经济学人下载:人与机器人的管理

I, robot-manager人与机器人的管理
Management thinkers need to ponder more about homo-robo relations 管理思想家需要考虑更多关于人与机器人的关系

ROBOTS have been the stuff of science fiction for so long that it is surprisingly hard to see them as the stuff of management fact. A Czech playwright, Karel Capek, gave them their name in 1920 (from the Slavonic word for “work”). An American writer, Isaac Asimov, confronted them with their most memorable dilemmas. Hollywood turned them into superheroes and supervillains. When some film critics drew up lists of Hollywood’s 50 greatest good guys and 50 greatest baddies, the only character to appear on both lists was a robot, the Terminator.

机器人已经被认为是科幻的东西太久了以至于把他们看做管理事实的东西惊人地难。一为捷克剧作家Karel Capek在1920年给他们取了名字（来自斯拉夫语意为“工作”）。一位美国作家以撒·阿西莫夫让他们面对他们最难忘的困境。好莱坞把他们变成了超级英雄和超级大坏蛋。当一些电影评论家写出好莱坞50只最好的人和50只最坏的人的名单时，唯一一位同时出现在两份名单上的角色是终结者。

It is time for management thinkers to catch up with science-fiction writers. Robots have been doing menial jobs on production lines since the 1960s. The world already has more than 1m industrial robots. There is now an acceleration in the rates at which they are becoming both cleverer and cheaper: an explosive combination. Robots are learning to interact with the world around them. Their ability to see things is getting ever closer to that of humans, as is their capacity to ingest information and act on it. Tomorrow’s robots will increasingly take on delicate, complex tasks. And instead of being imprisoned in cages to stop them colliding with people and machines, they will be free to wander.

现在管理思想家是时候赶上科幻作家的脚步了。自20世纪60年代起机器人已经在生产线上做杂活了。世界上已经有超过100百万的工业机器人。现在机器人变得更聪明更廉价的比率也在增长：一个爆炸性的组合。机器人正在学着对他们周围的世界作出回应。他们看东西的能力逐渐接近人类，他们摄取信息的容量以及对其作出反应。以后的机器人逐渐能够从事精致与复杂的工作。代之把他们关进笼子以防与人类和机器对抗，机器人将会自由漫步。

America’s armed forces have blazed a trail here. They now have no fewer than 12,000 robots serving in their ranks. Peter Singer, of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, says mankind’s 5,000-year monopoly on the fighting of war is breaking down. Recent additions to the battlefield include tiny “insects” that perform reconnaissance missions and giant “dogs” to terrify foes. The Pentagon is also working on the EATR, a robot that fuels itself by eating whatever biomass it finds around it.

美国的武装力量已经在这里开拓了一条路。他们现在有不下12000只机器人服务于他们的队伍。智囊团布鲁金斯学会的彼得·辛格说，人类在战争上5000年的垄断正在被打破。最近增加到战场的包括执行侦察任务的小“昆虫”和吓唬敌人的大“狗”。五角大楼正在研发强动力自动战术机器人，一种通过吃任何在它周围找到的生物质来补充能量的机器人。

But the civilian world cannot be far behind. Who better to unclog sewers or suck up nuclear waste than these remarkable machines? The Japanese have made surprisingly little use of robots to clear up after the recent earthquake, given their world leadership in this area. They say that they had the wrong sort of robots in the wrong places. But they have issued a global call for robotic assistance and are likely to put more robots to work shortly.

但是平民的世界不能落后。谁通下水道或者吸收核废料的功力能比这些非凡的机器要好？日本人在最近一次地震后的清理中用到的机器人惊人地少。他们说他们在错误的地方选择了错误的机器人。但是他们已经在全球范围内发布了关于机器人助理的声援而且貌似马上会投入更多的机器人。