如何谈论未来的社会图景？

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霍金：

“The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.” 

— Stephen Hawking (1942–2018)

语言点：

automation [ˌɔtəˈmeʃən]  n. 自动化

traditional manufacturing  传统制造业

artificial intelligence = AI 人工智能

马斯克:

“If there’s not a need for your labor, do you feel useless?” 

“I think we'll just end up doing a universal basic income...it's gonna be necessary. The harder challenge, the much harder challenge, is how do people then have meaning. Like, a lot of people, they derive the meaning from their employment. ...If you're not needed, if there's not a need for your labor, how do you...what's the meaning? Do you have meaning? Do you feel useless?...That's a much harder problem to deal with.”

— Elon Musk

语言点：

derive...from 由来，得自 

比尔·盖茨：

Bill Gates proposed that governments start taxing robot workers the same way we tax human workers.

语言点：

tax: 对…征税

• hardware and software is taxed at 7.5 percent.

• The president called on the U.S. Congress to pass tax cuts of at least $550 billion.

   tax cuts  减税

扎克伯格：

”We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure that everyone has a cushion to try new ideas," Zuckerberg said at his Harvard commencement address Thursday.

语言点： 

1. cushion n./ v. = protect from impact  缓和…的冲击

    ◦ cushion the blow  降低冲击

       To cushion the blow, wages and pensions were increased.

       为了降低冲击，工资和养老金增加了。

    ◦ extra funds serving as a cushion against future inflation

       作为抵制未来通货膨胀而进行缓冲的额外资金

2. commencement address  毕业演讲

对于UBI的正反观点

正方：

Proponents say the aim is to give workers greater financial security as concerns rise about machines taking away jobs. It's also intended to alleviate income inequality.

反方：

Critics say the idea has good intentions but it doesn't solve bigger problems related to abysmal wage growth in recent decades. They also say it challenges the notion that you need to work to earn money.

"It's a misguided mission," says Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research center. "It's a tech CEO view of the world that I think is distorted."

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