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.
它們不會頂嘴，不會生病，一周七天，每天能24小時不辭辛苦地工作，不用上衛生間，只需偶爾充充電即可。從表面看，機器人是完美無缺的員工。但如果一開始沒有安排好，后果會很嚴重。“我見過員工們拔掉機器人的插頭，明目張膽地損壞機器人。員工們擔心自己或者工友會因此失業，”大衛?伯恩(David Bourne)如是說，他是卡耐基梅隆大學機器人研究所(Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University)機器人系統方面的首席科學家。