有时候，你着手一个项目，然后意识到自己误判了形势。你惊恐地发现已经无法回头。于是你硬着头皮继续干，希望避免灾难。不过关于马克·扎克伯格喝健力士啤酒的事就说到这里吧。其他人工智能大佬则怀有另一种深深的疑虑——对他们正在开发的技术可能带来的影响感到不安。10月18日，AI实验室Anthropic表示，计划将其5%的股份投入一个公共利益基金，该基金最终可能会向受经济动荡影响的人们分配现金。一天后，埃隆·马斯克承诺给每个美国儿童一股SpaceX股票。
Sometimes you embark on a project and realise that you have misjudged things. To your horror you realise it’s too late to turn back. So you plough on and hope to avoid catastrophe. But enough about Mark Zuckerberg drinking Guinness. Other artificial-intelligence bigwigs harbour deep misgivings of another kind—about the potential effects of the technology they are developing. On October 18th Anthropic, an AI lab, said it plans to put 5% of its shares into a public-benefit fund that might end up distributing cash to people affected by economic upheaval. A day later Elon Musk pledged to give one share in SpaceX to every child in America.
目前还没有AI引发就业灾难的迹象。但如果这项技术摧毁的工作岗位远远多于它创造的岗位，那么有偿就业究竟有多重要——不仅对人们的收入，也对人们的幸福和尊严——这个问题就确实会变得突出。
There is no sign yet of an AI jobs apocalypse. But if the technology were to destroy many more jobs than it creates, the question of how much paid employment matters, not just to people’s income but also to their happiness and dignity, would become salient indeed.
对这个问题有一些盲目乐观的答案。一些人指出，历史上满是并非围绕有偿工作组织起来的社会。调查数据显示，大多数退休美国人报告对自己的生活感到满意。换句话说，只要解决如何为没有工作的生活提供资金这个微不足道的问题，每个人都可以快乐地过日子，种出获奖的番茄，或者去乘河轮旅行。
There are Pollyanna-ish answers to this question. Some point out that history is full of societies that were not organised around paid work. Survey data show that most retired Americans report being satisfied with their lives. Solve the piddling problem of how to fund a life without work, in other words, and everyone could merrily spend their days growing prize-winning tomatoes or going on river cruises.
真相不可避免地要复杂得多。上个月，来自另一家AI实验室谷歌DeepMind的斯蒂芬妮·陈和其他研究人员发表了一篇关于幸福感与工作的学术文献综述，它有益地提醒人们：有偿就业提供的好处远远超出收入，而一旦发生真正的经济动荡，通往好结果的路径会很窄。
The truth, inevitably, is a lot more complicated. A review of the academic literature on well-being and work, published last month by Stephanie Chan and other researchers from Google DeepMind, another AI lab, is a helpful reminder that paid employment provides benefits that go well beyond income, and that the path to a good outcome in the event of real economic upheaval would be a narrow one.
想一想工作能提供什么。有影响力的学者玛丽·雅霍达指出了就业的五个潜在好处：它给人的日常作息带来条理；它带来的社交接触；集体目标感；工作带来的地位；以及它促使人们远离懒散、走向活动。（还有其他好处：加州大学欧文分校的诺亚·库切基尼亚及其合著者最近的一篇论文发现，有证据表明，在退休年龄之前离开劳动力的成年人认知衰退会加速。）
Consider what work provides. Marie Jahoda, an influential academic, identified five latent benefits of employment: the structure it imposes on people’s days; the social contact it entails; the sense of collective purpose; the status afforded by being in work; and the nudge it gives away from idleness and towards activity. (There are others, too: a recent paper by Noah Kouchekinia of the University of California, Irvine, and his co-authors found evidence that cognitive decline accelerates among adults who leave the workforce before retirement age.)
即使是拥有大量选择的人似乎也对闲适的生活心存警惕。并没有那么多硅谷亿万富翁放弃一切去专注于自己的爱好。类似地，哥德堡大学的本特·富拉克尔和安娜·戴维森的一篇论文研究了瑞典彩票中奖者如何回应自己的好运。更大的意外之财确实使中奖者更有可能请一段无薪假并减少工作时间，但只有一小部分人完全辞去工作。
Even people with plenty of options seem to be wary of a life of leisure. There aren’t that many Silicon Valley billionaires who pack it all in to focus on their hobbies. In a similar vein, a paper by Bengt Furaker and Anna Davidsson of the University of Gothenburg looked at how lottery winners in Sweden responded to their good fortunes. A larger windfall did make it more likely that winners would take a chunk of unpaid leave and reduce their working hours, but only a small share of them quit work entirely.
当然，有些工作远不如其他工作令人愉快。而且也有可能从其他地方获得潜在好处，比如照护他人，或者做全职家长。墨尔本大学的米歇尔·琼格内利斯及其合著者的一篇论文研究了志愿服务对澳大利亚退休人员福祉的影响。即使是非常少的量——每周仅一小时——也使生活满意度和目标感得分有了显著提升。
Some jobs are much less enjoyable than others, of course. And it is possible to derive latent benefits elsewhere, from caregiving, say, or being a stay-at-home parent. A paper by Michelle Jongenelis of the University of Melbourne and her co-authors looked at the effects of volunteering on the well-being of Australian retirees. Even a very small amount—as little as an hour a week—yielded notable improvements in scores for life satisfaction and purpose.
但对于想要并期望工作的人来说，这并不能带来多少安慰。在另一篇论文中，利兹大学的克莱门斯·赫奇科及其合著者追踪了德国成年人在进入退休时的自述福祉。就业者的生活满意度在离开劳动力之后没有太大变化。但在达到退休年龄时曾长期失业的人报告称福祉大幅跃升。
But this is cold comfort for people who want and expect to work. In another paper, Clemens Hetschko of the University of Leeds and his co-authors traced German adults’ self-reported well-being as they entered retirement. Life satisfaction for employed people did not change much after they left the workforce. But people who had been long-term unemployed when they hit retirement age reported a big jump in well-being.
乍看之下，这似乎很奇怪。那些有工作的人几乎肯定在日常生活和收入方面经历了更大的动荡。作者的理论是，失业者已经转换了社会类别，从适龄工作时不受欢迎的类别，转变为达到退休年龄后体面的类别。
On the face of it, this seems odd. The people who had been in work would almost certainly have experienced greater upheaval to their daily routines and incomes. The authors’ theory is that unemployed people have switched social categories, from an unwanted one when they are of working age to a respectable one when they reach retirement age.
换句话说，任何轻率地说人们可以用其他活动替代有偿就业的人，都是在无视证据。有些工作很糟糕。但目前没有其他东西能以同样社会可接受的形式，提供同样的心理和金钱利益组合。如果人工智能抢走人们的工作，确保人们有足够的钱生活是一个大问题。给他们一种自我价值感同样困难。■
In other words, anyone who blithely says that people can substitute other activities for paid employment is wishing away the evidence. Some jobs are dismal. But at the moment nothing else brings the same bundle of psychological and monetary benefits in such a socially acceptable form. Making sure people have enough money to live on if AI takes away their jobs is a big problem. Giving them a sense of self-worth would be just as difficult. ■