IC670MDL240K GE

Statistical methods have improved a lot since the paper on robotics economics was published.The papers,published in 2013 and co-authored by Carl Benedict Frey and Michael Osborne of the University of Oxford,UK,are widely interpreted as 47 percent of U.S.employment at risk of being displaced by automation.In fact,one of the difficulties of research is to sort out the cause and effect relationship:companies that recruit heavily may also buy robots,not the other way around.But their paper shows that companies buy up on robots when prices drop.This builds a causal chain:cheaper robots lead to higher levels of automation,which in turn lead to more jobs.

自有关机器人经济学的论文发表以来，统计方法已经改进了很多。这些论文在2013年发表，由英国牛津大学的卡尔·贝内迪克特·弗雷与迈克尔·奥斯本合写，被普遍解读为47%的美国就业人员面临被自动化取代的风险。其实，研究的难点之一是理清因果关系：大举招兵买马的企业可能正好也会购入机器人，而不是相反。但他们的论文表明，企业在机器人的价格降低时会大举购入。这就构建了一条因果链：更便宜的机器人带来更高程度的自动化，继而带来更多的就业。