美国老工业基地的复兴 | 麻省理工技术评论

From rust belt to robot belt: Turning AI into jobs in the US heartland

The vast vacant lot along the Monongahela River has been a scar from Pittsburgh’s industrial past for decades. It was once the site of the Jones and Laughlin steelworks, one of the largest such facilities in the city back when steel was the dominant industry there. 

莫农加希拉河畔的大块空地是匹兹堡过去几十年工业辉煌的伤疤。这里曾是琼斯和劳克林钢铁厂旧址，那是钢铁还是当地主要产业时最大的一家工厂。

Most of the massive structures are long gone, leaving behind empty fields pocked with occasional remnants of steelmaking and a few odd buildings. It all stares down the river at downtown Pittsburgh.

多数大型设备早已不见了，只剩下空地，到处是炼钢留下的残渣和些许怪异的建筑，凝望着下游的匹兹堡老城。

Next to the sprawling site is one of Pittsburgh’s poorer neighborhoods, Hazelwood, where a house can go for less than $50,000. As with many of the towns that stretch south along the river toward West Virginia, like McKeesport and Duquesne, the economic reasons for its existence—steel and coal—are a fading memory.

大片杂乱的废地旁是匹兹堡最贫困的住宅区黑泽尔伍德，这里一栋房子不到5万美元。沿河一路向南到西弗吉尼亚州的许多城镇，像麦基斯波特和迪凯纳等，其存在的经济原因——钢铁和煤炭——都已成往事。

These days the old steel site, called Hazelwood Green by its developers, is coming back to life. At one edge, fenced off from prying eyes, is a test area for Uber's self-driving cars. A new road, still closed to the public, traverses the 178 acres of the site, complete with parking signs, fire hydrants, a paved bike path, and a sidewalk. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture it bustling with visitors to the planned park along the riverfront. 

如今，被开发商成为“黑泽尔伍德绿色”的老钢厂区正在恢复生机。一边是优步自动驾驶汽车的试验场，拦起来防人窥探。一条还未开放的新路穿过178英里的老钢厂区，装有许多停车标志、消防龙头、自行车道和人行道。用不着脑补就可以想象计划中的河滨公园中游人如织的景象。

The gem of the redevelopment effort is Mill 19, the former coke works. A structure more than a quarter-­mile long, sitting amid the empty fields, it has been stripped clean to a three-story metal skeleton. Crews of workers are clearing away remaining debris and preparing the building for its reincarnation. By next spring, if all goes according to plan, its first occupant will move in: the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute.

在开发项目的精华是19车间，以前是焦炭车间。这是跨度400多米的建筑，坐落在空地之中，现在已被抛光为一个三层的金属骨架。大量工人正在清理剩下的废料，准备再造这一建筑。如果一切按计划进行，明年春天，第一批商家将入住：先进机器人制造研究所。

The symbolism of robots moving into a former steelworks is lost on few people in the city. Pittsburgh is reinventing itself, using the advances in automation, robots, and artificial intelligence coming out of its schools—particularly Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)—to try to create a high-tech economy. 

机器人进入曾经的炼钢厂，这所城市中几乎没有人会忽视这种象征意义。匹兹堡重生，使用来自其大学中的自动化、机器人和人工智能，尤其是卡内基梅隆大学，正在构建一种高科技经济。

Lawrenceville, five miles from Hazelwood, has become a center for US development of self-driving cars. Uber Advanced Technologies occupies a handful of industrial buildings; self-driving startups Argo AI and Aurora Innovation are nearby. Even Caterpillar has set up shop, working on autonomous backhoes and other heavy machines that could one day operate themselves.

距离黑泽尔伍德5英里的劳伦斯维尔已成为美国自动驾驶汽车发展的中心。优步先进技术使用了多个工业建筑；自动驾驶初创企业阿尔戈AI和欧若拉创新都在附近，连卡特彼勒都开设车间，开发自动反铲挖掘机和其他重型设备，它们有一天可以自动运行。

This has drawn billions of dollars from Silicon Valley and elsewhere, a welcome development in a city whose economy has been moribund for decades. And the effects are visible. Self-driving cars out for a test ride are a common sight, as are lines outside the trendy restaurants in what civic boosters call “Robotics Row.”

这吸引了来自硅谷等地的数十亿美元，在一个几十年来经济萎靡不振的城市中，这是让人欢迎的进展。效果是明显的。试验场开出来的自动驾驶汽车司空见惯，在高档饭店外排队，被当地支持者称为“机器人队列”。

While many longtime residents complain of skyrocketing home prices near the tech firms’ headquarters and test facilities, they’ll also tell you these are the best days the city has seen in their lifetimes.

尽管许多老居民抱怨技术公司总部和试验场周围的房价暴涨，他们也会告诉你，这是他们这辈子看到这个城市的最佳岁月。

But despite all this activity, Pittsburgh’s economy is struggling by many measures. Though the city’s population is no longer hemorrhaging away—between 1970 and 1980 it fell by roughly a fifth—it isn’t growing, either, and is aging quickly. During the last half-decade, almost 70,000 people aged 35 to 54 have left the region. 

尽管这些活动生机勃勃，匹兹堡的经济在许多方面依然困难。尽管城市人口已不再大量流出，1970年到1980年间，人口降低了月五分之一，可如今也没有增长，并且在快速老龄化。过去五年间，近7万35岁到54岁之间的人口离开该地区。

And not far from the city and its elite universities, in areas where the main hope for prosperity lies in coal and natural gas from fracking rather than self-driving cars, well-­paying jobs are scarce and towns are being devastated by opioid addiction. 

距离城市和城市的顶尖大学不远，那些经济发展的主要希望主要依赖煤炭和页岩气而非自动驾驶汽车的地区，高薪工作很少，阿片药物成瘾正在毁灭者城镇。

This makes Pittsburgh not only a microcosm of the US industrial heartland but a test case for the question facing every city and country with access to new digital technologies: Can AI, advanced robotics, self-driving cars, and other recent breakthroughs spread prosperity to the population at large, or will they just concentrate the wealth among entrepreneurs, investors, and some highly skilled tech workers?

这让匹兹堡不仅成为美国产业心脏地带的缩影，也表现出每个拥抱新数字技术的城市和国家面临的问题：人工智能、先进机器人、自动驾驶汽车和其他最新突破能否将繁荣带给广大人口，抑或它们只是把财富集中在企业家、投资人和一些高技术工人手中？

To prosper, says Scott Andes at the National League of Cities, Pittsburgh “can’t just be a producer of brilliant talent and ideas that then don’t turn into job generation.” He adds, “Pittsburgh is a great case study for the 21st-century economy, because it is beginning to leverage research strengths into economic value.”

国家城市联盟的斯科特·安德斯说，要繁荣起来，匹兹堡“不能只是接触人才和思想的生产者，这些无法转化为就业”。他说，“匹兹堡是21世纪经济体的一个伟大实验，因为它正开始撬动研究实力，将其转化为经济价值。”

Changing jobs

There is no sillier—or more disingenuous—debate in the tech community than the one over whether robots and AI will destroy jobs or, conversely, create a great abundance of new ones. In fact, the outcome depends on various economic factors. And how it will play out as the pace of AI intensifies, no one knows.

在技术界，没有比讨论机器人和人工智能是否会消灭工作岗位或者反过来会创造大量工作岗位这一问题更可笑或更虚伪的了。事实上，结果要看许多经济因素。随着人工智能加速发展，结果会如何没人知道。

Automation and robots have certainly wiped out many jobs over the last few decades, especially in manufacturing. In one of the first attempts to quantify the impact of industrial robots, research by Daron Acemoglu at MIT and his colleagues, based on data from 1990 to 2007, found that for every robot on the factory floor, some six jobs are lost. That means as many as 670,000 jobs for the years that they looked at, and as many as 1.5 million jobs at 2016 levels of robot usage in the US.

过去几十年，自动化和机器人肯定消除了许多工作，尤其在制造业领域。最早一些量化工业机器人的影响的研究包括麻省理工许愿的达龙·阿西莫格鲁及其同事根据1990年到2007年的数据所做的分析，分析发现车间中每出现一个机器人，大约6个人失去工作。那意味着1990年到2007年流失了67万个岗位，以2016年机器人在美国使用水平计算，150万岗位流失。

Automation is changing work

Gauging the net gain or loss of jobs due to robotics and AI is a tricky business. But it’s clear that the kinds of jobs in demand are changing as the need for manual labor declines and that for digital and human skills soars.

衡量机器人和人工智能导致的岗位净增加或净流失很复杂，但显而易见，工作岗位需求在发生变化，对体力劳动的需求在降低，对数字和脑力技能的需求在增加。

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that about 50 percent of tasks done in our economy could be automated. But such statistics are often misinterpreted. The 50 percent merely describes the “technical feasibility” of what can be automated with existing and emerging technologies, says James Manyika, the institute’s chairman. The number of actual jobs lost will depend on the costs and benefits of replacing people with machines.

麦肯锡全球研究所估计，我们经济体中约50%的的工作将实现自动化。但这些统计结果经常被误读。研究所主席詹姆斯·曼伊卡说，50%仅仅描述了在现有和新兴技术水平下可被自动化的“技术可能性”。真正流失岗位的数量要看机器取代人力的成本和收益。

Even more uncertain is how many new jobs will be created. Many technologists, especially roboticists, assert that advances will lead to a wealth of new kinds of work. So far, though, that hasn’t happened, and few of the breakthroughs have reached the largest sectors of the US economy, such as health care.

可以创造出多少新岗位更难以确定。许多技术人士，尤其是机器人开发者，他们相信进步会长造出大量新岗位。尽管迄今为止，这并未发生，在美国经济的最大部门中几乎没有取得任何突破，如健康卫生领域。

Perhaps we just need to be patient; technology advances have always increased incomes, which then increased demand for goods and services, which then led to more jobs. 

可能我们要有耐心，技术进步总能增加收入，然后增加对商品和服务的需求，最后创造更多岗位。

But Laura Tyson, a top economic advisor to President Bill Clinton and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, asks the question that is on everyone’s mind: What if, this time around, the goods and services that people want just don’t require much human labor to produce? “This is the first time that technology, we think, could on net reduce the demand for human workers,” she says.

但比尔·克林顿总统的首席经济顾问和加州大学伯克利分校教授劳拉·泰森问出所有人心中的问题：万一这回人们想要的商品和服务偏偏不需要太多人力生产又该如何？“我们想，这是技术第一次减低对工人的净需求，”她说。

“The naïve view among macroeconomists for several decades has been that technology will always create jobs,” says Acemoglu. “The alarmists’ is that this time is different and it will destroy jobs.” Though in the past the economic benefits from new technologies have always been enough to create more jobs than were lost, he says, “lately, for a variety of reasons, there has been a much more job-destroying face to technology.” 

“几十年来，宏观经济学家天真的认为技术永远可以创造岗位，”阿西莫格鲁说。“让人引发惊慌的是这一次不一样了，技术消灭工作。”尽管过去经济受益于新技术，创造出来的岗位总比流失的多，他说，“最近，因为各种原因，技术消灭工作的一面更强大”。

Part of what he’s describing is the so-called productivity paradox: while big data, automation, and AI should in theory be making businesses more productive, boosting the economy and creating more jobs to offset the ones being lost, this hasn’t happened. Some economists think it’s just a matter of time—though it could take many years.

他描述的部分内容是所谓的生产力悖论：理论上说，大数据、自动化和人工智能让商业活动生产力更高，促进经济并创造出更多岗位，抵消流失的岗位，可这尚未发生。有些经济学家认为这不过是时间问题，尽管需要很多年。

But the debate about how many jobs are gained or lost obscures a much more important point. The location of jobs and the kind of work they involve are changing, and that’s what’s causing real pain to people and to local economies.

可对到底能创造或流失多少岗位的讨论让人们忘记更重要的一点。岗位在何处以及它们需要什么岗位，两者在发生变化，这是人们和当地经济受到的真正冲击。

In the US, demand for low-­paying work in places like warehouses and restaurants is growing; so is demand for well-paying work in occupations requiring lots of technical skills, such as programming. At the same time, many traditionally middle-class jobs in areas like manufacturing and data processing are shriveling. 

在美国，仓库和饭店等工作地点的低收入岗位需求在增加，编程等需要大量技术技能的高薪职位也在增加。同时，许多制造业和数据处理等传统中产阶级岗位却在萎缩。

These trends have contributed to record levels of income inequality. “There is not a lot of disagreement that technology is changing the skills and occupations in demand,” says Tyson. “And that will continue to increase income inequality.”

这些动向导致了收入空前不平等。“人们基本同意，技术改变了对技能和职业的需求，”泰森说。“这会进一步增进收入不平等。”

This movie has, of course, played out before. In 1900, about 40 percent of US workers were on farms; today fewer than 2 percent are. In 1950, about 24 percent of the jobs were in manufacturing; today around 9 percent are. Similar shifts are occurring in other developed countries. But today’s changes are happening faster and more broadly than before, leaving little time for people to adapt.

当然，这种情形以前也发生过。1900年，约40%的美国工人在农场，可今天不到2%的人务农。1950年，约24%的岗位在制造业，今天大约9%。这种变化也发生在其他发达国家。但今天的变化发生得更迅猛、更广泛，没有时间让人们做出调整。

Many are simply giving up on finding a decent job. Labor-force participation—basically, the proportion of people working or seeking work—is showing a troubling drop, especially for men aged 25 to 54.

许多人干脆不再找一份体面工作了。劳动力参与率下降，尤其是25岁到54岁的人口，这令人担忧。

Melissa Kearney and Katharine Abraham, economists at the University of Maryland, have looked at why. They think there may be several causes, but they say robots and automation are a critical one. Many people without a college degree simply think the prospects of finding a well-­paying job are too slim to make it worth looking.

马里兰大学经济学家梅丽莎·科尔尼和凯瑟琳·亚布拉罕研究背后的原因。他们认为有几个原因，但机器人和自动化是最重要的。许多没有大学学位的人干脆认为找到高薪工作的机会太渺茫了，干脆就别去找了。

Inequality is up as growth slows

Despite advances in AI and robotics, productivity is sluggish, and fewer people are enjoying the benefits. To boost growth, especially as workforce growth slows, we will need more AI, and we’ll need to learn how to deploy it better.

尽管人工智能和机器人技术取得进步，生产力却进步不大，受益的人较少。为了在劳动力增长放缓的情况下促进增长，我们需要更多的人工智能，我们需要学习如何更好的应用它。

Princeton economist Anne Case and her coauthor Angus Deaton have identified what’s likely a related trend. They found that mortality is rising among middle-aged white people in the US with a high school diploma or less. 

普林斯顿经济学家安妮·凯斯和共同作者安格斯·迪顿指出可能与此有关的一种趋势。他们发现高中文凭及以下的美国中年白人，他们的死亡率在增加。

The culprits: high rates of suicide, drug addiction, and alcoholism, which Case and Deaton call “diseases of despair” because they don’t seem related to poverty per se, but rather to disappointment; in a reversal of expectations, people are realizing they won’t be better off than their parents. 

原因：高自杀率、药物成瘾和酗酒，凯斯和迪顿认为这是“失望病”，因为他们看起来和自身贫穷无关，而是失望。期望发生逆转，人们正在发现他们不会比父母过得更好了。

Automation might be partly to blame for these social problems. But if economists like Acemoglu are right, the key to creating more good jobs is not fewer of these advances but better versions of them that are deployed faster throughout the economy. 

自动化可能要部分为这些社会问题负责。但如果阿西莫格鲁这样的经济学家说得对，创造更多好工作的钥匙并非减少这些进步，而是推行更好的版本，让它们更加迅速地在整个经济体得以应用。

Pittsburgh reborn

That, in essence, is what Pittsburgh’s attempt at reinventing itself is about. So far the results are mixed. “The transformation of the city by new, young people working in AI and robotics has been spectacular,” says Andrew Moore, dean of computer science at CMU. “But it has been more of an approach of gentrification rather than an inclusion of the community.”

说到底，这正是匹兹堡要重建的自我。迄今为止，结果喜忧参半。“在人工智能和机器人部门工作的年轻人给城市带来的变化令人惊讶，”卡内基梅隆大学计算机科学系主任安德鲁·摩尔说。“但这更多是一种贵族化的方式，缺少社区包容性。”

That criticism resonates in a place that prides itself as a working-class city with strong unions and a rich history of progressive politics. Mayor William Peduto helped attract Uber to the city, but he has since soured on the San Francisco–based company. 

这种批评在一个有着强大工会和丰富的进步主义政治史、以工人阶级城市为傲的地方而言引发了共鸣。市长威廉·佩杜托把优步引进过来，但他对这家旧金山公司并没有什么好感。

“The Silicon Valley model doesn’t [put] people in the equation. It is based on what return will be derived for VCs,” he said in a recent interview at city hall with MIT Technology Review. “In places like Detroit and Pittsburgh, when we look at the future of work, we want to know what the future of the worker is.”

“硅谷模式没有把人考虑在内。它考虑的是风险投资能获得多大回报，”他最近接受《麻省理工技术评论》采访时说。“像底特律和匹兹堡这种地方，我们考虑工作的未来时，我们想要知道工人的未来是什么。”

According to a recent poll, more than half of Pittsburgh residents would strongly support Amazon’s building its second headquarters there. That’s far more than in many cities on Amazon’s shortlist—in Austin and Boston only around a third of the population would welcome the move. 

最近民调显示，超过一半的匹兹堡居民强烈支持亚马逊将匹兹堡定为第二总部。这比亚马逊名单上的其他城市多得多，在奥斯汀和波士顿，只有大概三分之一的人口欢迎这一举动。

It’s hardly surprising: Amazon is pledging 50,000 jobs and $5 billion in investment, which would be transformative for Pittsburgh. It’s rumored that the city is tempting the company with the site along the Monongahela River that includes Mill 19. 

这并不令人吃惊：亚马逊承诺创造5万个工作岗位，投资50亿美元，这可以彻底改变匹兹堡。据传该城市拿出莫农加希拉河畔的一块地吸引亚马逊，其中就包括19车间。

But if Amazon picks Pittsburgh, that’s likely to exacerbate the anxiety over how to match residents with new high-tech jobs. “There is nowhere near enough people in the city and the region with the technical skills,” says CMU’s Moore. “We’re great in terms of the rare genius leaders, but [Pittsburgh] really needs to skill up the local population to take part in this.” 

可如果亚马逊选择了匹兹堡，有可能加深当地居民就如何与高技术岗位对接引起的焦虑。“这个城市和地区技术水平高的人不够，”卡内基梅隆大学的摩尔说。“我们并不缺乏天才领导者，但真正需要的是当地人口也有能力参与其中。”

The challenge facing the city and the rest of the country, though, is not only to include more people in the high-tech workforce but to expand the supply of those well-paying jobs. Advanced robotics can modernize the factories in a city like Pittsburgh and help make manufacturing more competitive.

这所城市和全国各地面临的挑战不仅是让更多人加入到高技术队伍中来，还包括增加高薪岗位的供给。先进机器人可以是匹兹堡等城市的工厂现代化，使制造业更有竞争力。

But the factory jobs lost through the years aren’t coming back. As a country, we’re struggling to imagine how to build an economy with plenty of good jobs around AI and automation.

但这些年失去的工厂岗位不会回来了。我们很难想象如何构建一个经济体，人工智能和自动化带了许多好岗位。

A person standing on the flat roof of a building in the Lawrenceville neighborhood can get a glimpse of the future. On the first floor is a large garage housing several of Aurora’s self-driving cars. Off in some weedy fields is a Caterpillar backhoe belonging to the company’s research outpost for autonomous machines. Beyond that is a fenced-in testing area next to yet another former steel facility—this one housing Carnegie Robotics, which is working on a bomb-clearing robot for the Army. In the background is the National Robotics Center, another imposing building and home—until it moves into Mill 19—of the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute.

站在劳伦斯维尔街区的建筑房顶上可以远眺未来。一层是欧若拉自动驾驶汽车的停车区，草地外是一台卡特彼勒反铲机，这是该公司的自动驾驶研发中心。更远处是拦起来的测试场，旁边是另一家旧钢铁厂，建筑属于卡内基机器人，该公司正为陆军开发炸弹清除机器人。背景是国家机器人中心——另一栋雄伟的建筑，此前是先进机器人制造研究所所在地，后者搬进了19车间。

It’s an impressive scene highlighting signs, if you know where to look, of some of the world’s leading research into robotics and automation. But it is also almost deadly quiet. There are a few cars in the parking lots—those of the engineers and programmers involved in the various robotic ventures, and probably some visitors. Beyond that, there are no signs of workers anywhere.

这个场景让人印象深刻，如果你找对角度，可以看到世界上最先进的机器人和自动化研究。但这里死一般静谧。停车场里只有不多几辆车，都是供职于各种机器人企业的工程师和程序员，可能还有一些游客。除此之外，没有工人的迹象。