记者已经在一个季度内撰写了数千篇稿件了。

7) Lawyers: If you're going into the legal world, veer toward litigation.
7）律师：如果你还有志从事法律工作，那就去做诉讼吧。

Webb believes non-litigation lawyers could soon be replaced by online form-based services like LegalZoom that can carry out simple tasks like trademark applications, wills and even divorce.
韦伯相信，LegalZoom等基于表单的服务将会替代非诉讼律师完成简单的任务，诸如商标申请，遗嘱，甚至离婚。

It's all been made easier by the trend to make records more open and easily accessible, lessening the need for high-priced lawyers.
目前的趋势是备案更公开，更易于获取，因此简化了程序，人们对花费高昂的律师的需求也减少了。

8) Phone workers: Many millennials don't have landline phones. That trend is only likely to continue with the advances of digital communication.
8）电话工人：千禧一代（指1985-1995年出生的人）中的很多人都没有固定电话。随着数字通讯的发展，这种趋势只有继续下去的可能。

That means telecom companies like AT&Tand Verizon could eliminate billing, operator and other positions on the telephone side of the business.
这就意味着像美国电话电报公司和威瑞森这样的电话公司可能会淘汰开账单的员工、接线员和电话业务等其他职位。

"There are a bunch of jobs that don't really need to exit," Webb said.
韦伯说：“有很多工作岗位都没有存在的必要了。”

Fearing the future? These predictions will make people who work in these fields understandably cringe. But Webb isn't pessimistic about what lies ahead.
对未来感到担忧吗？以上的这些预测会理所当然地使在这些领域工作的人感到担心。但韦伯并不对前景感到担心。

"I don't see our technological future as a dystopian one. I just see it as different. For many people different is dystopian, which is something you need to get over," she said.
她说：“我并不认为技术的未来是反乌托邦的，我只觉得它将会有所改变。而对一些人来说，这些改变就是反乌托邦的，是我们需要克服的。”

One outcome may be that tomorrow's employers will value very different skillsets than today's.
结果之一就是，与今日相比，未来的雇主们将会看重不同的技能。

"We need highly-skilled plumbers and highly-skilled people in all types of fields we no longer venerate," Webb said.
韦伯说：“我们需要高水平的水管工，在其他我们不再崇拜的行业里，我们也需要高水平的员工。”

Vocabulary:

imminent: 临近的

disruption: 瓦解

obsolete: 过时的，淘汰的

underlying: 潜在的

cringe: 尴尬