电脑也会欣赏风景了

What sort of scenery do you find most appealing? Researchers in the U.K. asked volunteers that question, through an online photo-rating game, and the result was sort of what you’d expect. "Beautiful mountains, abundant greenery, beautiful water features like lakes and oceans." Chanuki Seresinhe, a data scientist at the Warwick Business School.

你觉得什么样的风景最吸引人?英国的研究人员通过在线照片评估游戏向志愿者提出了这一问题，结果可能跟你想的一样。“美丽的山峦，繁茂的植被，湖泊和海洋等美丽的水景。”华威商学院的数据科学家查努基.谢瑞新和说道。

She says the more surprising finding was that human-built structures—churches and towers and cottages—could enhance the perception of the beauty of a scene. And big expanses of green grass—like athletic fields—didn’t actually rate that highly.

她说，更令人惊讶的发现是，人造建筑——教堂、塔楼和别墅——可以增强人们对美景的感知。而像体育场里那种大片的绿色草地，实际上并没有得到很高的评价。

What they did next is where the data science comes in: They fed a computer 160,000 photographs rated through the online game. And they taught the machine to break each image into the scenic elements it contained. Snowy mountains, waterfalls, crosswalks and construction sites.

然后，他们向计算机提出了一个挑战：他们要求它评估以前从未见过的其他风景照片。事实上，它在评估人们普遍欣赏的美景方面做得相当不错。这项研究发表在《皇家学会开放科学》杂志上。

As smart as it is, the scenery-loving computer probably won’t be putting tour guides out of business. "Actually I think it can help tour guides. I think it can actually maybe uncover places we didn’t know about that might have not been that popular.”

不过，虽然计算机聪明得可以欣赏美景了，但它还不至于让导游失业。“实际上，我认为计算机可以帮助导游。我想它或许会发现一些尚不为人知、还未大受欢迎的美景。”

And Seresinhe says the system might also help city planners more objectively evaluate the scenic beauty of new urban developments. "We can also now look at how to design cities that people find more beautiful, and people might want to actually spend more time in."

谢瑞新和说道，该系统还可以帮助城市规划者更客观地评估新城市发展的风景规划。“我们现在还可以研究如何利用计算机设计出让人感觉更漂亮、愿意花更多时间生活在里面的城市。”

Assuming, that is, the computer doesn’t become truly intelligent… and, like humans, starts spitting out subjective opinions entirely its own.

假设计算机并非变得真正的智能化……而是开始像人类一样能够吐露完全属于自己的主观意见了。