© Nicolás Valencia, using image © Flickr user masakiishitani licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
自动化是否会影响建筑行业?
Will Automation Affect Architects?
由专筑网李韧,曹逸希编译
《经济学人》杂志称,到2037年,至少将有47%的工作岗位将由机器人所取代,机器人甚至能完成一些曾经拥有高等学历的人员才能胜任的工作任务。世界经济论坛讨论会预估,在2015年至2020年间,全世界的工作机会将减少710万,因为人工智能、机器人、纳米技术和其它社会因素已经能够代替人类更好地完成那些任务。
这并不是玩笑,麻省理工学院的评论员曾经说,美国快餐店员工的加薪要求也许会加速这一行业对人工雇员的需求。另外,社会权威人士Elon Musk和Richard Branson也警告说,自动化的普及将会导致社会产生大量的失业现象,而且也会促使全球财富的高度集中。
英国经济学家Guy Standing曾在达沃斯论坛上表示,也许机器人化及人工智能对于取代大量的人工雇员来说是一件可以预防的事,那么问题来了,自动化是否会对建筑师产生影响?我们会被机器人所取代吗?
想象一下你的父母、祖父母、曾祖父母的工作,在20世纪,随着新技术的出现,许多行业已经消失。研究者Ian Wyatt 和Daniel Hecker说,在1910年,有32%的美国人口都从事着农业工作,当时的技术专业人员甚至不超过5%。而90年后,只有1%的人员仍然在地里干活,而受过专业训练的人数比例已达到23%。
你思考一下,如果今天我们谈论的是社会网络专家、数据研究者、UX设计师、渲染人员、无人机专家、应用软件开发者、VR专业人士,以及建筑行业的3D、BIM、特效、可持续设计专员,如果他们都为同一个企业而工作,那么对于这些新岗位,人们就必须学习曾经并不存在的新技术。但培训需要花费很多时间与资源,然而,那些曾经工作在冶金亦或是农业领域的人对此类知识并不了解,因此如果让他们重新找相关工作,会比较困难。因此这其中的代价相当大。
这就是Guy Standing所说的“无产阶级”,这是一种脆弱的新兴社会阶层,资历过高而且工作时间为零,并且高度倾向于平民化。这也就是说,例如Uber应用的出现也创建了单独的经济体,也被称为“协作”。但这些创业者并没有创造出高质量的工作岗位,因此在该岗位上并没有养老保险、社会保险以及带薪假期,其本质上还是自由职业者。
那么让我们回到建筑行业,以5年为一个规划区间,截止于2020年,而与计算机、数学、机械工程、建筑等专业相关的工作仍然呈现的是稳定增长的状态,而对于机械工程和建筑领域来说,其发展能呈增长状态也许要归功于近几年的新兴市场、气候变化、3D打印和地缘政治波动等因素。另一方面,牛津大学2013年出版的每日电讯报预估了近700个工作岗位的自动化趋势。这真的是个好消息吗?建筑师的替代率较低,约为1.8%,造型师的替代率为2.1%,航天工程师为1.7%,策展人为0.7%,微生物学家为1.2%,戏剧艺术家为1%,人类学家为0.8%,舞蹈编剧为0.4%。
那么这些工作有什么共同点呢?事实上,这些专业人员需要超高的人际交往能力,并且其工作并不是百无聊赖的流水线工作。哈佛大学教育学院的教授David J. Deming研究了从1980年至2012年美国的工作岗位所分别需要的技能,其结论是,那些能够很好地结合运用数学和人际关系的员工在未来将会有更多机会,这些技能也包括共事和合作等软技能。
这样,Mark Cuban在上一届美国SXSW大会中提出,那些需要认知技能、批判性思维以及创造力的工作岗位并不容易被机器人所取代,他这样解释道:
“我们应当从全球的角度来了解如何才能拥有批判性思维,这对于我们来说更为重要,甚至比去了解编程、CPA等高薪职业更具价值。”
从这个角度来说,伦敦大学学院(UCL)和英国威尔士班戈大学最近的研究说明,雕塑家、建筑师,以及画家等行业“似乎都与不同的空间概念化有关,这种空间概念化体现在对空间的系统对比方式上。”因此建筑师与其他行业的人的区别在于不仅在于具有空间感知的区别,而且建筑师还能够给其他非专业人士传递相关的概念信息。
因此,自动化和人工智能暂时无法取代建筑师,但这并不意味着这个行业不会产生一定的变革,因为电脑软件能够为人们分担重复繁琐的任务,优化设计产品,这能够有效地减少人工的操作,但也会导致未来项目所需参与的人数减少。
另一方面,劳动力市场逐渐趋于饱和,许多建筑师开始利用原有优势开始跨学科学习。虽然仍然有人喜欢通过手绘来表达概念,但无论有没有机器人设计师的存在,VR技术、3D打印,以及人工智能的优势在未来仍将大放异彩。
According to The Economist, 47% of the work done by humans will have been replaced by robots by 2037, even those traditionally associated with university education. While the World Economic Forum estimates that between 2015 and 2020, 7.1 million jobs will be lost around the world, as "artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology and other socio-economic factors replace the need for human employees."
It's not science fiction: the MIT Technology Review warns that the current debate over raising the minimum wage for fast food employees in the United States would accelerate their own automation. On the other hand, Silicon Valley personalities and millionaires like Elon Musk and Richard Branson warned that the impact of automation will force the creation of a universal basic income to compensate not only the massive unemployment that would generate these new technologies but also the hyper-concentration of the global wealth.
One advocate of this idea is the British economist Guy Standing who wrote at the Davos Forum that it "would be a sensible precaution against the possibility of mass displacement by robotization and artificial intelligence," but will automation affect architects? Will we really be replaced by robots?
Think for a moment about your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents work: during the 20th century, hundreds of businesses emerged and disappeared as new technologies emerged and consolidated. Academics Ian Wyatt and Daniel Hecker estimated that in 1910 about 32% of the US population was involved in agriculture, while professionals and technicians did not exceed 5%. Ninety years later, only 1% remained in the field, while those with professional training accounted for 23%.
If you think about it, today we are talking about social network experts, data scientists, UX designers, renderers, drone specialists, application developers, virtual reality creators, architects specializing in 3D / BIM / special effects / sustainability or even if they work on ArchDaily and the whole ecosystem of the world of architecture on the Internet. For these new jobs, it is necessary to learn new technologies and exercise skills that have not been previously evaluated by the job market. However, this training takes years and resources: we know that those who lost their jobs in metallurgy or agriculture were not immediately data scientists. This formative and generational transition is painful.
Authors like Guy Standing speak of the precariat, a fragile new social class, overqualified, hired at zero hours and highly prone to populism. In this sense, the emergence of applications like Uber has effectively created new economies around them - also called "collaborative" - but they have not necessarily created quality jobs: there are no pensions, no social protection or paid holidays, but a freelance disguised as collaboration.
Let's go back to architecture: Future of Jobs projects that, for the five-year period ending in 2020, jobs related to computing, mathematics, engineering and architecture show "solid growth." In the case of these two last fields, this would be thanks to the growth of the middle class in emerging markets, climate change, 3D printing massification and geopolitical volatility, among other factors. On the other hand, The Telegraph newspaper estimated the automation probabilities of 700 jobs, from a University of Oxford study published in 2013. The good news? Architects have one of the lowest replacement rates (1.8%), in a comfortable position with stylists (2.1%), aerospace engineers (1.7%), curators (0.7%) microbiologists (1, 2%), theatrical makeup artists (1%), anthropologists (0.8%) and choreographers (0.4%).
So, what do the most difficult jobs to replace have in common? Many of them require a high level of human interaction and have a low percentage of repetitive activities in their workday. David J. Deming, a professor at the Harvard School of Education, crossed job offers published in the United States between 1980 and 2012 with the skills needed for each job. Deming concluded that those employees who "successfully combine mathematical and interpersonal skills [...] should find many rewarding and lucrative opportunities" in the future, highlighting soft skills such as empathy and cooperation.
In that way, Mark Cuban postulated in the last edition of the SXSW conference cycle in the United States that jobs related to cognitive skills, critical thinking and creativity would be less exposed to be replaced by robots:
“Knowing how to critically think and assess them from a global perspective is going to be more valuable than what we see as exciting careers today which might be programming or CPA or those types of things”
In this sense, a recent study by University College London (UCL) and the University of Bangor postulates that sculptors, architects, and painters "seem to relate to a different spatial conceptualization that manifests itself in a systematically contrasting way of speaking about space." That is a spatial perception that distinguishes us as architects but also separates us from the rest of society by sharing and disseminating ideas to those who are not specialized.
Automation and artificial intelligence, for the time being, would not replace architects, but this does not mean that the discipline does not undergo profound transformations in its exercise: computers and software eliminate tedious repetitive activities, optimizing the production of technical material and allowing, among other things, atomize the size of architectural offices. Each time fewer architects are needed to develop more complex projects.
On the other hand, the saturation of the labor market motivated thousands of architects to take advantage of their learned skills to cross other disciplines. And while some are still tangled in rusty discussions about whether we should project with pencil or mouse; Virtual reality, 3D printing and the advances that artificial intelligence continues to show continue to shape discussions about our profession in the coming years. With or without robots.
出处:本文译自www.archdaily.com/,转载请注明出处。
|
|