AI是伟大的平等器

The past few months I've been mulling over a series of studies economists have conducted on the value of artificial intelligence in the workplace. How much, they wanted to know, does AI help white-collar professionals do their jobs? The productivity gains they've observed are substantial: AI is clearly making us better, faster workers. The numbers have prompted AI optimists to predict an economic boom and AI pessimists to worry about a future of fewer jobs.

过去几个月，我一直在思考经济学家们对工作场所人工智能价值进行的一系列研究。他们想知道，人工智能对白领专业人员的工作有多大帮助？他们观察到的生产力提升是巨大的：人工智能显然使我们成为更好、更快的工作者。这些数字使人工智能乐观主义者预测了一场经济繁荣，而人工智能悲观主义者则担心未来的就业机会减少。

But behind those numbers, buried a little deeper in the studies, is the finding that interests me. The question isn't how much AI helps out around the office but who it helps — and why.

但在这些数字背后，深入研究中发现了一个让我感兴趣的结果。问题不在于人工智能在办公室中有多大帮助，而在于它帮助了谁，以及为什么。

AI, the studies indicate, is making us more productive in a weird way. It's not helping everyone get better at their jobs. It's mostly turbocharging workers who are bad at their jobs, while doing little to aid — or even hindering — those who are already productive to begin with. AI, in other words, is raising overall productivity by narrowing the gap between high performers and low performers. It's equalizing white-collar work — a vast swath of the economy that has always been predicated on the assumption that some people will inherently be much, much better at their jobs than others.

研究表明，人工智能以一种奇怪的方式提高了我们的生产力。它并不是帮助每个人在工作中变得更好。它主要是加速那些工作表现不佳的员工，而对那些已经很有生产力的员工帮助不大，甚至有时还会阻碍他们。换句话说，人工智能通过缩小高绩效员工和低绩效员工之间的差距，提高了整体生产力。它正在使白领工作变得更加平等，而白领工作一直以来都是基于这样一个假设：有些人在工作中本质上比其他人要好得多。

Before we get into the broader implications of the studies, let's start by reviewing their findings. Economists looked at the impact of AI in six different areas of work:

在我们讨论这些研究的更广泛影响之前，让我们先来回顾一下它们的发现。经济学家们研究了人工智能在六个不同工作领域的影响：

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