近日，一家名为Engineer.ai的印度初创公司声称利用人工智能技术辅助开发应用程序，获得了近3000万美元融资后被曝出，但实际上是真实的工程师在人工编程；只是借人工智能的宣传来吸引客户和投资。
This AI startup claims to automate app making but actually just uses humans
The Verge
Engineer.ai, an Indian startup claiming to have built an artificial intelligence-assisted app development platform, is not in fact using AI to literally build apps, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Instead, the company, which has attracted nearly $30 million in funding from a SoftBank-owned firm and others, is reportedly relying mostly on human engineers, while using hype around AI to attract customers and investment that will last it until it can actually get its automation platform off the ground.
1) 作名词，表示“大肆的宣传广告；炒作”，英文解释为“Hype is the use of a lot of publicity and advertising to make people interested in something such as a product.”举个🌰：
We are certainly seeing a lot of hype by some companies.
我们的确看到一些公司天花乱坠的广告宣传。
2) 作动词，等同于“hype up”，表示“大肆宣传”，英文解释为“To hype a product means to advertise or praise it a lot.”举个🌰：
The media seems obsessed with hyping up individuals or groups.
传媒界似乎热衷于对某些个人或团体进行大肆炒作。
表示“（使）顺利开始，开始发生”，英文解释为“to start happening successfully; to make sth start happening successfully”举个🌰：
Without more money, the movie is unlikely to get off the ground.
没有更多的资金，这部影片难以顺利开拍。
The company claims its AI tools are “human-assisted,” and that it provides a service that will help a customer make more than 80 percent of a mobile app from scratch in about an hour, according to claims Engineer.ai founder Sachin Dev Duggal, who also says his other title is “Chief Wizard,” made onstage at a conference last year. However, the WSJ reports that Engineer.ai does not use AI to assemble the code, and instead uses human engineers in India and elsewhere to put together the app.
表示“从零开始”，英文解释为“If you do something from scratch, you do it without making use of anything that has been done before.”举个🌰：
Building a home from scratch can be both exciting and challenging.
白手起家既激动人心又具有挑战性。
The company was sued earlier this year by its chief business officer, Robert Holdheim, who claims the company is exaggerating its AI abilities to get the funding it needed to actually work on the technology. According to Holdheim, Duggal “was telling investors that Engineer.ai was 80% done with developing a product that, in truth, he had barely even begun to develop.”
表示“诉讼”，可作及物/不及物动词，英文解释为“If you sue someone, you start a legal case against them, usually in order to claim money from them because they have harmed you in some way.”举个🌰：
The company could be sued for damages.
该公司会因所造成的损失被起诉。
When pressed on how the company actually employs machine learning and other AI training techniques, the company told the WSJ it uses natural language processing to estimate pricing and timelines of requested features, and that it relies on a “decision tree” to assign tasks to engineers. Neither of those really qualify as the type of modern AI that powers cutting-edge machine translation or image recognition, and it does not appear that any kind of AI agent or software of any kind is actually compiling code. Engineer.ai did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
表示“尖端的，前沿的”，英文解释为“Cutting-edge techniques or equipment are the most advanced that there are in a particular field.”举个🌰：
What we are planning is cutting-edge technology never seen in Australia before.
我们正在筹划的是澳大利亚前所未见的尖端技术。
类似的：state-of-the-art表示“（技术上）最先进的”，英文解释为“If you describe something as state-of-the-art, you mean that it is the best available because it has been made using the most modern techniques and technology.”
Engineer.ai is not alone in allegedly talking up its AI capabilities. Funding for AI startups is growing fast, reaching $31 billion last year, according to PitchBook, and companies like Japanese conglomerate SoftBank have pledged to invest hundreds of billions in AI in the coming years. The number of companies which include the .ai top-level domain from the British territory Anguilla has doubled in the last few years, the WSJ reports. In other words, saying your company is building a traditional technology, like an app development platform, but tossing in AI is an easy way to get funding and attention in a saturated startup landscape increasingly squeezed by the efforts of giants like Facebook, Google, Uber, and others.
表示“夸大”，英文解释为“If someone talks up a particular thing, they make it sound more interesting, valuable, or likely than it originally seemed.”举个🌰：
He'll be talking up his plans.
他将夸大他的计划。
表示“企业集团”，英文解释为“A conglomerate is a large business firm consisting of several different companies.”举个🌰：
the world's second-largest media conglomerate
世界第二大传媒集团。
还可以用giant来表示巨头公司”，英文解释为“Giant is often used to refer to any large, successful business organization or country.”举个🌰：
Japanese electronics giant, Sony
日本的电子业巨头——索尼公司
以及behemoth/ˈbiːhɪmɒθ/ 表示“巨头（指规模庞大、实力雄厚的公司或机构）”，英文解释为“a very big and powerful company or organization”。
本义表示“（化学溶液）饱和的”以及“湿透的，浸透的”（extremely wet），此处应该是形容新兴公司前景比较“饱和”，前景堪忧。
According to the UK investment firm MMC Ventures, startups with some type of AI component can attract as much as 50 percent more funding than other software companies, and the firm tells the WSJ that it suspects 40 percent or even more of those companies don’t use any form of real AI at all. Part of the issue is that AI can feel easy to get off the ground in a testing or preliminary format, but that it’s much harder to actually deploy at scale. Additionally, gaining the necessary training data to build capable AI agents can be extremely costly and time-consuming; companies like Facebook and Google have gigantic research organizations paying engineers top salaries for the purpose of developing better AI training techniques that may one day be used to build commercial products.
1) 表示“利用，调动（尤指想法、论据等）”，英文解释为“to use something for a particular purpose, especially ideas, arguments etc”，如：a job in which a variety of professional skills will be deployed 要用到多项专业技术的工作。
2) 表示“部署，调度（士兵、军事装备等）”，英文解释为“to organize or move soldiers, military equipment etc so that they are in the right place and ready to be used”，如：deploy forces/troops/weapons etc，NATO's decision to deploy cruise missiles北约要部署巡航导弹的决定。
The revelations around Engineer.ai also reveal an uncomfortable truth about a lot of modern AI: it barely exists. Much like the moderation efforts of large-scale tech platforms like Facebook and YouTube — which use some AI, but also mostly armies of contractors overseas and domestically to review harmful and violent content for removal — a lot of AI technologies require people to guide them.
表示“被透露的事实；被泄露的秘密”，英文解释为“A revelation is a surprising or interesting fact that is made known to people.”如：the seemingly everlasting revelations about his private life 有关他私生活的似乎永无休止的披露。
表示“大批，大群”，英文解释为“a large number of people involved in the same activity”举个🌰：
The village hall is maintained by an army of volunteers.
村礼堂由一大批志愿者维护。
The software must be trained to improve and be corrected when it gets stuff wrong, and that requires human eyes and ears to review, annotate data, and seed it back into the system where engineers can use it to fine-tune algorithms. This was especially true of the short-lived chatbot boom of a few years ago, when big names like Facebook and startups like Magic began employing scores of contractors hidden behind AI agents, like Facebook’s discontinued M, that would take the reins (or were the ones talking the whole time) when conversations became too complicated.
表示“为…做注释，标注”，英文解释为“If you annotate written work or a diagram, you add notes to it, especially in order to explain it.”举个🌰：
Historians annotate, check and interpret the diary selections.
历史学家们对这些日记选段进行注释、核对和阐释。
表示“微调”，英文解释为“If you fine-tune something, you make very small and precise changes to it in order to make it as successful or effective as it possibly can be.”举个🌰：
We do not try to fine-tune the economy on the basis of short-term predictions.
我们不会根据短期预测而试图对经济作微调。
chatbot: (一种聊天程序): a computer program in the form of a virtual e-mail correspondent that can reply to messages from computer users.
1) 表示“执政；掌权”，英文解释为“Journalists sometimes use the expression the reins or the reins of power to refer to the control of a country or organization.”举个🌰：
He was determined to see the party keep a hold on the reins of power.
2) 表示“给 (某人) 充分的自由”，英文解释为“If you give free rein to someone, you give them a lot of freedom to do what they want.”举个🌰：The government continued to believe it should give free rein to the private sector in transportation.
3) 表示“严格控制”，英文解释为“If you keep a tight rein on someone, you control them firmly.”举个🌰：Her parents kept her on a tight rein with their narrow and inflexible views.
But the mystification of AI, and the ability to dupe both the public and even investors into believing a technology is more sophisticated than it really is, has since extended outward to entire companies and sectors.
1) 表示“欺骗”，英文解释为“If a person dupes you, they trick you into doing something or into believing something which is not true.”如：a plot to dupe stamp collectors into buying fake rarities 一个欺骗集邮爱好者购买假冒珍品的阴谋。
2) 表示“受骗者”，英文解释为“A dupe is someone who is tricked by someone else.”举个🌰：
He was accused of being a dupe of the Americans.
他被控是美国人的傀儡。
Just look at the recent controversies over digital assistants and the human contractors hired to review the audio exchanges those assistants collect. Every one of the Big Five has admitted they use human employees to review these audio samples to help correct the assistants’ performance over time. That includes Apple, which has halted the practice and plans to offer an opt-out option after realizing it could undermine its pledge to user privacy.
1) 作名词，表示“（针对协议某一部分的）退出”，英文解释为“You can refer to the action of choosing not to be involved in a particular part of an agreement as an opt-out.”如：a list of demands, such as opt-outs from some parts of the treaty 例如退出条约部分条款的一系列要求。
2) 作形容词，表示“（协议中的条款）允许退出的”，英文解释为“An opt-out clause in an agreement gives people the choice not to be involved in one part of that agreement.”如：an opt-out clause 一项退出条款。
Google has halted the practice in the EU for its Assistant, and Facebook halted its own program that used human-assisted AI to perform voice-to-text transcription for Messenger. But Google continues to employ the practice in the US and elsewhere, as does Amazon for Alexa and Microsoft for Cortana and Skype.
But the point remains: humans are required to help AI improve, even when companies are loath to admit it and aren’t always transparent with customers when another person is in fact involved in the process. In this case, a whole class of new startups appears to be using AI hype to try to build new technologies they may not be capable of — or even intent on — actually providing, both because it may be too difficult and because it’s easy to pretend otherwise. And these companies are getting more money for it as a result.
表示“不情愿的”，英文解释为“ If you are loath to do something, you do not want to do it.”举个🌰：
Sensing he held the advantage, Mr. Chen was loath to change the subject.
陈先生觉得占有优势，不愿改变话题。
可作形容词/副词，表示“除此之外；在其他方面”，英文解释为“except for what has just been mentioned”举个🌰：
He was tired but otherwise in good health.
他除了累身体很好。
This spoiled an otherwise excellent piece of work.
这就把本来很出色的一件作品毁掉了。
注：otherwise有“原本”的意思。
- END -
「没有一种学习 叫带你学习」
LearnAndRecord
2015年2月8日
2019年8月18日
第1653天
每天持续行动学外语