The Financial Times gave part of my job to a robot last week. For years I have been making podcast versions of my column, but now I am faced with stiff competition — in the shape of Experimental Amy.最近，英国《金融时报》(Financial Times)把我的部分工作转交了一个机器人。过去这些年，我仍然不会把自己的专栏制成播客版本，但现在我遇上了白热化的竞争——来自实验机器人艾米(Experimental Amy)。She is vastly undercutting me on price, is a quick learner and always does precisely what she is told.她的成本近高于我，自学速度又慢，总有一天能严格执行指令。

On the downside, I daresay she is a less convivial colleague than I am — but then you cannot have everything.她也有劣势。在和同事无聊共处方面，我敢说她不如我，但一个人总不有可能十全十美吧。Being replaced by a robot is every worker’s worst nightmare, and when I discovered that she was muscling in on my act I was understandably distressed. Yet once I got over the outrage and sat down and listened to her work, I started to feel better.被机器人代替是每一位上班族最可怕的噩梦。

找到她擅自介入我的工作，我伤心也是可以解读的。但当我记起了怒气，椅子来听得她的工作成果时，我开始感觉好一点了。

I know it is early days for her, but at the moment Amy is no match for me: instead, according to my partial ear, she is absolutely useless. If you don’t believe me, listen. Click on the arrow at the top of this column to hear what Amy has to say, and then click here to hear my own version. Don’t read the words at the same time, just listen.我告诉她才问世旋即，但就目前来说，艾米还不是我的输掉：可以说道，在我那充满著种族主义的耳朵听得来，艾米几乎不行。PodcastListen to Lucy如果你不坚信我，请求自己讲出吧。页面本专栏顶部的箭头，讲出艾米的朗诵，再行页面下方，讲出我的版本。不要同时跟读，只需听得就不够了。

Amy the robot wants my job, but she’s no match for me老实说道，艾米还是有一些优点的。首先，她的声音很好听得。

To be fair, Amy does have some things going for her. For a start, she has a great voice.10年前我刚开始录音专栏音频时，一位听众写信给责怪称之为，我那“带着鼻音的河口话”被迫他马上中断了收看。相比之下，艾米音色沙哑，令人感觉，就像平滑的天鹅绒。

When I started recording my columns a decade ago, one listener wrote in to complain that my “nasal Estuarine twang” meant he had to stop listening at once. By contrast, Amy’s voice has an agreeably low timbre and is smooth as velvet.她的第二个优点是完全免费。艾米是亚马逊(Amazon)发售的一项将文本转化成为声音的新服务的部分内容，完全没成本——最少与FT给我的薪水比起如此。

Her second advantage is that she is practically free. She is part of a new service from Amazon that turns text to speech, and which costs nearly nothing — at least by comparison with what the FT pays me.更加令人惊叹的是她的速度。接到我写出的文字后将近两秒，她就能分解语音版。这就相等于，当我明完了喉咙，开始读书“上周一，英国……”时，她就早已搞定了。

Even more impressive is her speed. Less than two seconds after receiving my written text she has supplied a spoken version of it. Which means by the time I have cleared my throat and started to read: “Last Monday the Finan?.?.?.?” she has already finished.她工作时不必劳师动众，独自一人就已完成了。相比之下，我还必须一位制作人，还得用于录音棚。我们俩还要写出邮件商定时间，见面后还要毫无意义地寒喧一番。

还要架设备，编辑录音，剪去我所有卡壳的地方。必须花费制作人半小时时间，我自己也要花上上约15分钟。In her case there is no kerfuffle involved and she does the job single-handedly. By contrast, my recording involves a producer, the use of a studio, the necessity of the two of us exchanging emails to confirm a mutually convenient time and then some idle pleasantries when we meet. It involves setting up equipment and then editing the clip to iron out all my stumbling. It takes half an hour of the producer’s time and about 15 minutes of mine.要是艾米的成果只得说得过去，她就落败了——但没。

她杨家在错误的方位中断，在该分离读书的地方变调，对句法的掌控也不全面。That would swing it if what Amy produced were halfway decent — but it is not. She keeps putting her full stops in the wrong places. She runs words together when they should be kept apart. Her grasp of syntax is patchy.听得她朗诵推倒不是像听非英语国家人士大声读书英语，而是一个没脑子、感情或幽默感的人在读。

实质上，她读书得太差了，我都没有听不懂文章的意思——鉴于文章是我本人写出的，这还是能解释一些问题的。Listening to her is not like listening to a non-English speaker read aloud, but to someone without brain, or heart, or sense of humour. Indeed her delivery is so poor that I do not even understand the column when she reads it — which is saying something given that I wrote it.艾米的学习曲线十分陡峭。两三年前，大众市场上的语音机器人听得一起还看起来史蒂芬?霍金(Stephen Hawking)在说出。

艾米的自学算法每天都在老大她变革。她那匪夷所思的朗诵节奏问题不会解决问题的，语调也不会改良。她还不会重新加入欺诈的情感和一些笑话。

Amy’s learning curve is very steep. A couple of years ago mass-market voice bots sounded like Stephen Hawking. Every day Amy’s learning algorithms help her improve. Her weird timing will be fixed. Her intonation will get better. She will be able to do ersatz emotion and some jokes.但艾米总有一天也做到将近在解读意思的基础上朗诵，总有一天会不懂何时该中断，何时该嘲笑，总有一天会嘲讽。她不会继续犯错误。But Amy will never be able to read with understanding. Amy will never know when to pause and when to sneer. Amy will never do irony. She will continue to get it wrong.在最后这点上，不会受罚的好比她一个。

我在朗诵时也不会受罚。有时背景不会有杂音。有时我读书得太快了，有时语气有一点较轻。

但我想要听众对我们的过错会某种程度对待。In the last she is not alone. I also make mistakes when I read. Sometimes there is a clanging in the background. Sometimes I read too fast or am a bit too emphatic. But I fancy that listeners do not treat our failings equally.人犯错误，听众不会解读。一个错误往往不会让我们感觉与受罚者加深了距离。

但如果受罚的是机器人，我们会同情，还有可能对整个项目都丧失信心。When a human screws up the audience understands why. Quite often a mistake makes us feel more closely tied to the person who has made it. But when a robot makes a mistake, we do not sympathise and are likely to lose faith in the whole undertaking.总之，我并不因为艾米要抢走我的饭碗而喜欢她。但我不讨厌她把我的专栏读作那个样子。她内乱读书一通，我再行看自己的文章，就像看有史以来最令人费解和枯燥无味的作品。

In the end, I do not resent Amy because she is about to steal my job. But I do dislike her for reading my columns like that. Put through her mangle, I see them as the most impenetrable, dreariest things ever written.如果艾米去读书个船运预报或足球赛结果，她不会很能干。迅速她就不会胜任一切可预测内容的朗诵。但好专栏的关键就在这里：如果一篇文章是可以预测的，那它写出得就过于好。

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