Computers taking our jobs is not a new concept. Visit any advanced manufacturing plant, anywhere in the world, and you will see many people, but yes, also, computers doing jobs once filled by humans. In some cases, they are doing work that humans could never have done, in others a job that would once have taken a lifetime to complete is now being done in seconds.
计算机将取代我们的工作这种说法并不新鲜。在世界任何地方，走进任何一家有着先进制造工艺的工厂参观，你都会看到有很多人，但是没错，你还会看到有很多计算机在执行过去由人来完成的工作。其中有些工作是人类永远做不了的，还有些工作曾经需要一个人花费毕生精力，现在用计算机却眨眼就能完成。
What we don’t yet know is whether the advent of AI will be part of that same old story, in which machines wipe out some jobs, create some new ones and complement others, or if it will be a revolution that destroys careers without creating anything in the way of replacement. For the little it is worth, my bet is that it will be more like the railways: a technological boom that revolutionised our society, but one in which most of the benefit went to the people using the railways, not the companies that built them, some of which lost their shirts.
我们还不清楚的是，AI的到来将是一个换汤不换药的老掉牙故事，也就是说，机器将淘汰掉一些工作，创造出一些新的工作，同时对其他一些工作起到补充作用，还是说它将掀起一场革命，毁灭所有工作，但不创造任何新的工作来取代它们？以我的拙见，它的影响多半像铁路一样：一场技术热潮给我们的社会带来翻天覆地的变化，但获益者主要是使用铁路的人们，而不是修铁路的公司，那些公司有的还亏得精光。
Still it is worth thinking about a world in which AI destroys most or all jobs because it is a useful way to think about the value of work. One long-mooted policy response to this — advanced by some on the libertarian right and some on the left — is the introduction of a universal basic income.
不过，设想我们处在一个被AI摧毁了大部分乃至全部工作的世界是有用的，可以借此思考工作的价值。很早以前就有人提议采取一种政策来应对这种前景——倡导者中既有自由派右翼，也有左翼——那就是推行“全民基本收入”(universal basic income)。