AI Is Starting to Threaten White-Collar Jobs. Few Industries Are Immune.


几十年前，自动化开始取代并改造制造业岗位；如今，AI的出现令办公室白领这类企业中更高阶的职位面临同样的命运。



几十年前，自动化开始取代并改造制造业岗位；如今，人工智能(AI)的出现令办公室白领这类企业中更高阶的职位面临同样的命运。 6park.com
Decades after automation began taking and transforming manufacturing jobs, artificial intelligence is coming for the higher-ups in the corporate office. 6park.com
    
白领岗位裁员的名单几乎每天都在增加，包括最近几周谷歌(Google)、多邻国(Duolingo)和联合包裹服务公司(United Parcel Service, 简称UPS)的裁员。虽然直接因生成式AI而失去的工作岗位总数仍然较少，但其中一些公司及其他人士已将裁员与机器学习和其他AI应用等提高生产力的新技术联系起来。 6park.com
The list of white-collar layoffs is growing almost daily and includes jobs cuts at Google, Duolingo and UPS in recent weeks. While the total number of jobs directly lost to generative AI remains low, some of these companies and others have linked cuts to new productivity-boosting technologies such as machine learning and other AI applications. 6park.com
    
公司高管和管理顾问也表示，生成式AI可能很快会颠覆更大比例的白领工作。与之前的自动化技术浪潮不同，生成式AI不仅仅是加快日常工作的速度或者通过识别数据模式进行预测，它还具有创造内容和综合想法的能力——这些本质上就是目前大量白领在电脑前从事的知识型工作。 6park.com
Generative AI could soon upend a much bigger share of white-collar jobs, including middle and high-level managers, according to company consultants and executives. Unlike previous waves of automation technology, generative AI doesn’t just speed up routine tasks or make predictions by recognizing data patterns. It has the power to create content and synthesize ideas—in essence, the kind of knowledge work millions of people now do behind computers. 6park.com
    
企业高管和顾问说，其中包括管理职位，其中许多职位可能一去不复返了。他们预测，这种快速发展的技术将改造或取代目前从科技到化工等行业的许多岗位。 6park.com
That includes managerial roles, many of which might never come back, the corporate executives and consultants say. They predict the fast-evolving technology will revamp or replace work now done up and down the corporate ladder in industries ranging from technology to chemicals. 6park.com
     
转职咨询公司Challenger, Gray & Christmas高级副总裁Andy Challenger说：“这一波（技术）浪潮有可能取代或提升许多涉及批判性思维的白领工作。” 6park.com
“This wave [of technology] is a potential replacement or an enhancement for lots of critical-thinking, white-collar jobs,” said Andy Challenger, senior vice president of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. 6park.com
    
一些已经在进行的裁员是AI带来的变化直接导致的。还有一些公司在裁员，以便投入更多资金挖掘AI潜力，并面临着提高运营效率的压力。 6park.com
Some of the job cuts taking place already are a direct result of the changes coming from AI. Other companies are cutting jobs to spend more money on the promise of AI and under pressure to operate more efficiently. 6park.com
    
与此同时，企业领导人表示，AI可能会以其他方式影响未来的员工人数。在化学公司科慕(Chemours)，高管们预测，未来他们将不必招聘那么多员工。 6park.com
Meanwhile, business leaders say AI could affect future head counts in other ways. At chemical company Chemours, executives predict they won’t have to recruit as many people in the future. 6park.com
    
科慕首席执行官Mark E. Newman说：“随着公司的发展，我们需要招聘的新员工会减少，而不是大幅裁员。” 6park.com
“As the company grows, we’ll need fewer new hires as opposed to having to do a significant retrenchment,” said Chief Executive Mark E. Newman.

AI相关裁员增加

根据Challenger的统计，自去年5月以来，从企业披露看有超过4,600个工作岗位的裁减与AI有关，尤其是在媒体和科技行业。该公司估计， 与AI相关的裁员总数可能更高，因为许多公司在裁员公告中并未明确将裁员与AI的应用联系起来。 6park.com
Since last May, companies have attributed more than 4,600 job cuts to AI, particularly in media and tech, according to Challenger’s count. The firm estimates the full tally of AI-related job cuts is likely higher, since many companies haven’t explicitly linked cuts to AI adoption in layoff announcements. 6park.com
     
与此同时，目前在日常工作生活中使用生成式AI的专业人员数量激增。根据管理咨询集团奥纬咨询(Oliver Wyman)的研究机构奥纬论坛(Oliver Wyman Forum)进行的一项调查，在从金融服务到营销分析和专业服务等领域的15,000多名员工中，大多数人表示他们在2023年末每周至少使用一次该技术，这一数字比去年5月份有了大幅跃升。 6park.com
Meanwhile, the number of professionals who now use generative AI in their daily work lives has surged. A majority of more than 15,000 workers in fields ranging from financial services to marketing analytics and professional services said they were using the technology at least once a week in late 2023, a sharp jump from May, according to Oliver Wyman Forum, the research arm of management-consulting group Oliver Wyman, which conducted the survey.



近三分之二的白领员工表示，他们的工作效率因此得到了提高，而在将AI融入工作的蓝领员工中，这一比例为54%。 6park.com
Nearly two-thirds of those white-collar workers said their productivity had improved as a result, compared with 54% of blue-collar workers who had incorporated generative AI into their jobs. 6park.com
    
谷歌上个月裁员数以百计，涉及硬件和内部软件工具等业务领域，以控制成本并将更多投资转向AI开发。语言学习软件公司多邻国在同一周表示，该公司已经裁减了10%的外包员工，AI将取代他们负责的部分内容创作工作。 6park.com
Alphabet’s Google last month laid off hundreds of employees in business areas including hardware and internal-software tools as it reins in costs and shifts more investments into AI development. The language-learning software company Duolingo said in the same week that it had cut 10% of its contractors and that AI would replace some of the content creation they had handled.  6park.com
    
科技领域以外的公司也开始了类似的AI转型。 6park.com
Companies beyond the tech sector have embarked on similar AI transitions.  6park.com
     
UPS表示将裁员1.2万人，主要是管理人员和一些合同工，即使包裹运输业务回暖，这些职位也不太可能再恢复。UPS已在客户运费定价等流程中加强对机器学习的使用。因此，该公司的定价部门需要的人手减少了。 6park.com
United Parcel Service said that it would cut 12,000 jobs—primarily those of management staff and some contract workers—and that those positions weren’t likely to return even when the package-shipping business picks up again. The company has ramped up its use of machine learning in processes such as determining what to charge customers for shipments. As a result, the company’s pricing department has needed fewer people. 6park.com
   
UPS发言人Glenn Zaccara表示，生成式AI和相关技术的使用也在改变UPS的一些岗位，减少了重复性工作和身体压力。 6park.com
The use of generative AI and related technologies is also changing some jobs at UPS “by reducing repetitive tasks and physical stress,” UPS spokesperson Glenn Zaccara said.


谷歌上个月裁员数以百计，以控制成本并将更多投资转向AI开发。

中级管理层压缩

奥纬咨询的上述研究预测，随着AI应用的增加，管理层级可能重构。入门级员工可能首当其冲，因为他们越来越多的职责被自动化取代。未来的入门级岗位将更像现在的一线管理角色。 6park.com
As AI adoption grows, it is likely to reconfigure management hierarchies, the Oliver Wyman study projects. Entry-level workers are likely to bear the initial brunt as more of their duties are automated away. In turn, future entry-level work will look more like first-level management roles. 6park.com
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上述分析显示，这种级联效应可能导致中级管理层的层级扁平化，这里也是企业高管的人才储备层。 6park.com
The cascading effect could flatten layers of middle management, the staging ground for senior leadership roles, according to the analysis. 6park.com
    
在这项研究中，超过一半的受访高级白领管理人员表示，他们认为自己的工作可能会被生成式AI自动化，而持这种观点的中层和一线管理人员的比例分别为43%和38%。 6park.com
More than half of senior white-collar managers surveyed in the study said they thought their jobs could be automated by generative AI, compared with 43% of middle managers and 38% of first-line managers. 6park.com
    
不过，各行各业的企业领导者都表示，他们预计这项新技术将加强和提升一些白领岗位，让员工和管理人员有机会从事更有意义的工作— —无论是为公司还是为自己的职业生涯。 6park.com
Still, business leaders across the economy say they expect the new technology will augment and elevate some white-collar roles, giving employees and managers the means to do more meaningful work—both for their companies and in their careers.  6park.com
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Prosus的高管表示，随着AI将更多员工的工作自动化，这种情况已经出现。该公司是一家总部位于荷兰的全球技术投资集团。 6park.com
At Prosus, a global technology-investment group based in the Netherlands, executives say that is already happening as AI automates more of its workforce’s tasks.  6park.com
    
Prosus的AI和数据科学全球主管Euro Beinat说：“工程师、软件开发人员等现在的工作效率已经能够提升一倍。”Beinat表示：“其中一个预料之外的结果是，这些员工中的很多人可以做更多事情，而且与我们以前所做的工作略有不同。” 6park.com
“Engineers, software developers and so on can do the work twice as fast,” said Euro Beinat, Prosus’s global head of AI and data science. “One of the side effects is that a lot of these employees can do more and do slightly different things than we were doing before.” 6park.com
    
例如，Prosus的网页设计师过去通常让软件开发人员编码。Beinat说，现在这些设计师可以自己编码了。与此同时，软件开发人员可以更加专注于设计和编制更复杂的代码。他说，这是“技能资历的提升”。 6park.com
Prosus’s web designers, for instance, used to ask software developers to do the coding. Now they can do it themselves, Beinat says. Meanwhile software developers can focus more on design and complex code. It is “a seniority boost,” he said. 6park.com
    
从杜邦(DuPont)分拆出来的科慕在过去三年里对近1,000名办公室和实验室工作人员进行了AI应用培训。科慕首席企业转型官Matt Abbott说，过去，财务专业人员在准备某些报告时需要在系统和电子表格之间进行大量复制和粘贴工作，而现在，得益于无代码分析工具的培训，他们做这些工作的速度提升很大。 6park.com
At Chemours, a DuPont spinoff, the company has trained close to 1,000 office and lab workers in AI applications over the past three years. As a result, finance professionals who used to prepare certain reports with a lot of copying and pasting between systems and spreadsheets now do it much faster because of their training with no-code analytic tools, said Matt Abbott, chief enterprise transformation officer at Chemours.  6park.com
    
Abbott说：“财务团队现在可以把时间用在其他业务关键项目上，而不必再不停的运行系统查询。” 6park.com
“The finance team is now able to use their time on other business-critical projects rather than constantly running system queries,” Abbott said.