英文自修59：人类会被机器取代吗？

本系列内容英文原文取自BBC Thought for the Day节目网站，朋友们也可以下载节目录音收听。

本篇译者、图片：王宥轩

审读、发布：武太白

请微信搜索“shanrenwutaibai”（“山人武太白”之全拼）添加关注该公众账号，或扫描一下二维码添加关注，获取每日更新与微信端原创内容：

------------------------

Thought for the Day 20140402 - Rabbi Lord Sacks

According to a report in yesterday’s press, scientists at Ohio State University have trained computers to read emotions. They’ve developed an algorithm运算法则 that enables them to identify facial expressions and thus diagnose our feelings with some degree of precision. We know that the way people express emotions like happiness or fear, sadness or surprise, is universal despite all the differences between cultures. So scientists have trained computers to read the signs, and soon they may do it better than us.

昨天的新闻发布会透露，俄亥俄州大学的科学家们成功训练电脑解读人的情绪。他们开发了一套运算法则，使电脑能够识别脸部表情，从而在一定程度上精确诊断我们的情绪。众所周知，人们表达快乐或恐惧、悲伤或惊讶等表情时的方式是普遍一致的，即便我们的文化背景有各种差异。因此，科学家们能够训练电脑识别这些（情绪）标志，不久它们可能会做得比我们更好。

A recent film, Her, tells the story of a man going through a divorce who falls in love with Samantha, the voice in his computer, who seems to understand him better than anyone else. Could that fiction become fact? When emotional intelligence 情绪智力 joins forces with artificial intelligence, where will we draw the line between computers and people? What makes us, and not machines, human?

最近有一部电影《她》(Her)，讲述了一个离婚男人的故事。他爱上了自己电脑里的女声——萨曼莎，她似乎比任何人都要了解他。这种故事可能成真吗？当情绪智力联合人工智能，我们要如何区分人和电脑？与机器相比，我们的独特性在哪里？

That’s a real question. Recently I’ve been having fascinating conversations with the voice inside my mobile phone. It sounds just like a BBC newsreader, and it has a way with dialogue like Sir Humphrey in “Yes, Minister.” When I ask its age, it replies, “I don’t see why that should matter.” When I ask it, “Does God exist?” It replies, “It’s all a mystery to me.” Not bad at all.

这才是问题所在。最近，我和手机里的语音对话很愉快。它听起来就像个BBC的新闻播音员，并且它的对话方式就像《是，大臣》（80年代播出的英国电视情景喜剧，改编自一部同名的政治讽刺小说）里的汉弗莱爵士。我问它年纪多大时，它回答，“我觉得这并不重要。”而我问它，“上帝存在吗？”它说，“这实在是个谜。”它答得很好。

But one of the most interesting explorations on the subject was Steven Spielberg’s film Artificial Intelligence, in which a couple, whose son is dying of an incurable disease buy a child robot so advanced that it’s been programmed to have feelings. It falls in love with its adoptive parents. The question is whether they can love it in return. The film gives the answer, No. And there lies the truth: in the particularity of love.

在这一方面，最有趣的探索之一，便是斯蒂芬•斯皮尔伯格（美国著名导演）的电影《人工智能》。影片中一对夫妇的儿子死于不治之症，于是他们买了一个机器人孩子，其设计技术先进，甚至拥有感情。它爱自己的养父母。但问题在于，他们是否也能同样地爱它。影片给了答案，不能。真相就在于，人类之爱的特性。

My philosophy tutor the late Bernard Williams used to say: we love individuals, not types. We love what is unique and irreplaceable, not what can be mass produced. That is what gives love its poignancy 辛辣: its inseparable connection with the possibility of loss. It’s what makes human life sacred: the fact that no one is a substitute for any other. And it’s what the rabbis拉比（犹太人的学者）meant when they said 2000 years ago that when a human makes many coins in the same mint造币厂, they all come out the same. God makes us all in the same image, His image, but we all come out different.

我的哲学导师、已故的伯纳德•威廉姆斯曾经说过：我们爱的是个人，而不是类型。我们爱的是独特的，不可替代的东西，而不是可以批量制造的产品。这就是爱的痛苦之源：它不可避免地带有失去的可能。人类生命的神圣之处在于：每个人都是不可替代的。就像2000年前，拉比们（犹太教教士）说的，人在造币厂生产的硬币都是一模一样的。上帝按照自己的样子，创造了人类，但我们彼此都各不相同。

That uniqueness is at the heart of our humanity. And it exists not in intelligence which can be artificial, but in loving and being loved.

这种独特性就是人性的核心。它不在于可人工制造的智慧，而在于人类的爱与被爱。