白领也危险了：5个正在被机器人夺走的“高大上”职业

    多年以来，研究人员一直预测称，机器人将会抢走人类的工作。在英国，德勤公司和牛津大学估算说，未来将有1000万个非技术类工作岗位将被机器人取代。牛津大学研究人员卡尔•贝内迪克特•弗瑞和迈克尔•奥斯本在2013年声称，到2033年，美国将有47%的工作岗位实现自动化，并被电脑所取代。

    有些专家则表示人类无需过分担心，因为科技在吞噬一批旧职业的同时，总会创造一批新职业，从而使工人换岗而非失业。不过近年来，随着科技变得愈加复杂，人们的担忧与日俱增。市场研究机构Outsell公司的首席分析师利•沃森•希利表示：“究竟是哪里不同了？如今，科技进步的速度加上大数据现象，导致更高水平的机器已经可以从事更高级的认知型任务。”言下之意就是，以前有些高要求的工作需要一些受到高级培训的人才，但以后未必如此。操作，乃至制造机器所需要人数非常有限，那么那些被机器抢走了工作的人又应该上哪去呢？

    麻省理工学院研究人员马特•毕尼表示：“我不认为我们对这个问题已经有了很好的应对方法。这个‘末日场景’看起来还是挺严峻的。从现在开始，形势的确会发生变化，而且它的变化速度会超过我们能够应对的速度。”

    一直到不久以前，受到机器人冲击的还主要是蓝领工作，尤其是装配线上的蓝领工人。但现在，人工智能、机器人和其它颠覆性的新技术正在挑战以前貌似不容易被取代的白领工作。

    以联邦快递为例。《机器人报告》杂志编辑兼发行人弗兰克•托比表示：“该公司希望在2020年建成一个飞行员中心，靠三四名飞行员就能飞全美的整支机队（几百架飞机）。”俄罗斯科技巨头Mail.Ru集团CEO兼风投机构Grishin Robots公司的机器人总监迪米特里•格里辛表示：“我投资的一家公司能利用机器人在学校里教数学。”

    这也带来了下面这个问题：把这么多工作推给机器，究竟是会给人类带来光明的未来，还是会演变成《终结者》那样的结局：人类成为机器人统治下的羔羊？

    以下是已经被计算机、机器人和人工智能取代了的五个专业性工作。

    For years now, some researchers have been anticipating that robots would take away jobs from humans. In the UK, Deloitte and the University of Oxford predicted that 10 million unskilled jobs could be taken over by robots. University of Oxford researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne estimated in 2013 that 47 percent of total U.S. jobs could be automated and taken over by computers by 2033.

    Some experts say not to worry because technology has always created new jobs while eliminating old ones ones,displacing but not replacing workers. But lately, as technology has become more sophisticated, the drumbeat of worry has intensified. “What’s different now?” asked Leigh Watson Healy, chief analyst at market research firm Outsell. “The pace of technology advancements plus the big data phenomenon lead to a whole new level of machines to perform higher level cognitive tasks.” Translated: the old formula of creating more demanding jobs that need advanced training may no longer hold true. The number of people needed to oversee the machines, and to create them, is limited. Where do the many whose occupations have become obsolete go?

    “I don’t think we have a good handle on this,” said MIT researcher Matt Beane. “The end game scenarios seem kind of severe. From here on in, it’s really, really, really going to change and it’s going to change faster than we can handle.”

    Until recently, it was largely blue collar jobs that have felt the brunt, as technologies automated assembly-line work. Now, researchers are beginning to see that artificial intelligence, robotics and new disruptive technology are challenging white-collar professions that previously seemed invulnerable.

    Look at FedEx. “They hope that by 2020 they will have a pilot center with three or four pilots that fly the FedEx fleet [of hundreds of planes] around the country,” said Frank Tobe, editor and publisher of The Robot Report, a publication that tracks and analyzes the robot industry. Or there’s education. “I invested in one company that uses robots to teach mathematics in schools,” said Dmitry Grishin, CEO of Russian tech giant Mail.Ru Group and head of robotics VC firm Grishin Robots.

    Which raises the question: Will pushing labor onto machines open a new bright future for humanity, or a new variation on the Terminator series: Rule of the Robot Overlords?

    Here are five professional jobs already being replaced by computers, robots, and AI.