经济学人下载:人与机器人的管理

As robots advance into the service industries they are starting to look less like machines and more like living creatures. The Paro (made by AIST, a Japanese research agency) is shaped like a baby seal and responds to attention. Honda’s robot, ASIMO, is humanoid and can walk, talk and respond to commands. Roxxxy, an American-made “sex robot”, can be programmed to appeal to all preferences, and (unlike many a real-life spouse) listens to its partner to try to improve its performance.

当机器人进入到服务产业时它们开始变得不像机器更像生物了。帕罗（日本产业技术研究院制作）形似一只小海豹对命令做出反应。本田的机器人ASIMO具有人类特点还会走路，说话和回应命令。Roxxxy是美国制造的“性爱机器人”，可以设置以满足各种喜好，还（不像真人配偶）听从它搭档努力改善它的表现。

Until now executives have largely ignored robots, regarding them as an engineering rather than a management problem. This cannot go on: robots are becoming too powerful and ubiquitous. Companies may need to rethink their strategies as they gain access to these new sorts of workers. Do they really need to outsource production to China, for example, when they have clever machines that work ceaselessly without pay? They certainly need to rethink their human-resources policies—starting by questioning whether they should have departments devoted to purely human resources.

直到今天执行者们大部分忽略了机器人，把它们当做工程问题而不是管理问题。这不可能继续：机器人这在变得很有力还无处不在。企业也许需要重新考虑它们的战略通过这些另类的工人获取利益。它们真的需要把产品交给中国去加工，例如，当他们有聪明的机器零工资不停地工作的时候？它们必然要重新考虑它们的人力资源政策，从是否他们应该有纯粹的人力资源部门的问题开始。

The first issue is how to manage the robots themselves. Asimov laid down the basic rule in 1942: no robot should harm a human. This rule has been reinforced by recent technological improvements: robots are now much more sensitive to their surroundings and can be instructed to avoid hitting people. But the Pentagon’s plans make all this a bit more complicated: many of its robots will be, in essence, killing machines.

第一个问题是如何管理机器人它们自己。阿西莫夫在1942年立下了一个基本规则：机器人不应该伤害人类。这条规则已经通过最近的技术改良被加强了：机器人现在对周围的事物敏感得多，还可以遵照指示避免袭击人类。但是五角大楼的计划使得这一切变得更复杂：许多它的机器人本质上会变成杀人机器。

A second question is how to manage the homo side of homo-robo relations. Workers have always worried that new technologies will take away their livelihoods, ever since the original Luddites’ fears about mechanised looms. That worry takes on a particularly intense form when the machines come with a human face: Capek’s play that gave robots their name depicted a world in which they initially brought lots of benefits but eventually led to mass unemployment and discontent. Now, the arrival of increasingly humanoid automatons in workplaces, in an era of high unemployment, is bound to provoke a reaction.

第二个问题是如何处理人与机器人之间人的一边。劳动者们总是担心新技术会带走他们的生计，从最初唯恐失业而反对用机器人的生产者们对机械织布机的恐惧开始。当机器以人类的面孔出现时那种担忧呈现出一个特别紧张的形式：卡佩克给机器人取名字的戏描述了一个他们原本带来许多利益但是最终却导致大量失业和不满的世界。现在，在工作场所越来越多得人类机器人的到来，对于一个高失业率的时代，必然要激起一点反应。