人工智能時代該教孩子學什麼
Pity school careers advisers. If economists are to be believed, vast numbers of jobs will have evaporated by the time today’s pupils reach the labour market. Oxford university’s Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne say almost half of the jobs in the US are at high risk from computerisation in the next two decades, together with two-thirds of those in India and three-quarters in China.
學校的就業顧問真可憐。如果經濟學家的話可以相信，當如今的小學生有朝一日進入勞動力市場時，大量就業崗位將已經消失。牛津大學(Oxford university)的卡爾•貝內迪克特•弗雷(Carl Benedikt Frey)和邁克爾•奧斯本(Michael Osborne)稱，未來二十年，美國幾乎一半的就業崗位、印度三分之二的崗位以及中國四分之三的工作都很可能被計算機取代。
While workers worry about whether robots will take their jobs, teachers are wondering how to use education to insulate the next generation from such a fate. This has worked before. When the last wave of automation swept the developed world at the start of the 20th century, policymakers decided education was the answer. If machines were going to substitute for brawn, they reasoned, more people would need to use their brains.
在勞動者擔心機器人是否會搶走他們的飯碗之際，老師們卻在思考如何利用教育使下一代人免遭這種命運。這種方法以前成功過。20世紀初，當上一波自動化浪潮席捲發達世界時，政策制定者認定，解決方案是教育。如果機器將取代人類的體力，他們推斷，更多人將需要從事腦力勞動。
The US invested heavily in education, with good results. Workers reaped the benefits through better jobs and higher wages. Economists Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson summed it up like this: “The industrial revolution started a race between technology and education — and, for most of the 20th century, humans won that race.”
於是美國大舉投資教育，並取得了很好的效果。勞動者通過更好的工作和薪酬待遇獲得了好處。經濟學家安德魯•麥卡菲(Andrew McAfee)和埃裏克•布林約爾鬆(Erik Brynjolfsson)這樣總結道：“工業革命開啓了科技與教育之間的競賽——在20世紀的多數時間裏，人類是這場競賽的贏家。”
But the next race will be against technology that replaces brains and brawn. Machine learning algorithms are already starting to supplant the likes of mergers and acquisition bankers and currency traders. Some experts argue we need to respond with another fundamental rethink of education.
但是，下一場競賽的對手將是同時取代人類的腦力和體力的技術。機器學習算法已經開始取代併購業務銀行家和外匯交易員之類的崗位。一些專家認爲，我們需要以再一次徹底反思教育來應對挑戰。
“School education has tended to focus on developing the core cognitive competences — for example, reading, writing and arithmetic,” said Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, in a recent speech. “Smart machines have long since surpassed humans in their ability to do the first and third of these. And they are fast catching-up on the second. That begs the question of whether there are other skills where humans’ comparative advantage is greater.”
“學校教育往往注重開發核心認知能力——例如，閱讀、寫作和算術，”英國央行(Bank of England)首席經濟學家安迪•霍爾丹(Andy Haldane)在最近一次演講中表示，“智能機器早已在第一項和第三項上超越了人類。同時它們在第二項上奮起直追。這就引出了一個問題：有沒有人類擁有更大比較優勢的其他技能？”
So what skills should we teach our children to robot-proof their careers?
因此，爲了讓我們的孩子免遭被機器人搶走工作的命運，我們應該教給他們什麼技能？
How to be creative
如何擁有創造力
Artificial intelligence tends to solve problems methodically but the human brain is far better at making logical leaps of imagination. It is more intuitive, creative and better at persuasion. Humans can also combine their creativity with robot-surpassing dexterity to cut someone’s hair, for example, or cook a delicious meal. “It’s good to invest in creative education because these are some of the skills that should be left [after automation],” says Stian Westlake, head of policy and research at Nesta, the UK innovation charity.
人工智能往往可以井井有條地解決問題，但是人類大腦在有邏輯地發揮想象力、進行跳躍性思維方面要出色得多。人腦直覺更好、更具創造性、更有說服力。人類還可以結合自己的創造力和讓機器人望塵莫及的靈巧，去給人理髮或者烹調美食。“投資創造性方面的教育很好，因爲創造力屬於（自動化）應該無法取代的技能，”英國國家科技藝術基金會(Nesta)政策和研究主管斯蒂安•韋斯特萊克(Stian Westlake)稱。
When you start to look at the world like this, you turn some familiar tropes about global education on their head.
當你開始這樣看待世界時，你會完全改變對一些有關全球教育的常見比喻的看法。
Mr Westlake says: “It’s a paradoxical story where countries like the UK come out well, because our creative economy is quite strong. We beat ourselves up over our inability to be as good at Singapore and Shanghai at coding and things like this, but actually it turns out it’s quite possible that sort of stuff is going to be the stuff that’s very easy for artificial intelligence to automate.”
韋斯特萊克稱：“出人意料的是，因爲創意經濟相當強勁，英國等國家會安然無恙。我們因爲自己在編碼等方面的能力不如新加坡和上海而苛責自己，但是事實上，這類工作最後很可能會是人工智能很容易用自動化取代的東西。”
How to be nice
情商致勝
Some machines may have learnt how to seem caring but humans still have an unsurpassed ability to empathise with others. The new phrase is “EQ”, which stands for emotional quotient (or emotional intelligence). “The high-skill, high-pay jobs of the future may involve skills better measured by EQs than IQs, by jobs creating social as much as financial value,” the BOE’s Mr Haldane said.
一些機器或許已經學會如何表示關心，但是人類仍然擁有機器無法超越的“同理”能力。新的說法是“情商”(EQ)，代表情緒商數（或情緒智商）。“未來的高技能、高薪工作需要的技能，可能對情商的要求高過對智商的要求，並要求工作不僅創造經濟價值，還要創造同樣多的社會價值，”英國央行的霍爾丹稱。
Whether or not such skills can be taught is an open question. Still, some organisations are giving it a go. ING, the Dutch bank, has recently put 350 staff through an “EQ training programme”. The aim is to teach these bankers how to “build trust with the client through asking lots more questions and listening out for feelings and beliefs as opposed to just listening out for content,” explains Steve Ellis, director at Rogensi, a consultancy that developed the project with ING.
關於這些技能能否傳授的問題尚未定論。不過，一些組織正在嘗試。荷蘭銀行國際集團(ING)最近讓350名員工參加了“情商培訓課程”。目的是教這些銀行員工如何“通過多提問題、聆聽客戶的感受和想法（而非只聽內容），來建立與客戶之間的信任，”與ING合作開發該項目的諮詢公司rogenSi的主管史蒂夫•埃利斯(Steve Ellis)稱。
One of the exercises involves sitting bankers in a room, showing them pictures of people’s facial expressions and asking them to identify the emotion felt. Mark Pieter de Boer, head of financial market sales at ING, admits some bankers were initially resistant. “Typically, what you see is people who are very much IQ-focused struggle with making that change.”
其中一項練習是，讓銀行員工坐在一個房間內，展示一些人們面部表情的圖片，讓他們識別這些表情反映的情緒。ING金融市場銷售主管馬克•彼得•德博爾(Mark Pieter de Boer)承認，一些員工一開始有牴觸心理。“一般情況下，你看到那些非常注重智商的人很難做出這樣的改變。”
But he says enthusiasm increased when staff saw the training had results. A survey by the company found people who had been on the course were more motivated, there was greater collaboration between departments and productivity increased by 10 per cent.
但是他稱，當員工發現訓練有成效後，他們的積極性提高了。該公司的調查發現，參加該課程的員工更有幹勁，部門之間的合作更順暢，生產率提高了10%。
Remember the basics
別忘了基本技能
Even if the promised age of artificial intelligence does arrive, experts say we cannot afford to dispense with hard cognitive skills such as reading, writing and mathematics.
即使人工智能的有福時代最終真的到來，專家稱我們也不能免除學習閱讀、寫作和算術等高難度認知技能。
Daisy Christodoulou, research and development manager at the UK’s Ark Schools chain, says that, unless we have these foundations in place, we will not have the mental frameworks to solve higher-order problems creatively.
英國連鎖學校Ark Schools的研發經理黛西•克里斯托杜盧(Daisy Christodoulou)稱，除非掌握這些基本技能，否則我們無法建立起創造性解決高階問題的思維框架。
“Even if we do arrive at a point where most work is done by computers, cognitive skills will still matter — not for the economy, but for the successful functioning of a democratic society,” she says. “In such a society, a great deal will turn on the ownership and regulation of the computers and robots doing all the work, and the debates around such issues will require an educated and informed populace.”
“即使真的到了計算機完成大多數工作的那一天，認知技能仍然很重要——不是對於經濟而言，而是爲了民主社會的順利運轉。”她稱，“在那樣的社會中，對完成所有工作的計算機和機器人的擁有和監管將關係重大，圍繞這類問題的討論將需要受過教育、有知識的民衆。
