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Today I want to talk about a topic that I think is very interesting: automation. This is an advanced series, so I suggest you go to podcastitaliano.com to read the transcript of the most difficult words and expression translations. You may have heard the term “automation” before.This is the Garzanti dictionary definition: “Automation is The introduction of mechanical production processes, especially guided by electronic systems, reduces manual intervention to a minimum.”
Simply put, machines, robots, algorithms, etc., or tools behavior (The purpose is to) simplify Far (Significantly) Human work.
Already hereAncient (in ancient time) Artificial tools-“mechanical muscles”-to simplify his work, so that now in many countries, less than 5% of the population is engaged in agriculture, Without that influences (Do not harm, do not affect) Plentiful food, at least in the west, Of course (Of course)The Industrial Revolution 200 years ago greatly accelerated this process. This process has never stopped. On the contrary, it continues to accelerate Hand in hand (Step by step, go hand in hand) Improvement of living standards. Today, we are entering an era in which the tools we create are real “mechanical minds”.
When we think of the end of the world where robots rebelled against human creators, we laugh. But we are talking about very different things. In this world, robots do better than us, and at lower cost.
Many people suspect that humans will become obsolete and their work can be automated. Even if they are, they say, We will adapt (We will adapt, “Get used to”) as always.The problem is revolution We are getting closer (We are approaching) This is fundamentally different.Digital Age Carry (Bring your own) Artificial intelligence will soon become more efficient than us humans In progress (In progress) Different tasks. Today, we can already observe that so-called “robots” (not robots with physical bodies but “software”) are getting better and better at performing tasks that were specifically entrusted to humans in the past. So-called”White collar” (White collar) May be the first “victims”Large-scale automation (Large-scale automation) According to who is interested in the subject.
The core of the event (The bottom line is, the truth is…) This is the first time that technology has become more effective in performing tasks that require intelligence. This is the quality of the past Privilege (privilege) Humans (not “stupid machines”).But this situation is changing. This kind of “intelligence” is fundamentally different from ours. It is not important because this nDon’t take away (This will not change the facts) In many cases, it is still more effective than ours and will only improve further.
One of the areas where we will soon see the positive and negative effects of automation is transportation. We hear more and more “Self-driving car” (Self-driving car); Google has been successfully testing for several years, and there are other companies such as Tesla, Apple and most recently Uber (planning to replace human drivers with self-driving fleets), They strongly pointed out (Resolutely bet) its This technology. In terms of road safety, self-driving cars are already better than us.Do you think that more than one million people die in road traffic accidents in the world every year. This is the ninth leading cause of death in the world: a number exaggerated (Disproportionately) electronic Inadmissible (Unacceptable, unacceptable), Especially if technology can help us reduce it drastically.
All of this is very interesting, but let’s try to think about how many people currently work in the transportation industry: taxi drivers, truck driver (Truck driver / camion = truck), Drivers of buses, trams, trains, subways, etc. This is 70 million jobs worldwide, which may disappear.some debate (claim) In the next 20 years, even 45% of the works that Current composition (Make up now) The US market can be automated.These are high numbers: we hardly know how to adapt Fast enough (Fast enough), Because it’s impossible to create jobs that even robots can’t do, or learn to do better jobs than us in a short time. In addition, most of the more common jobs existed in some form as early as 100 years ago: Contrary to what you think (Contrary to popular belief), Technology has not created a lot of new jobs.
Robots can not only replace “white-collar workers”, but also lawyers (robots can more effectively complete the research and data analysis between a large number of papers and documents), bartenders, doctors, journalists, and even creative personnel. Have the ability to create music And artistic algorithms. In San Francisco, I visited the world’s first fully automatic restaurant, e I am very touched (I am very impressed with it).
One of the reasons for this is the way robots can improve themselves: they can learn how to perform tasks correctly by analyzing large amounts of data. No programming required (No need to program them) Do this directly.My father works in the field of speech recognition (ie software, such as iPhone’s Siri, which can understand human language), and he also explained to me how to work in this field Advantage This technology is called a “neural network,” and it is the same technology that Google can guess about image content and improve the performance of its self-driving cars.
Automation is not good or bad, but it is inevitable.If a company starts Use it (Use it/make use of it), Others must do the same if they want to remain competitive.but if unemployment (unemployment) Increase, who will buy the products of these companies? Fewer and fewer (Fewer and fewer) People, which brings less revenue to the company, and these companies will be incentivized to further cut costs by automating more work.it is Vicious circle Unsolvable (A vicious circle that cannot be solved) .
Some experts Advance ideas (Recommendation, proposal) of Universal basic income (Universal basic income) : Everyone gets a sum of money because of this simple fact.I do not want Go too far (live / The object is not required) So I will not go into details; anyway, the phenomenon of automation is likely to be so high influences (great influence) For our society, such measures are necessary.
In short, I think we will hear more and more of this topic in the next few years. If we want to be ready to live in this world, this is a question we need to think about seriously. Future world (In the future world).
