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。

 

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，把它们当作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。

 

Loving the alien

喜爱外星人

 

So, companies will need to work hard to persuade workers that robots are productivity-enhancers, not just job-eating aliens. They need to show employees that the robot sitting alongside them can be more of a helpmate than a threat. Audi has been particularly successful in introducing industrial robots because the carmaker asked workers to identify areas where robots could improve performance and then gave those workers jobs overseeing the robots. Employers also need to explain that robots can help preserve manufacturing jobs in the rich world: one reason why Germany has lost fewer such jobs than Britain is that it has five times as many robots for every 10,000 workers.

 

所以，企业必须努力说服劳动者机器人是强化生产者，不仅仅是吃职位的外星人。他们需要给职员展示坐在他们边上的机器人比起威胁更可以成为一位帮手。奥迪在引进产业机器人方面特别成功，因为汽车制造商要求工人们鉴定机器人可以改进的地方然后交给那些人监管机器人的工作。雇佣者还需要解释机器人可以有助于在富有的国家保留制造职业：为什么德国失去这样的职位比英国少的一个原因是对于每10000名劳动者它有5倍的机器人。

 

These two principles – don’t let robots hurt or frighten people – are relatively simple. Robot scientists are tackling more complicated problems as robots become more sophisticated. They are keen to avoid hierarchies among rescue-robots (because the loss of the leader would render the rest redundant). So they are using game theory to make sure the robots can communicate with each other in egalitarian ways. They are keen to avoid duplication between robots and their human handlers. So they are producing more complicated mathematical formulae in order that robots can constantly adjust themselves to human intentions. This suggests that the world could be on the verge of a great management revolution: making robots behave like humans rather than the 20th century’s preferred option, making humans behave like robots.

 

这两条基本原则——不要让机器人伤害或威胁人类——相对简单。随着机器人变得日益精致，机器人科学家们正在处理更复杂的问题。他们热望在救援机器人当中避免等级（因为失去领导的话会使剩下的人失业）。所以他们利用游戏理论来确保机器人可以通过平等的方式互相交流。他们渴望避免机器人与它们的人类操作者的重复。所以他们产出更多复杂的数学公式为了使机器人能够不断地调节他们自己来遵从人类的指示。这暗示了世界濒临于一个重要的管理改革：使机器人的行为像人类而不是20世纪的首选项，使人类的行为像机器人。

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