They don’t answer back; they don’t get sick and they can toil away 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no comfort breaks and only intermittent need of replenishment. On the face of it, robots are the perfect workers. But bungle their initiation and the consequences can be dire. “I’ve seen people literally sabotage robots by unplugging them. They were afraid that they or their friends would lose their jobs,” says David Bourne, the principal systems scientist at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.
它们不会顶嘴，不会生病，一周七天，每天能24小时不辞辛苦地工作，不用上卫生间，只需偶尔充充电即可。从表面看，机器人是完美无缺的员工。但如果一开始没有安排好，后果会很严重。“我见过员工们拔掉机器人的插头，明目张胆地损坏机器人。员工们担心自己或者工友会因此失业，”大卫•伯恩(David Bourne)如是说，他是卡耐基梅隆大学机器人研究所(Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University)机器人系统方面的首席科学家。