What Are Human Beings For?
http://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2013-01-25/letters-at-3am-what-are-human-beings-for/
在迷思的同时，时代已经自己大踏步前进了。
Terry Gou is chairman of Foxconn, a Chinese manufacturer of iPhones. Foxconn employs more than a million people worldwide. Gou says, "As human beings are also animals,
to manage one million animals gives me a headache." Gou plans to avoid headaches by replacing his employees with more than one million robots (The New York Times, Aug. 18, 2012).
That Times report also describes a Dutch electronics factory staffed almost entirely by robots: "[T]hey do it all without a coffee break – three shifts a day, 365 days a year." No coffee breaks, no sick days, no health care, and no unions. "'With these machines,'" said engineer Binne Visser, "'we can make any consumer device in the world.'"
The article goes on to quote Harvard economist Claudia Goldin: "'
If you're doing something that can be written down in a programmatic, algorithmic manner, you're going to be substituted for quickly.'" Meanwhile, "South Korea ... is 'hiring' hundreds of robots as teacher aides and classroom playmates and is experimenting with robots that would teach English" (The New York Times, July 10, 2010).
"Some law firms now use artificial intelligence software to scan and read mountains of legal documents, work that previously was performed by highly paid human lawyers" (Newsweek, July 25, 2011).
"Nearly six million factory jobs, almost a third of the entire [U.S.] manufacturing industry, have disappeared since 2000. And while many of these jobs were lost to competition with low-wage countries, even more vanished because of computer-driven machinery" (The New York Times, Nov. 25, 2012).
The Pentagon, of course, is having a robotic field day. "New robots ... are being designed to handle a [broad] range of tasks, from picking off snipers to serving as indefatigable night sentries. ... Fifty-six nations are now developing robotic weapons. ...
Robots have replaced millions of workers and are on track to replace hundreds of millions. Three-dimensional printers may replace millions of robots, plus millions more workers, plus myriad functions of retail and transport. This isn't the future; the process has begun with, as The Economist puts it, a relentless march.
