双语阅读｜对人工智能的质疑在工业化时代就出现过
THE ORIGINAL MACHINERY question, which had seemed so vital and urgent, eventually resolved itself. Despite the fears expressed by David Ricardo, among others, that “substitution of machinery for human labour…may render the population redundant”, the overall effect of mechanisation turned out to be job creation on an unprecedented scale. Machines allowed individual workers to produce more, reducing the price of many goods, increasing demand and generating a need for more workers. Entirely new jobs were created to oversee the machines. As companies got bigger, they required managers, accountants and other support staff. And whole new and hitherto unimagined industries sprang up with the arrival of the railways, telegraphy and electrification.
原先那个似乎那么重大、那么紧迫的机械问题最终自行解决了。尽管这其中包括大卫·李嘉图在内的一些人担心“机器替代人力……会造成人口过剩”，但是，总的看来，机械化的影响后果却是提供规模空前的就业机会。机器使得个体工人生产出更多产品，这样降低许多产品的价格，增加需求，导致需要更多工人。整体来说，看管机器增加了新的就业岗位。公司变大，会需要管理者、会计和其他相关员工。随着铁路、电信和电气化的出现，涌现出了全新且无法设想的行业。
To be sure, all this took time. Industrialisation caused pervasive labour-market upheaval as some jobs vanished, others changed beyond recognition and totally new ones emerged. Conditions in factories were grim, and it took several decades before economic growth was reflected in significant wage gains for workers—a delay known as “Engels’ pause”.
可以肯定的是，这一切都在经历时间的考验。工业化造成过劳动力市场的大剧变，一些职业消失，另外一些职业变得面目全非，有一些全新的职业出现。工厂状况曾很糟糕，在几十年之后，工人的工资有了显著增长，这才让经济增长得到体现 。这一滞后现象称作“恩格斯暂停”。
Worries about unemployment gave way to a much wider argument about employment conditions, fuelling the rise of socialist and communist ideas and creating the modern labour movement. By the end of the 19th century the machinery question had faded away, because the answer was so obvious. In 1896 Arthur Hadley, an American economist, articulated the view of the time when he observed that rather than destroying jobs, mechanisation had brought about “a conspicuous increase of employment in those lines where improvements in machinery have been greatest”.
失业现象的担忧不广泛争论，取而代之的是就业问题，激起了社会主义和共产主义思汗潮，产生了现代劳工运动。在十九世纪末，由于机器问题的答案非常明显，这个问题逐渐消失。美国经济学家亚瑟•海德里（Arthur Hadley）在1896年总结了当时的一个观点：“在机械有很大改进的行业里”，机械化没有严重损害就业机会，“而是明显增加就业”。
What does all this tell us today? Historical analogies are never perfect, but they can be informative. Artificial intelligence is now prompting many of the same concerns as mechanisation did two centuries ago. The 19th-century experience of industrialisation suggests that jobs will be redefined, rather than destroyed; that new industries will emerge; that work and leisure will be transformed; that education and welfare systems will have to change; and that there will be geopolitical and regulatory consequences.
所有这一切给今天的我们什么启示呢?历史先例从没有完美的，不过，能让人增长见识。如同两个世纪前的机械化一样，人工智能现如今正引发了很多相关问题。十九世纪工业化的经历表明，工作会重新得到界定而不是受摧毁，新行业将应运而生，教育和福利体系得改变，而之后会对地缘政治和监管造成的影响。
In many ways, the two big debates about AI—whether it will destroy jobs, and whether it might destroy humanity—are really arguments about the rate of change. If you believe that AI is improving so rapidly that human-level artificial general intelligence (AGI) is just around the corner, you are more likely to worry about unexpected and widespread job losses and the possibility that the technology may suddenly get out of control. It seems more probable, however, that AI will improve steadily, and that its impact over the next decade or two, while significant, will not be on the same scale as the epochal shift from a mostly agricultural to a mostly industrial economy.
从很多方面看，有关人工智能的两大争论——人工智能是否会摧毁就业机会，是否可能毁灭人类——实际上是关于变化速度的争论。如果你相信人工智能改善的步伐非常快，人类水平的人工整体智能（AGI）即将来临，那么你更可能担心会普遍发生突然失业和技术会一下失控。不过，人工智能很可能会逐步地改善，其在未来十年或二十年的影响会很大，但不会像从以农业经济为主转变到以工业经济为主那样大规模的划时代变化。
AGI is probably still a couple of decades away, perhaps more, so the debate about what it might or might not be able to do, and how society should respond to it, is still entirely theoretical. This special report has therefore focused on the practical effects of AI in the nearer term. These are likely to be a broadening and quickening of the spread of computers into the workplace and everyday life, requiring people to update their skills faster and more frequently than they do at the moment. Provided educational systems are upgraded and made more flexible, which is beginning to happen, that should be entirely feasible.
AGI的实现或许仍要有二三十年，可能更远，因此，有关AGI能做或不能做什么以及社会应该作何反应的争论，还完全是理论性的。因此，这份特别报告集中在人工智能在近期的实际影响上。这些影响可能会扩大和加快电脑普及到工作场所和日常生活中，要求人们比现在更快、更频繁地更新技能。只要教育体制得到提升、变得更为灵活——这一点正开始进行——那么AGI就完全是可行的。
So far the debate has been dominated by the gloomy possibilities of massive job losses and rogue AIs. More positive scenarios, in which AI dramatically changes the world for the better, tend to attract less attention. So here are three examples. First, AI could transform transport and urban life, starting with self-driving vehicles. Being able to summon one at will could remove the need to own a car, greatly reduce the number of vehicles on the roads and all but eliminate road deaths. Urban environments will enjoy a renaissance as pollution declines and space previously devoted to parking is reallocated to parks, housing and bicycle paths.
到目前为止，有关AGI的争论占主导地位的是令人悲观的大量失业人口和人工智能失控的可能性。更积极的设想——人工智能显著地使世界变得更好——往往很少受到关注。这儿有三个例子。第一、人工智能可以改善交通和城市生活，从无人驾驶车辆开始。能够随意召唤一部车可能会让人无需买车，极大减少马路上车辆数量，差不多就消除道路死亡事故。城市环境会恢复，因为污染降低，原先停车的空间用于建公园、住房和自行车道。
Second, AI could soon enable people to converse with a wide range of things: their home and their car, most obviously, just as people talk to a disembodied computer in “Star Trek”, but also AI avatars of companies and other organisations, information services, AI advisers and tutors. A host of AI-powered personal assistants, such as Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Viv, are already jostling for position, and could become an important new way to interact with computers and access information, like the web browser and touchscreen before them. Speech alone is not always the best way to interact with a computer, so such conversations will often be accompanied by graphics (perhaps in the form of “augmented reality” overlays on people’s vision). AI also has huge potential to help humans talk to one another, by facilitating real-time translation between people using different languages. Basic versions of this technology exist today, and will get better.
第二、人工智能会很快能让人类与很多事物进行交流，如住宅和汽车，这是最为明显的，犹如在《星际航行》（Star Trek）里人类与无实体的电脑交谈一样。另外，人类还能与IA化的公司、机构、信息服务、AI顾问和导师进行交流。一些AI个人助手，如Alexa、Cortana、Siri和Viv，都在为了争得一席之地而展开激烈竞争。它们也成为与电脑交互以及获取信息的一种新方式，就像是它们的前辈网络浏览器和触摸屏。单就语言来说，与电脑交流并不是最佳方式，因此，通话时经常伴有图形（在人们的视觉上或许用“现实增强”形式来叠加）。人工智能通过给说不同语言的人提供实时翻译，也有很大的潜力去帮助人们相互对话。这项技术的基础应用现已存在，以后会变得更好。
The indefatigable helper
精力充沛的助手
Third, AI could make a big difference by turbocharging scientific and medical research. “The thing that excites me the most is using AI to help speed up scientific breakthroughs,” says Demis Hassabis of DeepMind. An AI could act as a relentless research assistant, he reckons, in fields from cancer research to climate change, helping solve problems by sifting through data, reading thousands of scientific papers and suggesting hypotheses or pointing out correlations that might be worth investigating. IBM is already working in this area, using its Watson AI technology to analyse large volumes of medical data. Deep learning will be used to analyse the data from the “100,000 Genomes” project now under way in England’s National Health Service; the same techniques can help physicists sift reams of data from particle colliders for new discoveries.
第三，人工智能通过快速科学和医学研究，实现巨大的变革。“最让我激动的是，运用人工智能有助于加快科学突破，”DeepMind公司的杰米斯•哈萨比斯说。他认为，一个人工智能可以像一位不屈不挠的研究助手那样工作，从癌症研究领域到气候变化领域，帮助解决问题：筛选数据，阅读成千上万份科学论文，提出假想，指出可能值得研究的相关性。IBM已开始在这个领域的工作，运用其沃森人工智能技术分析大量的医疗数据。深度学习将用于分析“100 000基因组”项目提供的数据，此项目目前英国国民健康服务正在展开；类似技术可为新的发现帮助筛选大量的粒子对撞机数据。
After years of frustration with AI’s slow rate of progress, it is ironic that many now think it is moving too quickly. Yet a sober assessment suggests that AI should be welcomed, not feared. In the 1840s John Stuart Mill wrote that “the proof of the ultimate benefit to labourers of mechanical inventions…will hereafter be seen to be conclusive.” A future economist may say the same of the benefits of AI, not just for labourers but for everyone.
在经过多年对人工智能进展缓慢的而感到沮丧失望之后，具有讽刺意味的是，现在有许多人认为人工智能发展太快了。然而，冷静的看法表示，应该欣然接受而不是畏惧害怕人工智能。约翰·斯图尔特·密尔在十九世纪四十年代曾写道：“机械的发明最终造福于工人的证明今后将会看到是确凿可靠的”。未来的经济学家在谈及人工智能的好处时会说同样的话，还不仅仅是惠及工人而是每一个人。
编译：zhangshumta
编辑：翻吧君
英文来源：经济学人