不用担心 机器人接管不了世界

There is a tech experiment that I long to do. It is to set up fake online personas for a Hitler-worshipper and a Stalin fan, then wait to see what merchandise the likes of Facebook and Amazon’s robotic helpers serve up for their delight.

我很想做一次科技实验：在网络上设置两个虚假用户，分别为希特勒(Hitler)崇拜者和斯大林(Stalin)迷，然后拭目以待Facebook、亚马逊(Amazon)等互联网公司的机器人助手会推荐什么样的商品来讨好他们。

I actually quite appreciate web companies’ suggestions, based on my browsing history, for stuff I might like. It is like having a friendly idiot savant scanning the horizon, with a slightly too binary version of my preferences, but nonetheless often hitting the spot.

我其实非常感谢互联网公司基于我的浏览历史，为我推荐我可能喜欢的物品。这就像让一个友善的“白痴天才”（idiot savant，有认知障碍，但在某方面有超乎常人的能力——译者注）怀着对我的偏好的过于机械的理解，去搜索海量信息，不过也常常可以切中我的需求。

I am interested in how these robots work, although I demur at their being called smart. Surely stupid, able and willing is more apt and preferable? Genuinely smart software would be terrifying.

我对这些机器人如何工作很感兴趣，虽然我不认为应该称它们“智能”。愚蠢、能干、乐于助人，用这样的词来形容它们当然更恰当、听起来也更舒服吧？真正智能的软件将令人恐惧。

Yet technologists have promised that 2020 to 2030 will herald The Singularity, the time when computers become smarter than humans.

然而，技术专家曾誓言，2020年至2030年将预示着“奇点”(The Singularity)——电脑变得比人类更聪明的时刻——的到来。

So when the chance came up to meet Ralf Herbrich, Amazon’s Berlin-based head of machine learning, I was excited to hear from one of the world’s most qualified people whether superhuman, conscious computers are a likelihood — and a mortal danger to humanity as Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk among others say. 

所以，当有机会面见亚马逊机器学习研究负责人、在柏林生活的拉尔夫•赫布里希(Ralf Herbrich)时，我很兴奋。他是世界上最有资格谈论这一问题的专家之一，我很想听他谈谈是否有可能出现超越人类、且有意识的电脑，这样的电脑是否会如斯蒂芬•霍金(Stephen Hawking)、比尔•盖茨(Bill Gates)、埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)等人所说，对人类构成毁灭性威胁。

Amazon does not use only machine learning to help us buy more stuff. It offers the intelligence developed by Mr Herbrich’s team to users of its Web Services, the part of the empire that, white-labelled, runs many big websites including this one — and that Jeff Bezos expects soon to be bigger than Amazon’s retail estate.

亚马逊并不仅仅用机器学习帮我们购买更多物品。它还向旗下云端运算服务Amazon Web Services（简称AWS）的用户提供赫布里希团队开发的智能产品。AWS是一个云端运算帝国的一部分，亚马逊创始人杰夫•贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)期望这个帝国能够很快超过亚马逊的零售业务。亚马逊的云端运算服务以“白标”(white-labelled)方式，运营着包括AWS在内的许多大型网站。

Those who disapprove of Amazon may be amused to know that, but for a twist of history, Mr Herbrich would likely now be working for the Stasi. A rebellious, computer-obsessed teenager in East Germany, he was shunted into a factory electrician job at 16.

那些不喜欢亚马逊的人知道这一点也许会觉得好笑：如果历史不发生转折，赫布里希如今很可能正在为史塔西（Stasi，前东德情报和秘密警察机构——译者注）工作。16岁时的他是一名痴迷电脑的叛逆东德少年，被分配到一家工厂做电工。

He says the pressure to help out the secret police with the skills he learnt on a broken Sinclair ZX81 sent by a relative in the west may ultimately have been irresistible — had the wall not come down six weeks into his apprenticeship.

他说，如果不是自己的学徒期开始六周后柏林墙就被推到了的话，他可能最终无法顶住要求他为秘密警察卖力的压力——利用从西德亲戚给的一台破辛克莱(Sinclair)ZX81型电脑上学到的技能。

Since then, he has become a research fellow at Cambridge and worked in machine learning for Microsoft and Facebook.

后来，他在剑桥大学(Cambridge)成为一名研究员，在微软(Microsoft)、Facebook从事过机器学习研究工作。

Conveniently, on the office tour, I saw a real-life machine learning issue. An automatic translation from German-language Amazon to English had changed a USB cable into a “USB rope”. “There is always a need for human intervention,” Mr Herbrich observed.

在办公室参观期间，我不经意间发现了机器学习在实际应用中的一个问题。在将德文亚马逊网站译成英文时，自动翻译软件将USB线缆(USB cable)译成了“USB绳子”(USB rope)。“总是需要进行人工干预，”赫布里希表示。

He has no desire or expectation for bots to take over the world. A phrase he used was “the sliver of achievability”.

他并不渴望或者期望机器人接管世界。他的说法是“可能性微乎其微”。

“The Singularity? It didn’t happen,” he said and went on to explain that it won’t be happening, either.

“奇点？它没有出现过，”他说，并继续解释道，将来也不会出现。

“People are really good at seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing. Machines are not good at that. We’re just getting to the point where algorithms can recognise still images of cats and mice. But the brain does it much better.”

“人类非常擅长看、尝、闻、听。机器人并不擅长这些。我们刚刚达到可以让算法识别猫和老鼠的静态图像的水平。但人脑在这方面厉害得多。”

To my surprise, Mr Herbrich agreed computers are really glorified adding machines. “Yes, and the brain is a very coarse information processing machine.

令我惊讶的是，赫布里希竟然赞同电脑只是被美化了的计算器的说法。“是的，而人脑是一个非常粗糙的信息处理器。”

“Computers can emulate intelligent behaviour. We’re seeing a lot of that and it’s impressive that when we put it in the cloud, we’re able to perform highly complex tasks.

“电脑可以模拟智能行为。此类模拟正在大量进行，令人印象深刻的是，当我们把模拟行为置于云端时，我们就能够完成高度复杂的任务。”

“But all that’s happening is that they combine patterns. Machines learn the hard way. They can’t replicate creativity; recombining higher-level abstractions and imagining futures based on very little information or example. They can’t have a hunch, like even scientists do. The algorithms we’re studying today are crude approximations because they don’t rely on the same principles as the brain.”

“但正在发生的不过是它们把各种模式合并起来。机器人学得很吃力。它们无法复制创造力；无法重组更高级的抽象概念，无法基于很少的信息或事例想象未来。它们没有直觉，而所有人类、包括科学家都是有直觉的。我们今天研究的算法只是简陋的模拟，因为它们赖以运转的机理与大脑的工作机理不一样。”

So what about the idea of superhuman computers taking on a life of their own? “No. A computer is a tool and only humans can build computers. People write programs. A computer can’t write a program. There will be no self-propelling computer.”

那么，怎么看超人类电脑自己获得生命的观点？“不会。电脑是一种工具，只有人类能够制造电脑。人类能编写程序，电脑不能。不会出现有自我意志的电脑。”

By happy coincidence, or perhaps Oxford University Press has been monitoring my search history, I got home to find the publisher had sent a book on artificial intelligence, AI by Professor Margaret Boden.

巧合的是——或许牛津大学出版社(Oxford University Press)一直在监视我的搜索历史——回家后，我发现该出版社寄来一本玛格丽特•博登(Margaret Boden)教授撰写的关于人工智能的书。

I expected this to be another bots-are-taking over manifesto. Instead, it is an elegant demolition of the notion of the superhuman computer. “Near-apocalyptic visions of AI’s future are illusory,” Prof Boden concludes. 

我原以为这本书会是又一份“机器人将接管世界”的宣言。然而不是——该书对超人类电脑的概念进行了精彩的驳斥。博登教授总结道：“对人工智能未来的末日式想象是错误的。”

Again, how refreshing. It seems the (sensible) humans are fighting back.

又一个多么令人舒畅的结论。似乎（理智的）人类正在进行反击。