【特别推荐】谷歌CEO的公开信：人类即将进入人工智能时代
来源：有道词典
每年，Google创始人Larry Page与Sergey Brin都会给大家写一封信。而今年，他们首次邀请Google CEO Sundar Pichai执笔，为大家解读Google的发展战略与愿景。想知道这封信里有哪些亮点？来一探究竟吧。
"We will move from mobile first to an AI first world"
“我们将从移动优先进入到人工智能优先的世界”
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin typically write a public letter every year to reflect on the company’s accomplishments and goals.
以往每年的公开信都是由谷歌的联合创始人Larry Page和Sergey Brin执笔，在心中，他们会讲述公司的成就和目标。
This year, however, Google’s new CEO Sundar Pichai penned the annual note for the first time.
而今年，这一任务则首次落到了谷歌的新任CEO孙达尔·皮猜身上。
Pichai was made CEO of Google after a recent reorganization made the company a subsidiary of umbrella organization Alphabet.
他于近期谷歌公司架构重组并成立联合公司Alphabet后上任。
Pichai’s note delves into Google’s accomplishments around search, YouTube, artificial intelligence, and more.
皮猜的公开信深入探讨了谷歌在搜索引擎、YouTube、人工智能以及其它更多领域的成就。
He writes that Google will continue to push heavily into the development of artificial intelligence as a means of improving and advancing its most important products.
他在信中说道，谷歌将持续大力推动人工智能的发展，将之作为改善和引领公司最重要产品的手段。
“Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the ‘device’ to fade away,” Pichai wrote.
“放眼未来，下一步重要发展将是隐去‘设备’这一概念”，皮猜写道。
“Over time, the computer itself—whatever its form factor—will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. We will move from mobile first to an AI first world.”
“随着时间的流逝，电脑本身——无论其形式如何——将成为一个智能化的助手，帮助你度过每一天的生活。我们将从移动优先进入到人工智能优先的时代。”
Read Pichai’s full letter below:
皮猜的公开信完整版如下：
When Larry and Sergey founded Google in 1998, there were about 300 million people online.
当Larry与Sergey在1998年创建Google时，全球有3亿人使用网络。
By and large, they were sitting in a chair, logging on to a desktop machine, typing searches on a big keyboard connected to a big, bulky monitor.
人们大多坐在椅子上，登陆到桌面设备，然后在一个连接着又大又笨拙的显示器的大键盘上敲着字符，进行搜索。
Today, that number is around 3 billion people, many of them searching for information on tiny devices they carry with them wherever they go.
而如今，网民数量已升至30亿，他们中的许多人都可以通过自己随身携带的电子设备搜索信息。
In many ways, the founding mission of Google back in ’98—“to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”—is even truer and more important to tackle today, in a world where people look to their devices to help organize their day, get them from one place to another, and keep in touch.
多年来，Google一直坚持着自1998年创立以来就立下的使命：“整合全球信息，使人人都能触及并从中受益。”这一使命在当下则变得更加切实且至关重要。因为，在当今世界，人们已经习惯于使用设备来帮助他们安排每天的生活、来往于各地并与彼此保持联系。
The mobile phone really has become the remote control for our daily lives, and we’re communicating, consuming, educating, and entertaining ourselves, on our phones, in ways unimaginable just a few years ago.
手机已成为管理我们日常生活的遥控器。人们正在手机上，以许多过去无法想象的方式，进行沟通、消费、教育以及娱乐。
Knowledge for everyone: search and assistance
满足人们对知识的需求：搜索与支持
As we said when we announced Alphabet, “the new structure will allow us to keep tremendous focus on the extraordinary opportunities we have inside of Google.”
正如我们在宣布成立Alphabet时说的：“这一新的企业架构会使我们能够集中精力，把握住Google业务中的各种绝佳机遇。”
Those opportunities live within our mission, and today we are about one thing above all else: making information and knowledge available for everyone.
我们也将这些机遇融入了企业使命之中，而其中最重要的，是要让人人皆可获得信息与知识。
This of course brings us to Search—the very core of this company.
正因如此，搜索始终是我们企业的核心。
It’s easy to take Search for granted after so many years, but it’s amazing to think just how far it has come and still has to go.
过了这么多年，我们很容易将这一切看成理所当然，但是当我们回顾搜索已经取得的成就与将要面对的发展时，依旧会感到欣喜和期待。
I still remember the days when 10 bare blue links on a desktop page helped you navigate to different parts of the Internet. Contrast that to today, where the majority of our searches come from mobile, and an increasing number of them via voice.
我仍然记得那些通过桌面的10个浅蓝色链接去浏览互联网的日子，而到今天大多数搜索是来自于我们的移动端，并有越来越多的人通过语音使用它。
These queries get harder and harder with each passing year—people want more local, more context-specific information, and they want it at their fingertips.
有些问题每过一年就变得愈发有挑战性——人们希望更多本地化的内容，更多符合当下情景的信息，他们还想要仅动动手指头就能获得这一切。
So we’ve made it possible for you to search for [Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio movies] or [Zika virus] and get a rich panel of facts and visuals.
所以我们正在努力使这些变为可能，让你轻松搜索到[奥斯卡影帝莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥电影]或[寨卡病毒]，此外我们的所有面板上还有更加丰富的时事资讯以及图像。
You can also get answers via Google Now—like the weather in your upcoming vacation spot, or when you should leave for the airport—without you even needing to ask the question.
你也可以通过Google Now获得想要的答案，比如说即将要去的度假胜地的天气情况，或者何时动身前往机场合适，有一些问题你甚至不需要去问就能得到答案。
Helping you find information that gets you through your day extends well beyond the classic search query.
帮助你获取信息并利用这些信息度过每一天已经远远超过传统搜索查询的范畴了。
Think, for example, of the number of photos you and your family have taken throughout your life, all of your memories.
想一想你和家人一共照过多少张承载着回忆的照片。
Collectively, people will take 1 trillion photos this year with their devices.
总的来说，这一年，人们通过各自的设备会拍摄1万亿张照片。
So we launched Google Photos to make it easier for people to organize their photos and videos, keep them safe, and be able to find them when they want to, on whatever device they are using.
所以我们发布了Google Photos，为的是让人们能更加轻松便利地整理照片和视频，在保证照片安全的同时，让你在任何设备上都可以随时找到你想要的图片。
Photos launched less than a year ago and already has more than 100 million monthly active users. Or take Google Maps.
Photos不到一年前发布，现在每月已经有超过1亿的活跃用户了。对了，还有我们的Google地图。
When you ask us about a location, you don’t just want to know how to get from point A to point B.
当你询问我们地址的时候，你应该不会只想知道A点到B点怎么走。
Depending on the context, you may want to know what time is best to avoid the crowds, whether the store you’re looking for is open right now, or what the best things to do are in a destination you’re visiting for the first time.
根据不同的情境，你也许还想知道躲避拥堵的最佳时间段，想要逛的店铺是否还开门，以及第一次探访的目的地有什么好玩的。
But all of this is just a start. There is still much work to be done to make Search and our Google services more helpful to you throughout your day.
而这些仅仅是一个开始。为了让搜索以及Google的服务能够全天候地帮助到你的日常生活，我们仍有许多工作要做。
You should be able to move seamlessly across Google services in a natural way, and get assistance that understands your context, situation, and needs—all while respecting your privacy and protecting your data.
未来，你将能够自然穿梭于Google的各项服务，并获得基于你所处环境、情境以及需求的各项帮助，同时，我们会尊重你的隐私并保护你的个人数据。
The average parent has different needs than the average college student. Similarly, a user wants different help when in the car versus the living room.
父母和大学生的需求不同，用户在车中或者在客厅中所需的帮助也不尽相同。
Smart assistance should understand all of these things and be helpful at the right time, in the right way.
聪明的支持是需要理解这其中的差异并在正确的时间提供恰当的帮助。
The power of machine learning and artificial intelligence
机器学习与人工智能的力量
A key driver behind all of this work has been our long-term investment in machine learning and AI.
推动这些工作的是我们在机器学习和人工智能方面的长期投入。
It’s what allows you to use your voice to search for information, to translate the web from one language to another, to filter the spam from your inbox, to search for “hugs” in your photos and actually pull up pictures of people hugging … to solve many of the problems we encounter in daily life.
正是它们使得你可以通过语音来搜索信息，进行不同语言间的转换，过滤掉邮箱中的垃圾邮件，找到Photos中和“拥抱”有关的照片.....来解决我们日常生活中面临的众多问题。
It’s what has allowed us to build products that get better over time, making them increasingly useful and helpful.
在过去的日子里，是它们让Google的产品不断成长，并越来越有帮助。
We’ve been building the best AI team and tools for years, and recent breakthroughs will allow us to do even more.
多年来，我们致力于组建最好的人工智能团队和工具，最近的一些突破让我们有机会做得更多。
This past March, DeepMind’s AlphaGo took on Lee Sedol, a legendary Go master, becoming the first program to beat a professional at the most complex game mankind ever devised.
在已经过去的3月，DeepMind研究的AlphaGo战胜了传奇围棋选手李世石，成为自围棋这一最复杂的游戏发明至今第一个打败专业棋手的程序。
The implications for this victory are, literally, game changing—and the ultimate winner is humanity.
毫不夸张地说，这次胜利的意义十分重大，而最终的赢家便是我们人类。
This is another important step toward creating artificial intelligence that can help us in everything from accomplishing our daily tasks and travels, to eventually tackling even bigger challenges like climate change and cancer diagnosis.
这对于创造能够在方方面面协助我们的人工智能，包括完成日常任务以及出行，到最终解决诸如气候变化以及癌症诊断这样更重大的挑战，是另外一个重要的跨越。
More great content, in more places
在更多地方提供更多优质内容
In the early days of the Internet, people thought of information primarily in terms of web pages.
在互联网发展初期，一提到信息，人们首先会想到网页。
Our focus on our core mission has led us to many efforts over the years to improve discovery, creation, and monetization of content—from indexing images, video, and the news, to building platforms like Google Play and YouTube.
这些年来，我们专注于达成核心使命，从索引图片、视频和新闻到构建Google Play及YouTube等平台，我们采取的众多行动都推动了内容的发现、创造以及变现。
And with the migration to mobile, people are watching more videos, playing more games, listening to more music, reading more books, and using more apps than ever before.
随着内容向移动端的不断迁移，人们正在比以往任何时候观看更多的视频、玩更多的游戏、聆听更多的音乐、阅读更多的书籍，且使用更多的应用程序。
That’s why we have worked hard to make YouTube and Google Play useful platforms for discovering and delivering great content from creators and developers to our users, when they want it, on whatever screen is in front of them.
因此，我们努力将YouTube和Google Play打造成为发现与传递优质内容的有效平台，让用户能够随时随地在任意屏幕上观看来自创作者和开发者的优质内容。
Google Play reaches more than 1 billion Android users. And YouTube is the number-one destination for video—over 1 billion users per month visit the site—and ranks among the year’s most downloaded mobile apps.
Google Play覆盖了超过10亿的Android用户。YouTube也是人们观看视频的首选平台，每月有超过10亿用户访问YouTube网站。此外，YouTube还是年度下载次数最多的移动应用程序之一。
In fact, the amount of time people spend watching videos on YouTube continues to grow rapidly—and more than half of this watchtime now happens on mobile.
事实上，人们在YouTube上观看视频的时长实现了持续快速增长，其中超过半数的观看时长来自于移动端。
As we look to the future, we aim to provide more choice to YouTube fans—more ways for them to engage with creators and each other, and more ways for them to get great content.
未来，我们致力于为YouTube用户提供更多选择，让他们以更多方式与创作者和其他用户进行互动，并以更多方式获取优质内容。
We’ve started down this journey with specialized apps like YouTube Kids, as well as through our YouTube Red subscription service, which allows fans to get all of YouTube without ads, a premium YouTube Music experience and exclusive access to new original series and movies from top YouTube creators like PewDiePie and Lilly Singh.
为此，我们推出了YouTube Kids等专用应用程序，并推出了YouTube Red订阅服务，让用户享受无广告的观看体验。此外，用户还可以享受优质YouTube Music体验，观看来自PewDiePie、Lilly Singh等知名YouTube创作者的原创影视剧。
We also continue to invest in the mobile web—which is a vital source of traffic for the vast majority of websites.
与此同时，我们继续对移动网络进行投资，这已成为绝大多数网站重要的访问量来源。
Over this past year, Google has worked closely with publishers, developers, and others in the ecosystem to help make the mobile web a smoother, faster experience for users.
在过去一年的时间里，Google与发布者、开发者以及生态系统里的其他各方进行了紧密合作，致力于为用户提供更加流畅、更加快速的移动网络体验。
A good example is the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project, which we launched as an open-source initiative in partnership with news publishers, to help them create mobile-optimized content that loads instantly everywhere.
“加速的移动页面”（AMP）项目就是这方面很好的一个例子。这是我们携手新闻发布者推出的一项开源举措，旨在帮助发布者创造能够在任意地点即刻加载的移动优化内容。
The other example is Progressive Web Apps (PWA), which combine the best of the web and the best of apps—allowing companies to build mobile sites that load quickly, send push notifications, have home screen icons, and much more.
“模仿原生应用的Web应用”(PWA)是这方面的另一个例子，通过将网页和应用程序各自的优势相结合，该应用能够让企业创建可快速加载、发送推送通知、拥有主屏幕图标等更多特点的移动站点。
And finally, we continue to invest in improving Chrome on mobile—in the four short years since launch, it has just passed 1 billion monthly active users on mobile.
最后，我们继续投入与对Chrome移动端性能的改进。自推出以来，短短四年的时间里，Chrome移动端的月度活跃用户就已突破了10亿。
Of course, great content requires investment. Whether you’re talking about Google’s web search, or a compelling news article you read in The New York Times or The Guardian, or watching a video on YouTube, advertising helps fund content for millions and millions of people.
当然，优质内容需要资金投入。不论是对Google的网页搜索，还是对于《纽约时报》或《卫报》上引人注目的新闻文章，抑或是对于在YouTube上观看的视频，广告都有助于为广大用户所享受的这些内容提供资金支持。
So we work hard to build great ad products that people find useful—and that give revenue back to creators and publishers.
为此，我们致力于打造有效的优质广告产品，为创作者和发布者创造收益。
Powerful computing platforms
强大的计算平台
Just a decade ago, computing was still synonymous with big computers that sat on our desks.
在十年前，计算还等同于那些放在桌子上的大型计算机。
Then, over just a few years, the keys to powerful computing—processors and sensors—became so small and cheap that they allowed for the proliferation of supercomputers that fit into our pockets: mobile phones.
然而仅仅几年后，支持强大计算能力的关键—处理器和传感器，就已变得小巧而经济了。得益于此，易于随身携带的超级计算机—手机，得以快速发展。
Android has helped drive this scale: it has more than 1.4 billion 30-day-active devices—and growing.
Android操作系统则进一步推进了手机的普及。目前，Android系统拥有超过14亿的月活跃用户，且这一数字仍在继续扩大。
Today’s proliferation of “screens” goes well beyond phones, desktops, and tablets.
如今，“含屏电子设备”快速发展，早已不限于手机、台式电脑与平板电脑的范畴。
Already, there are exciting developments as screens extend to your car, like Android Auto, or your wrist, like Android Wear.
随着屏幕应用扩展至汽车及手腕，Android Auto车载系统以及Android Wear可穿戴平台也应运而生。
Virtual reality is also showing incredible promise—Google Cardboard has introduced more than 5 million people to the incredible, immersive and educational possibilities of VR.
此外，虚拟现实技术也展现出惊人的潜力——Google Cardboard已为500多万用户带去无与伦比、生动逼真，且具有教育意义的美好体验，展现了虚拟现实技术的无限潜力。
Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the “device” to fade away. Over time, the computer itself—whatever its form factor—will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. We will move from mobile first to an AI first world.
放眼未来，“设备”的概念将与我们渐行渐远。有朝一日，各种外形的计算机将会在我们生活的各个方面扮演智能助手的角色。这个世界将从“移动设备优先”变为“人工智能优先”。
Enterprise
为企业服务
Most of these computing experiences are very likely to be built in the cloud. The cloud is more secure, more cost effective, and it provides the ability to easily take advantage of the latest technology advances, be it more automated operations, machine learning, or more intelligent office productivity tools.
未来，绝大多数计算将很可能在云端进行。不管是对于自动化操作、机器学习，还是对于高效智能办公工具，云端运行都更加安全、经济高效，也更利于运用这些最新科技。
Google started in the cloud and has been investing in infrastructure, data management, analytics, and AI from the very beginning.
Google从一开始就从事云端服务，并投资开发基础构架、数据管理、分析工具及人工智能。
We now have a broad and growing set of enterprise offerings: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Google Apps, Chromebooks, Android, image recognition, speech translation, maps, machine learning for customers’ proprietary data sets, and more.
目前我们已开发出类别众多并不断增加的企业产品，如Google公共云（GCP）、Google企业应用、Chromebooks、Android、Google Analytics、图像识别、语音翻译、地图及支持用户专用数据集服务的机器学习等。
Our customers like Whirlpool, Land O’Lakes and Spotify are transforming their businesses by using our enterprise productivity suite of Google Apps and Google Cloud Platform services.
我们的客户，如Whirlpool，O'Lakes以及Spotify等，正在利用Google企业应用套件与Google云平台服务等企业级产能工具来进行商业转型。
As we look to our long-term investments in our productivity tools supported by our machine learning and artificial intelligence efforts, we see huge opportunities to dramatically improve how people work.
我们长期投入于开发以机器学习及人工智能为支持的产品，并以此明显改善人们的工作方式。
Your phone should proactively bring up the right documents, schedule and map your meetings, let people know if you are late, suggest responses to messages, handle your payments and expenses, etc.
在未来，你的手机将能够自动提取正确文件、规划会议日程并追踪会议进展、通知别人你能否按时到达、草拟短信回复，并能够处理你的开销等等。
Building for everyone
服务于每一个人
Whether it’s a developer using Google Cloud Platform to power their new application, or a creator finding new income and viewers via YouTube, we believe in leveling the playing field for everyone.
无论是使用Google公共云推动新应用研发的开发者，还是通过YouTube发现新收入来源和观众的创作者，我们都相信Google会为每个人提供一个公平竞争的平台。
The Internet is one of the world’s most powerful equalizers, and we see it as our job to make it available to as many people as possible.
互联网是世界上最强大的均衡器之一，让更多人享受到这项服务，也始终是我们的宗旨所在。
This belief has been a core Google principle from the very start—remember that Google Search was in the hands of millions long before the idea for Google advertising was born.
这从一开始便是Google的核心原则。早在Google广告诞生之前，Google搜索就已被广为利用。
We work on advertising because it’s what allows us to make our services free; Google Search works the same for anyone with an Internet connection, whether it is in a modern high-rise or a rural schoolhouse.
我们从事广告业务也是因为它能使这些服务免费化。Google搜索也致力于为每个网民提供平等的服务，无论他身处现代化大都市还是农村校舍。
Making this possible is a lot more complicated than simply translating a product or launching a local country domain. Poor infrastructure keeps billions of people around the world locked out of all of the possibilities the web may offer them.
但实现该目标，远比简单地引进产品或启用当地国家的域名，要复杂地多。落后的基础设施让全世界数以亿计的人们无法通过网络接触外面的大千世界。
That’s why we make it possible for there to be a $50 Android phone, or a $100 Chromebook.
这就是为什么我们要生产50美元一部的Android手机或100美元一台的Chromebook笔记本。
It’s why this year we launched Maps with turn-by-turn navigation that works even without an Internet connection, and made it possible for people to get faster-loading, streamlined Google Search if they are on a slower network. We want to make sure that no matter who you are or where you are or how advanced the device you are using … Google works for you.
这也是为什么今年我们推出了可离线使用的路线导航。即使网速较慢，人们也能快速地加载，且流畅地进行Google搜索。我们想确保无论你是谁、身处何地，也无论你使用何种水平的设备……Google皆可为你效劳。
In all we do, Google will continue to strive to make sure that remains true—to build technology for everyone.
通过不懈努力，我们致力于让技术能够服务于每一个人。
Farmers in Kenya use Google Search to keep up with crop prices and make sure they can make a good living. A classroom in Wisconsin can take a field trip to the Sistine Chapel … just by holding a pair of Cardboard goggles. People everywhere can use their voices to share new perspectives, and connect with others, by creating and watching videos on YouTube. Information can be shared—knowledge can flow—from anyone, to anywhere.
例如，肯尼亚的农民可以使用Google搜索关注农作物的价格，从而卖得好价钱；威斯康星州的学生可以利用Cardboard眼镜去西斯廷教堂进行“实地考察旅行”；通过在YouTube上制作和观看视频，各地的人们都能分享自己的新观点，与他人沟通。
In 17 years, it’s remarkable to me the degree to which the company has stayed true to our original vision for what Google should do, and what we should become.
17年来，Google始终不忘初心：做Google该做的，以期完成使命。对此，我十分感动。
For us, technology is not about the devices or the products we build. Those aren’t the end-goals. Technology is a democratizing force, empowering people through information.
对我们而言：技术，绝不仅仅是我们创造的设备或产品，因为那并不是终极目标。技术，是一种民主的力量，它所提供的信息，便是力量之源。
Google is an information company. It was when it was founded, and it is today. And it’s what people do with that information that amazes and inspires me every day.
而Google正是这样一家信息公司，成立至今，始终坚守初衷，从未改变。同时，人们对信息的运用，也不断给我带来惊喜与启迪。
前沿君微信：tech9999
投稿邮箱：13355524@qq.com