科普：人工智能如何影响你的工资（2）

How does artificial intelligence affect your salary?（2）

Roland Hall has been translating board games and marketing material from French to English for 27 years.
罗兰·霍尔的工作是将桌游和营销材料从法语翻译成英语，他从事这种工作已经有27年了。

He recalls that even in the 1990s software was used to render specific words from one language to another.
他回忆说，早在20世纪90年代，软件就被用来将特定的某些单词从一种语言翻译成另一种语言。

Today the tools are more advanced, meaning the types of job available have split in two.
如今，这些工具更加先进，这意味着现有的工作已经分成两类。

One type includes texts where fluency is less important.
一类包括对行文流畅性要求不那么高的文本。

An example might be a several-thousand-page manual for an aircraft, says Mr Hall, where readers simply need to know "what part to look for" and "do you turn it left or right".
霍尔表示，这种文本可能是长达数千页的飞机说明手册，读者只需知道“应该找哪个部件”，以及“你是把它向左转还是向右转”。

The other type includes literary translations, where the finest details matter.
另一类包括文学翻译，文本的细枝末节都非常重要。

The first type has been most affected by AI.
第一类受人工智能影响最大。

Many workers now edit translations that have gone through a machine similar to that underlying Google's translation service.
许多工作人员都是先用与谷歌翻译的底层技术类似的机器生成译文，然后再对译文进行编辑。

They are paid at a steep discount per word, but more work is available.
他们按字数计算的报酬大打折扣，但工作也变多了。

Lucia Ratikova, a Slovakian who specialises in construction and legal translations, reckons that such work now makes up more than half of listings on job sites, up from a tenth a few years ago.
专门从事建筑和法律翻译的斯洛伐克人露西娅·拉蒂科娃估计，这类工作现在占求职网站上发布信息的一半以上，而几年前这一比例为十分之一。

A larger pool of businesses, many eager to expand into global markets, are taking advantage of the drop in price.
更多的企业正在利用翻译价格下跌的机会，其中许多企业渴望进军全球市场。

If machines are able to do what humans do more cheaply, employers will turn to computers.
如果机器能够以更低的成本做人类做的事情，雇主就会转而使用计算机。

But as prices fall, overall demand for a service may rise, and possibly by enough to offset the increased use of machines.
但随着价格下降，整体需求会上升，从而可能抵消使用机器（带来的工作减少）。

There is no law to determine which effect will dominate.
没有定律可以决定哪种影响将占主导地位。

So far in America the number of translators has grown, yet their real wages have fallen slightly-probably because the profession now requires rather less skill.
到目前为止，美国的译员人数有所增加，但他们的实际工资却略有下降，可能是因为这一职业现在对技能的要求要低得多。

Customer service offers more difficult terrain for AI.
客户服务的人工智能应用情况更为棘手。

Firms have been trying to automate it for years.
多年来，公司一直在尝试将客服自动化。

Thus far they have mostly just annoyed customers.
到目前为止，这种做法主要只是惹恼了客户。

Who doesn’t try to game the chatbot in order to speak to an actual human?
为了和真人对话，谁不会试着对聊天机器人扯谎呢？

The American Customer Satisfaction Index has been falling since 2018, and workers also appear fed up.
自2018年以来，美国消费者满意度指数一直在下降，员工们似乎也受够了。

Turnover in American“contact centres” hit a record high of 38% last year.
去年，美国“联络中心”的员工流动率达到了创纪录的38%。

But there may be consolation: the workforce is becoming more welcoming to the low-skilled.
但还有一些安慰：客服行业对能力较差的人开始变得更加友好。

2024年8月7日于普洱金融培训中心