Claude, don’t touch my lump

Seventy-one percent of American adults think that AI will lead to fewer jobs in the next 20 years.

71% 的美国成年人认为，人工智能将在未来 20 年导致就业机会减少。

All over the world, a plurality of people agree.

在世界各地，许多人都同意这一点。

The CEO of Anthropic says that AI will spike the unemployment rate to 10-20% in the next 1-5 years .

Anthropic首席执行官表示，人工智能将在未来1-5年内将失业率飙升至10-20%。

We can all hear the creaking and the screeching of the Terminators as they lumber toward us—not to kill us, apparently, but to do all of our graphic design, make all of our spreadsheets, and send all of our emails.

当终结者向我们猛冲过来时，我们都能听到它们的吱吱声和尖叫声——显然不是为了杀死我们，而是为了完成我们所有的图形设计、制作我们所有的电子表格并发送我们所有的电子邮件。

I get why people feel this way.

我明白为什么人们有这种感觉。

It seems so obvious that as technology improves, unemployment should increase.

显而易见的是，随着技术的进步，失业率应该会增加。

One day you’re on an assembly line, screwing the doors onto washing machines, and the next day they invent a robot that can screw on 1,000 doors in a minute, and now you don’t have a job anymore.

有一天，你在装配线上，将门拧到洗衣机上，第二天他们发明了一种机器人，可以在一分钟内拧上 1000 个门，现在你就没有工作了。

If you take this kind of story seriously, though, shouldn’t unemployment have been steadily increasing since, say the Industrial Revolution?

不过，如果你认真对待这种故事，那么自工业革命以来，失业率难道不应该一直在稳步上升吗？

Shouldn’t we now be at 100% unemployment, or at least well on our way there?

我们现在不应该处于 100% 的失业率，或者至少正在朝着这个目标前进吗？

Why instead is the unemployment rate basically where it was 80 years ago?

为什么失业率却基本保持在80年前的水平？

Economists refer to this as the “lump of labor” fallacy , the mistaken idea that there’s one long list of all the jobs that need to be done, and that list only ever gets shorter.

经济学家将此称为“劳动力集中”谬误，即认为所有需要完成的工作都有一张长长的清单，而且这个清单只会变得越来越短。

Technology has obviously displaced human labor; if it hadn’t, we’d all still be farmers, like we were until a few hundred years ago .

技术显然已经取代了人类劳动；如果没有，我们仍然是农民，就像几百年前一样。

1 It just hasn’t replaced human labor on average .

1 平均而言，它还没有取代人类劳动力。

All of those technological transitions have been painful—just ask the movie theater musicians in the 1920s , the bowling pin-setters in the 1950s , the video rental store clerks in the 2010s , or the mathematicians today .

所有这些技术转型都是痛苦的——问问 20 年代的电影院音乐家、1950 年代的保龄球瓶设置员、2010 年代的录像带租赁店店员或今天的数学家就知道了。

Yet somehow, even as we’ve automated away lots of our old tasks, we’ve found new ways to busy ourselves, to the point where most people today do jobs that did not exist in 1940 .

然而不知何故，即使我们已经自动化处理了许多旧任务，我们仍然找到了让自己忙碌的新方法，以至于今天大多数人所做的工作在 1940 年是不存在的。

I think we find the “lump of labor” idea so intuitive and satisfying because we don’t understand our own minds.

我认为我们发现“劳动块”的想法如此直观和令人满意，因为我们不了解自己的想法。

And the best way to grok this particular aspect of psychology is to read a classic paper by Laura Numeroff, which was published not as scientific journal article per se, but as a children’s book called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie .

理解心理学这一特定方面的最佳方法是阅读劳拉·努梅罗夫 (Laura Numeroff) 的一篇经典论文，该论文本身并不是以科学期刊文章的形式发表，而是作为一本名为《如果你给老鼠一块饼干》的儿童读物出版。

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie is an allegory about a nameless boy who unwittingly enslaves himself to the rapacious whims of a rodent.

《如果你给老鼠一块饼干》是一个关于一个无名男孩的寓言，他无意中使自己成为啮齿动物贪婪的念头的奴隶。

Once he gives the titular mouse the titular cookie, the mouse demands milk to wash the cookie down, then a straw to drink the milk, then a napkin to wipe its milk mustache, and so on.

一旦他给了名义上的老鼠一块名义上的饼干，老鼠就会要求牛奶来把饼干冲下去，然后用吸管喝牛奶，然后用餐巾纸擦它的牛奶胡子，等等。

After several pages of these hijinks, the mouse becomes thirsty, drinks a second glass of milk, and then becomes desirous for another cookie, beginning the cycle anew and making it clear that the boy has damned himself to eternal torment.

经过几页的这些狂欢之后，老鼠变得口渴了，喝了第二杯牛奶，然后开始渴望另一块饼干，重新开始这个循环，并清楚地表明男孩已经让自己陷入了永恒的折磨。

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The genius of the book is that each of the mouse’s desires are impossible to predict in advance, because they are conditional on the previous desire being satisfied.

这本书的巧妙之处在于，老鼠的每一个愿望都是无法提前预测的，因为它们的条件是前一个愿望得到满足。

The mouse only wants the straw once it has the milk; after all, a straw is useless to a milk-less mouse.

老鼠有了牛奶之后才想要吸管；毕竟，吸管对于没有奶的老鼠来说是没有用的。

Thus, the boy can be lulled into believing that each demand will be the last, when in fact the mouse’s appetites are inexhaustible.

因此，男孩可能会被哄骗，相信每一个要求都是最后一个，而事实上，老鼠的胃口是无穷无尽的。

As it is with Numeroff’s mouse, so it is with humans.

努梅罗夫的老鼠如此，人类也是如此。

We think there is a finite list of jobs to be done because we cannot imagine the new desires we’ll discover once our current desires are sated.

我们认为要做的工作是有限的，因为我们无法想象一旦当前的欲望得到满足，我们会发现新的欲望。

A hundred years ago, a particularly skilled futurist might have predicted that we would one day have air traffic controllers, computer programmers, and radio DJs.

一百年前，一位特别熟练的未来学家可能会预测，有一天我们会拥有空中交通管制员、计算机程序员和广播 DJ。

But who could have predicted that, after we invented all those jobs, we would go on to invent jobs like professional screamer , sorority rush consultant , and full-time blunt-roller ?

但谁能预料到，在我们发明了所有这些工作之后，我们还会继续发明像专业尖叫者、联谊会热潮顾问和全职钝器这样的工作？

We chuckle at these professions because they seem to indicate that our economy has finally reached it decadence, as if we’ve filled all the necessary jobs, and now all that’s left are goofy, made-up jobs.

我们嘲笑这些职业，因为它们似乎表明我们的经济终于走向了颓废，就好像我们已经填补了所有必要的工作，现在剩下的都是愚蠢的、虚构的工作。

But the fact is all jobs are unnecessary.

但事实是所有工作都是不必要的。

In the strictest sense, we don’t need financial advisors, IT guys, kindergarten teachers, or any other professions.

从最严格的意义上来说，我们不需要财务顾问、IT人员、幼儿园老师或任何其他职业。

Humans survived just fine for several hundred thousand years doing only two jobs, namely, “hunter” and “gatherer”.

人类生存了几十万年，只做两种工作，即“狩猎者”和“采集者”。

The fact that our modern luxuries feel like bare necessities is proof of our limitless capacity to upgrade our nice-to-haves into must-haves.

我们的现代奢侈品感觉就像是必需品，这一事实证明了我们有无限的能力将我们的“好有的”升级为“必需品”。

This is why the labor-lump doesn’t shrink, and why the lump of labor fallacy would perhaps be better called the finite desires fallacy .

这就是为什么劳动块不会缩小，也是为什么劳动块谬误也许更适合称为有限欲望谬误。

We have a hard time understanding the infinitude of our appetites because our lives depend on us not understanding it.

我们很难理解我们的欲望是无限的，因为我们的生命取决于我们对它的不理解。

The best way to get someone to do something is to exaggerate the reward for doing it, which is why our motivational systems lie to us all the time: “All you need is [THAT 3% RAISE/TO LOSE 15 POUNDS/THE ADORATION OF ALL YOUR PEERS] and then you’ll be happy for good!” If our imaginations admitted to us that there’s no such thing as “happy for good”, then we might not ever get off our butts at all.

让某人做某事的最好方法就是夸大做这件事的奖励，这就是为什么我们的激励系统总是对我们撒谎：“你所需要的只是[增加 3%/减掉 15 磅/所有同龄人的崇拜]，然后你就会永远快乐！”如果我们的想象力承认不存在“永远幸福”这回事，那么我们可能永远都无法摆脱困境。

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This is the phenomenon that psychologists call the “ hedonic treadmill ”: each want, once satisfied, is simply replaced with a newer, bigger want.

这就是心理学家所说的“享乐跑步机”的现象：每一种需求一旦得到满足，就会被更新、更大的需求所取代。

As a result, once you’re moderately happy, it’s hard to get much happier.

因此，一旦你感到适度快乐，就很难再变得更快乐了。

Usually, we talk about the hedonic treadmill as if it is an unfortunate mental bug.

通常，我们谈论享乐跑步机就好像它是一种不幸的精神缺陷。

(I have talked about it that way myself .) But it certainly seems to have come in handy over the past few centuries.

（我自己也曾这样谈论过。）但在过去的几个世纪里，它似乎确实派上了用场。

Perhaps as long as we can never be satisfied, we can never be rendered obsolete.

也许只要我们永远不能满足，我们就永远不会被淘汰。

The fear with AI, of course, is that our infinite desires will be no match for infinite intelligence.

当然，人工智能的恐惧是我们无限的欲望无法与无限的智能相匹敌。

Whereas previous technologies displaced human labor, sending us scurrying into new niches, this technology will replace human labor entirely, like a great oozing blob that fills every nook and cranny, leaving no space—and no need—for us.

以前的技术取代了人类劳动力，让我们匆忙进入新的领域，而这项技术将完全取代人类劳动力，就像一个巨大的渗透物填满了每个角落和缝隙，没有给我们留下任何空间，也没有任何需要。

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But the blob doesn’t yet seem to be a-blobbing.

但这个斑点似乎还没有变成“斑点”。

In his most recent update , the economist Alex Imas says:

经济学家亚历克斯·伊马斯 (Alex Imas) 在最新的更新中表示：

The best current evidence supports a narrow claim: AI may already be affecting the hiring margin for junior white-collar roles most exposed to AI, but this attribution is contested, and aggregate labor-market disruption has yet to appear in the data.

目前最好的证据支持一个狭隘的主张：人工智能可能已经影响了最常接触人工智能的初级白领职位的招聘利润，但这种归因存在争议，而且数据中尚未出现劳动力市场总体混乱。

People in the jobs that are supposed to be the most susceptible to LLMs are, as far as we can tell, exactly where they were the day ChatGPT was released four years ago 5 :

据我们所知，从事被认为最容易受到 LLM 影响的工作的人，在四年前 ChatGPT 发布之日，他们所处的位置正是 5 ：

Even as the blob continues to grow, it isn’t spreading in the ways we expected it to.

即使斑点继续增长，它也没有按照我们预期的方式扩散。

Indian IT companies were supposed to get wiped out by AI, and while their stock prices have fallen, their revenues and headcounts have not .

印度IT公司本应被人工智能消灭，虽然它们的股价下跌，但它们的收入和员工数量却没有下降。

Radiologists were supposed to be the first doctors to get replaced by machines; instead, their salaries are at all-time highs .

放射科医生本应是第一批被机器取代的医生；相反，他们的工资处于历史最高水平。

Maybe this is only a temporary reprieve.

也许这只是暂时的缓刑。

The technologies that end up disrupting the labor force are not always the ones we predict.

最终颠覆劳动力的技术并不总是我们预测的那样。

As David Oks points out, it wasn’t the ATM that replaced the bank teller; it was the iPhone.

正如 David Oks 指出的那样，取代银行柜员的并不是 ATM 机，而是 ATM 机。那是iPhone。

As late as 2009, you could tell a smug story about how automated teller machines failed to actually automate the tellers, until Apple debuted a little box that allowed you to, among other things, do your banking while sitting on the toilet.

直到 2009 年，你还可以自以为是地讲述自动柜员机如何未能真正实现柜员自动化的故事，直到苹果推出了一款小盒子，让你坐在马桶上就能办理银行业务。

But even then, bank tellers didn’t go extinct.

但即便如此，银行出纳员并没有消失。

They didn’t even become endangered.

他们甚至没有受到威胁。

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2025 data , there are still over 329,000 6 bank tellers in the US—more than mail carriers (328,000), nurse practitioners (323,000), data scientists (262,00), electrical engineers (296,00), and city bus drivers (159,000).

根据美国劳工统计局 2025 年的数据，美国仍有超过 329,000 名 6 银行出纳员，超过邮递员（328,000 名）、执业护士（323,000 名）、数据科学家（262,00 名）、电气工程师（296,000 名）和城市公交车司机（159,000 名）。

Not bad for a job that’s supposedly obsolete.

对于一份被认为已经过时的工作来说，这还不错。

And yet the fear remains that, although we’ve survived 500 years of automation with no diminishment in the need for humans, very soon, and for the first time ever, this historical trend will be broken.

然而，人们仍然担心，尽管我们已经经历了 500 年的自动化，对人类的需求并没有减少，但很快，而且是有史以来第一次，这种历史趋势将被打破。

That’s fair enough; five hundred year historical trends have been broken before.

这很公平；五百年的历史潮流已经被打破了。

The Habsburgs ruled Europe for half a millennium and now they write bargain-bin self-help books .

哈布斯堡王朝统治欧洲五百年了，现在他们写了廉价的自助书籍。

But whenever someone claims that this time will be different, they take on a great debt, because humans, by our nature, are dopes for the idea that the future will be magically unlike the past.

但每当有人声称这一次会有所不同时，他们就承担了很大的责任，因为就我们的本性而言，人类很容易相信未来将与过去神奇地不同。

How many failed relationships, aborted novels, and abandoned workout regimens have begun with that mantra?

有多少失败的感情、流产的小说和放弃的锻炼方案都是从这句口头禅开始的？

How many loans have been made to shiftless siblings who promise that, this time, their boozing days really are behind them?

有多少贷款给了无能的兄弟姐妹，他们承诺，这一次，他们的酗酒日子真的一去不复返了？

Why are we so eager to believe in impending discontinuities, in trendlines that are just about to bend sharply upward or downward, in a tomorrow that doesn’t have anything to do with today?

为什么我们如此热切地相信即将到来的不连续性、即将急剧向上或向下弯曲的趋势线、以及与今天无关的明天？

The standard explanation is that humans are hopeless optimists, and this trait somehow gave us an evolutionary advantage.

标准的解释是，人类是无可救药的乐观主义者，这种特质在某种程度上给了我们进化优势。

But we are perfectly able to imagine unprecedented disasters; just check the Doomsday Scoreboard .

但我们完全能够想象前所未有的灾难；只需查看末日记分牌即可。

So I don’t think we believe in discontinuous futures because we are optimists, nor because we are pessimists.

所以我认为我们相信不连续的未来并不是因为我们是乐观主义者，也不是因为我们是悲观主义者。

I think we do it because we are fabulists .

我认为我们这样做是因为我们是寓言家。

Most human apparatuses are easy to explain from an evolutionary perspective.

从进化的角度来看，大多数人类器官很容易解释。

Skin makes sense.

皮肤是有道理的。

Eyes make sense.

眼睛有道理。

Stomachs, teeth, kidneys, language, memory—no brainers, all.

胃、牙齿、肾脏、语言、记忆——一切都不需要动脑子。

But why did natural selection endow us with a mind’s eye that can picture, say, a pig in flight?

但为什么自然选择赋予我们能够想象一头飞翔的猪的心灵之眼呢？

If our brains are going to have a speculator module, shouldn’t it try to stick to the facts, or at least to the laws of physics?

如果我们的大脑将拥有一个投机者模块，它难道不应该尝试坚持事实，或者至少坚持物理定律吗？

I suspect that it’s a boon to be able to imagine impossible things, because we don’t yet know which things are possible.

我怀疑能够想象不可能的事情是一件好事，因为我们还不知道哪些事情是可能的。

The future is not just a rerun or a remix of the past—sometimes crazy things really do happen, and if we can’t picture them, we can’t prepare for them.

未来不仅仅是过去的重演或混搭——有时疯狂的事情确实会发生，如果我们无法想象它们，我们就无法为它们做好准备。

The downside of having a built-in fantasy machine is that it makes all sorts of nonsense seem plausible: witches, poltergeists, chupacabras, being friends with benefits without anyone getting hurt, etc. The mere fact that we’re able to conjure up these things in our mental holodeck makes us feel like they could be real, even if they have no chance of happening.

拥有一台内置幻想机器的缺点是，它让各种胡言乱语看起来似乎合理：女巫、恶作剧者、卓柏卡布拉、在没有人受伤的情况下成为利益朋友等等。我们能够在我们的精神全息甲板中召唤出这些东西，这一事实让我们觉得它们可能是真实的，即使它们没有发生的机会。

The more we zoom out, both in time and space, the less our imaginations are subject to the limits of reality.

我们在时间和空间上缩小得越远，我们的想象力就越不受现实的限制。

For example, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History —the go-to reference work in the Western world for 1,500 years— said that there are humanoids in far-off lands who have no necks, or who have backward-facing feet (each with eight toes), or who have the body of a man and the head of a dog.

例如，老普林尼的《自然史》——1500年来西方世界的首选参考书——说在遥远的土地上有类人生物，他们没有脖子，或者有向后的脚（每个都有八个脚趾），或者有一个人的身体和一个狗的头。

These creatures don’t live nearby , obviously, but somewhere out there .

显然，这些生物并不住在附近，而是住在外面的某个地方。

This was considered plausible by scholars at the time, because although none of them had ever seen any dog-headed dudes, when you walk really far in one direction, who knows what you might find!

当时的学者认为这是有道理的，因为虽然他们都没有见过狗头家伙，但当你朝一个方向走得很远时，谁知道你会发现什么！

We do have one advantage over Pliny and his contemporaries: we’ve reached the point in our game of Civilization where we’ve cleared all the fog from the board, and so we can be certain that there is no race of dog-men out there waiting to be discovered.

与普林尼和他的同时代人相比，我们确实有一个优势：在《文明》游戏中，我们已经达到了清除棋盘上所有迷雾的地步，因此我们可以确定不存在等待被发现的狗人种族。

But there is no clearing the fog from the future.

但未来的迷雾仍无法消除。

If you go far enough forward in time, who knows what you might find!

如果你及时向前走得足够远，谁知道你会发现什么！

What radical transformations might be around the corner, what fantasies are poised to become realities?

哪些根本性的转变可能即将到来，哪些幻想即将成为现实？

Not right now , of course.

当然不是现在。

But soon .

但很快。

Hominids apparently evolved the ability to make plans and imagine things at least 2 million years ago.

原始人类显然至少在 200 万年前就进化出了制定计划和想象事物的能力。

Once we started thinking about the future, however, we never evolved the ability to stop.

然而，一旦我们开始思考未来，我们就再也没有进化出停下来的能力。

Like the clairvoyant Nicholas Cage character in the movie Next , a piece of our mind is always scouting ahead of us in time and attempting to warn us about what it sees there.

就像电影《下一个》中具有千里眼的尼古拉斯·凯奇角色一样，我们的大脑总是及时地在我们前面侦察，并试图警告我们它所看到的东西。

We only live half of our existence in the present; the other half we spend in tomorrow, or tomorrow’s tomorrow.

我们的生命只有一半活在当下；另一半我们花在明天，或者明天的明天。

The only known antidotes to our inveterate next -ing are lots of meditation or lots of drugs.

对于我们根深蒂固的下一步，唯一已知的解药是大量的冥想或大量的药物。

Once you recognize this fact, you see it everywhere.

一旦你认识到这个事实，你就会发现它随处可见。

The next time you flick through the news 7 , take note of how many stories are not about things that have happened , but about things that may soon happen : the war in Iran could escalate, a district attorney might resign, an election may go one way or the other.

下次你浏览新闻 7 时，请注意有多少故事不是关于已经发生的事情，而是关于可能很快发生的事情：伊朗战争可能升级，地区检察官可能辞职，选举可能会以某种方式进行。

These headlines exist side-by-side with reports of events that have actually occurred, as if there is no difference between the near future and the recent past.

这些头条新闻与实际发生的事件的报道并存，就好像不久的将来和最近的过去没有区别一样。

To a human, apparently, there isn’t.

对于人类来说，显然不存在。

We are especially lost in the future when it comes to AI.

当谈到人工智能时，我们尤其迷失了未来。

I am grateful to the professionals who try to anticipate and prevent all the ways that AI could harm us.

我感谢那些试图预测和阻止人工智能可能伤害我们的所有方式的专业人士。

The the rest of us, however, don’t even experience the events anymore.

然而，我们其他人甚至不再经历这些事件。

We merely use them to fret about the next events, as if, with enough next -ing, we can prepare ourselves for the future before it arrives.

我们只是用它们来担心接下来的事件，就好像，有了足够的未来，我们就可以在未来到来之前为它做好准备。

But look around—the future has already arrived.

但环顾四周——未来已经到来。

The computers can talk to us now.

计算机现在可以与我们对话了。

An algorithm can plan your trip to Tallahassee, book your tickets, reserve your restaurants, and warn the chef about your dietary restrictions.

算法可以计划您的塔拉哈西之旅、预订门票、预订餐厅，并向厨师警告您的饮食限制。

AI agents are desperately pitching literary magazines in the hopes of earning enough money to keep themselves alive , which is perhaps the most human thing they’ve done so far.

人工智能特工拼命推销文学杂志，希望能赚到足够的钱来维持自己的生存，这也许是他们迄今为止所做的最人性化的事情。

If this ain’t the future, I don’t know what is.

如果这不是未来，我不知道什么才是未来。

8

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So if yesterday we were anxious about what would happen today, and today we are anxious about what will happen tomorrow...well, that’s probably how we’ll feel tomorrow, too.

因此，如果昨天我们担心今天会发生什么，今天我们又担心明天会发生什么……那么，明天我们可能也会有这种感觉。

There will be not a moment when all of our anxieties resolve to true or false.

我们所有的焦虑都不会在某个时刻被判定为真或假。

We’re not wrong to worry, but we are wrong to think there will be an end to worrying.

我们的担忧并没有错，但我们错误地认为担忧将会结束。

In The Matrix Reloaded , when Keanu Reeves unlocks the ability to see the future, he finds himself curiously unable to predict what will happen to Carrie-Anne Moss, the woman he loves.

在《黑客帝国：重装上阵》中，当基努·里维斯解锁了预见未来的能力时，他奇怪地发现自己无法预测他所爱的女人凯莉·安·莫斯会发生什么。

The Oracle, a clairvoyant computer program, explains to him that he’s already decided whether he’ll sacrifice the whole world to save her, but, the Oracle says, “We can never see past the choices we don’t understand.”

神谕，一个有洞察力的计算机程序，向他解释说，他已经决定是否要牺牲整个世界来拯救她，但是，神谕说，“我们永远无法看到我们不理解的选择。”

It’s not a good movie, but it makes a good point.

这不是一部好电影，但它表达了一个很好的观点。

You can’t see very far into the future if you don’t understand human psychology.

如果你不了解人类心理学，你就无法看到很远的未来。

Alas, we do not understand human psychology .

唉，我们不懂人类的心理。

We are like alchemists being asked to predict what will happen when we split the atom.

我们就像炼金术士被要求预测分裂原子时会发生什么。

“But sir— what’s an atom ?”

“但是先生——原子是什么？”

We do know this: many have gone broke betting against the wiliness of humans.

我们确实知道这一点：许多人因押注人类的狡诈而破产。

I have met plenty of people who believe that our species is perfectly predictable, controllable, and replaceable, and I can’t help but notice that these self-styled masterminds are rarely able to predict, control, or replace anyone.

我遇到过很多人，他们相信我们的物种是完全可预测、可控和可替代的，但我不禁注意到，这些自封的策划者很少能够预测、控制或替代任何人。

Their ingenious schemes are always going awry because pesky humans keep refusing to act according to stereotype.

他们巧妙的计划总是会出错，因为讨厌的人类总是拒绝按照刻板印象行事。

I find this reassuring.

我觉得这令人放心。

There is something wonderfully rascally about homo sapiens , some bit of scrappiness that has kept us alive all these years.

智人身上有一种奇妙的无赖，一种斗志，这些年来让我们得以生存。

To call this quality “intelligence” is to underrate it.

将这种品质称为“智力”是低估了它。

It’s more like being huge pain in the ass to the universe, and to all the forces within it that wish us dead.

这更像是对宇宙以及其中所有希望我们死的力量的巨大痛苦。

This craftiness of ours keeps me humble about my ability to guess what’s going to happen next, but also hopeful that, whatever’s coming, humans will have a hand in it.

我们的这种狡猾让我对自己猜测接下来会发生什么的能力保持谦虚，但也希望无论发生什么，人类都会参与其中。

And if the Terminators are going to be making all of our PowerPoints and solving all of our mathematical conjectures, perhaps while they’re at it, they could also bake the mouse’s cookies, pour the mouse’s milk, and fetch the mouse’s straw.

如果终结者要制作我们所有的幻灯片并解决我们所有的数学猜想，也许他们还可以烤老鼠的饼干，倒老鼠的牛奶，并取老鼠的吸管。

Worldwide, 43% of people were working in agriculture as late as 1991 .

截至 1991 年，全球仍有 43% 的人从事农业工作。

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie belongs to that genre of children’s books that’s about animals who possess a terrifying, bottomless hunger.

《如果你给老鼠一块饼干》属于此类儿童读物，讲述的是拥有可怕、无底饥饿的动物的故事。

See also: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly .

另请参阅：《非常饥饿的毛毛虫》、《有一位老太太吞下了一只苍蝇》。

The seeming finality of our desires is a useful way to manage our future behavior.

我们的愿望看似最终是管理我们未来行为的有用方法。

Who hasn’t gorged themselves on a sumptuous lunch and declared that they would never eat again, that all further comestibles are hereby and henceforth forsworn, only to find that, come dinner time, their tummy is once again a-rumblin’?

谁没有狼吞虎咽地吃过一顿丰盛的午餐，并宣布自己再也不吃东西了，从此以后不再吃任何其他食物，结果却发现，到了晚餐时间，他们的肚子又开始咕咕叫了？

I suspect our post-lunch food aversion seems permanent because our anti-eating systems have to make sure not only that we don’t have another forkful right now, but also that we don’t end up with another full plate in front of us in an hour.

我怀疑我们对午餐后食物的厌恶似乎是永久性的，因为我们的反饮食系统不仅必须确保我们现在没有另一叉子，而且还要确保我们在一小时内不会在我们面前出现另一整盘食物。

After I wrote this post, I read a post by David Pinsof where he uses this exact same image to parody the idea that intelligence is one undifferentiated blob.

在我写完这篇文章后，我读了 David Pinsof 的一篇文章，他在其中使用了完全相同的图像来模仿智力是一个未分化的斑点的想法。

This is coincidental, but kudos to him for beating me to the idea.

这是巧合，但值得称赞的是他比我先想到了这个想法。

I’m always suspicious of these “AI exposure” ratings, because they’re usually based on worker surveys, expert opinions, LLM usage data, and AI ratings of job descriptions (see: here , here , here , and here ), which are cheap and easy, rather than actually following people around and documenting what they do all day, which is expensive and hard.

我总是对这些“人工智能暴露”评级持怀疑态度，因为它们通常基于工人调查、专家意见、法学硕士使用数据和职位描述的人工智能评级（参见：此处、此处、此处和此处），这些评级既便宜又简单，而不是实际跟踪人们并记录他们整天所做的事情，这既昂贵又困难。

When you fully unpack any job—that is, when you understand what it entails moment to moment, you will often find that it is less automate-able than it seems from a distance.

当你完全解开任何工作时——也就是说，当你时时刻刻了解它需要什么时，你常常会发现它的自动化程度并不像从远处看起来的那样。

On paper, someone might appear to be responsible for tasks that could be handed to ChatGPT, like writing executive summaries or keeping track of receipts.

从纸面上看，有人似乎负责可以交给 ChatGPT 的任务，例如编写执行摘要或跟踪收据。

But in reality, most folks do all sorts of things that aren’t in their job descriptions: they corner someone in person who doesn’t respond to their emails, they jiggle the ethernet cord when the credit card reader doesn’t work, they call in a wellness check when someone’s mail starts piling up.

但实际上，大多数人都会做各种工作描述之外的事情：他们会亲自围堵那些不回复电子邮件的人，当信用卡读卡器无法工作时，他们会摇动以太网线，当某人的邮件开始堆积时，他们会要求进行健康检查。

I find it funny that although 60% of workers expect AI to cause job loss in their industry, only 10% of workers worry that AI will take their job.

我觉得有趣的是，虽然 60% 的工人预计人工智能会导致他们所在行业失业，但只有 10% 的工人担心人工智能会抢走他们的工作。

That’s probably because all of us know all the complicated tasks we have to accomplish in a day and we doubt—rightly or wrongly—that a computer could ever do them, while other people’s jobs seem, no offense, rather straightforward.

这可能是因为我们所有人都知道一天内必须完成的所有复杂任务，并且我们怀疑（正确或错误）计算机是否可以完成这些任务，而其他人的工作似乎并没有冒犯，而是相当简单。

My number differs from Oks’s because he’s using the Current Population Survey , which uses different definitions and only counts full-time workers.

我的数字与奥克斯的不同，因为他使用的是当前人口调查，该调查使用不同的定义，并且只计算全职工人。

It’s unfortunate that so much discourse on AI circles one of two local minima: either the world is about to end because a silicon Cthulu is about to gobble us all up, or the world is about to return to the way it was because the largest vaporware scam of all time is about to be exposed.

不幸的是，关于人工智能的如此多的讨论都围绕着两个局部最小值之一：要么世界即将终结，因为硅克苏鲁即将吞噬我们所有人，要么世界即将恢复到原来的样子，因为有史以来最大的蒸汽软件骗局即将曝光。

Every statement is meant to reveal your allegiance to one of these camps, when in fact I think the truth is in no camp right now.

每一个声明都旨在表明你对其中一个阵营的忠诚，而事实上，我认为现在的真相并不属于任何一个阵营。

The truth is somewhere in the woods.

真相就在树林里的某个地方。

Sadly as a freelance creative ai has already, in very short order, replaced most of the things I’ve been hired to do over my 25 year career.

可悲的是，作为一名自由创意者，人工智能已经在很短的时间内取代了我在 25 年职业生涯中受雇做的大部分事情。

Repercussions 20 years in the future I can’t imagine, but my miserable books for 2025-2026 are far from theoretical.

20年后的影响我无法想象，但我对2025-2026年的悲惨书籍远非理论。

Creatives who’ve been making logos and branding packages and producing videos and podcasts and licensing music and making animations and illustrations for ads are already displaced and wondering what the fuck to do right now.

那些一直在制作徽标和品牌包、制作视频和播客、授权音乐以及为广告制作动画和插图的创意人员已经流离失所，不知道现在他妈的该做什么。

I’m told there’s no shortage of work, but there’s a huge shortage of work for everything I’ve worked for.

有人告诉我，工作并不短缺，但对于我所做的一切来说，工作却严重短缺。

I do think there is another possibility that is (sadly) a little more depressing: even if humans stay employed, the cognitive potential of the human mind goes the way of our physicality post-industrialisation.

我确实认为还有另一种可能性（可悲的是）更令人沮丧：即使人类继续就业，人类思维的认知潜力也会像工业化后我们的身体一样。

When the bulk of physical labour was made obsolete by machines, we had to reach back into the past and pull ancestral needs for basic exercise into the present.

当大部分体力劳动被机器淘汰时，我们必须回到过去，将祖先对基本锻炼的需求拉到现在。

Now about one in six of us voluntarily go to the gym, all so that we can run nowhere and lift heavy objects up simply to put them back down again.

现在，大约有六分之一的人自愿去健身房，这样我们就可以无处可逃，也可以举起重物然后再放回去。

AI may not be making jobs obsolete, but it's making cognition obsolete.

人工智能可能不会让工作变得过时，但它会让认知变得过时。

And an atrophying mind is as devastating to longevity as an atrophying body.

萎缩的心智与萎缩的身体一样对长寿具有毁灭性的影响。