一个关于友谊和机器人的发人深省的故事 | 盖茨书评
Most fiction about robots seems to fall into one of two categories: stories about how they’re going to kill us all or stories about how robots become an integral part of our lives. Although I enjoy the former—the first two Terminator movies are classics for a reason, and there are some terrific episodes of Black Mirror that tackle the subject—I’m drawn more to books and movies that paint robots in a positive light.
大多数机器人小说似乎都能归为这两大类：一类描述了机器人如何杀死所有人类，另一类描述了机器人如何成为我们生活中不可或缺的一部分。虽然我喜欢前者（前两部《终结者》电影成为经典之作是有原因的，《黑镜》中也有一部分精彩剧集与这个主题密切相关），但我更喜欢以积极的视角描绘机器人的书籍和电影。
Robots are going to play a huge role in our future, and fiction is a great way to explore what exactly that might mean. So, when I found out that Kazuo Ishiguro had written a new novel about robots called Klara and the Sun, I couldn’t wait to pick it up. I read Remains of the Day years ago and thought it was brilliant. His latest is just as thoughtful and beautifully written as you’d expect from him.
在未来，机器人将扮演一个重要角色，而小说这种形式可以很好地用来探究这究竟意味着什么。因此，我发现石黑一雄写了一本关于机器人的新小说《克拉拉与太阳》后，便迫不及待地开始阅读。几年前我读过《长日留痕》，我觉得这本书非常精彩。他的新作就像你所期望的那样，思想深刻，文笔优美。
The Klara in the title is an “artificial friend” who provides companionship to a sick 14-year-old girl named Josie. The story takes place in a dystopian future where children have been genetically “lifted’ to be smarter. The process of lifting is risky, and it’s the cause of Josie’s illness. Children only attend school online, so many kids have robot friends like Klara to try and make up for the lack of socialization. We don’t find out much about the world outside of Josie’s home, but there are references to frequent terrorism and environmental catastrophe.
标题中的克拉拉是一个“人工智能朋友”，为一个名叫乔西的14岁患病女孩提供陪伴。故事发生在一个反乌托邦的未来，那时孩子们的基因得到了“提升”，变得更加聪明。但提升的过程存在风险，这也是乔西患病的原因。孩子们只上网课，所以许多孩子都有像克拉拉这样的机器人朋友，试图弥补社会化的不足。我们对乔西家以外的世界了解不多，但书中也提到了频繁的恐怖袭击和环境灾难。
Klara is programmed to be deeply empathetic and curious about the world. Because the book is told in the first person, we see everything from her perspective, which is both fascinating and odd. There are long stretches of the book where you’ll almost forget that she isn’t human.
克拉拉的形象设定具有强烈的同情心和对世界的好奇心。由于这本书以第一人称叙事，所以我们看到的一切都在克拉拉的视角下，这既令人着迷又有些奇怪。在书中的很多篇幅，你几乎会忘记她并不是人类。
One of most striking things about the book is Ishiguro’s depiction of Klara’s vision. Instead of having one large field of vision, she seems to see the world through a series of pixel-like boxes. This results in some pretty wild descriptions, like this one when Klara looks at an adult woman she meets: “In one box she was visible only from her waist to the upper part of her neck, while the box beside it was almost entirely taken up by her eyes.” I found it a bit confusing, although it was a good reminder that Klara isn’t like us no matter how human she may seem at times.
这本书最引人注目的一点是石黑对克拉拉视觉的描述。她似乎没有一个广角的视野，相反她是通过一系列像素状的盒子来看世界。这导致了一些相当疯狂的描述，比如当克拉拉看着她遇到的一位成年女性时，书中会这样描写“在一个盒子里，只能看到她的腰部到脖子上部，而旁边的盒子几乎完全被她的眼睛占据了。” 我觉得这有点令人困惑，尽管这很好地提醒我们，无论克拉拉有时看起来多么像人类，她终究和我们不一样。
As I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but think about which parts of it paint a picture of our likely future—and which parts were pure fiction. I believe we’ll someday have both companion and utilitarian robots in our lives. Klara is mostly a companion. She’s not doing much of what you’d expect from a utilitarian robot, like bringing you things or preparing your meals. Her purpose is almost entirely social, and although I don’t know if we’ll ever have robots as emotionally sophisticated as she is, we might see pretty good companion robots emerge in the next decade.
阅读这本书时，我不禁去思考，书中哪些部分描绘了我们可能的未来，哪些又是纯粹的虚构。我相信会有这么一天，我们的生活中会同时出现陪伴型机器人和实用型机器人。克拉拉主要是陪伴型的。你期待实用性机器人会做的事情她大多不会做，比如给你送东西或为你准备饭菜。她的目的几乎完全是社交，虽然我不知道我们有朝一日是否会拥有像她那样情感丰富的机器人，但我们可能会在未来十年内看到相当不错的陪伴型机器人出现。
There’s a lot of work going on this space, especially around companion robots for older people. Loneliness is a real health problem in old age that increases your risk of premature death—a fact that has been made more evident by social isolation many seniors experienced during the pandemic. Research shows that having a pet can significantly ease this burden. This is where Companion robots like Klara would be the next step up from that.
这个领域有很多工作要做，特别是为老年人群体设计陪伴型机器人。孤独是一个真正的老年健康问题，会增加你过早死亡的风险——在大流行期间，许多老年人经历的社会孤立使这一事实更为明显。研究表明，养宠物可以大大减轻这种孤独感。这就是克拉拉这样的陪伴型机器人下一步的发展方向。
I’m curious to see whether people will treat these kinds of robots as pieces of technology or as something more. A lot of robot stories explore what happens when we start to see them as human. In Klara and the Sun, Josie seems to understand that her companion is artificial, but there are some uncomfortable scenes where Josie’s mom starts to treat Klara as another daughter. (The movie Her is about an artificial intelligence rather than a robot, but it deals with a similar scenario where a human develops complicated feelings.)
我很好奇，人们会把这些类型的机器人视为一种技术，还是将其视为更重要的什么东西。很多机器人故事都在探讨，当我们开始将机器人视为人类时会发生什么。在《克拉拉与太阳》中，乔西似乎明白她的同伴是人造的，但也有一些令人不安的场景，乔西的妈妈开始把克拉拉当作另一个女儿。（电影《她》讲述的不是机器人，而是人工智能，但它涉及到一个类似场景，即人类（对机器人）产生了复杂的感情。）
I’m inclined to think like Josie and see robots as machines, no matter how intelligent and human-like they become. In A Thousand Minds Jeff Hawkins explores at length what moral obligation we have to our machines. Should we feel bad about pulling the plug on an artificial intelligence if it’s as human-like as Klara? Hawkins concludes that the answer is no. I agree with him, although I can imagine a future where other people might not.
我倾向于像乔西那样思考，只把机器人看作机器，无论它们变得多么聪明、多么像人类。在《千脑筋》中，杰夫·霍金斯详细探讨了我们对机器负有的道德义务。如果一个人工智能像克拉拉一样像人类，我们应该为废弃它而感到难过吗？霍金斯认为，答案是否定的。我同意他的观点，尽管我可以想象在未来其他人或许会持相反意见。
Ishiguro certainly makes you think about what life with super intelligent robots might look like. He never claims to be a technologist or a futurist, but his perspective on artificial life is provocative nonetheless. At the end of the book, when someone asks Klara if she thinks she succeeded at her objective, she says, “Yes, I believe I gave good service and prevented Josie from becoming lonely.” In a world filled with stories about killer machines, it was refreshing to read about a future where robots make our lives better—even if they complicate things along the way.
石黑肯定会让你想到，拥有超级智能机器人的生活会是什么样子。他从未声称自己是技术专家或未来主义者，但他对人工智能生命的看法还是很具有启发性。在书的结尾，有人问克拉拉，她是否认为自己实现了目标，她说：“是的，我相信我提供了良好的服务，防止乔西变得孤独。”在充斥着“机器人是杀人机器”的诸多故事中，读到一篇“未来机器人会让我们的生活变得更加美好”这样的故事，会让人耳目一新——即使机器人在让生活变得美好的同时，也会让事情变得更加复杂。