不用擔心 機器人接管不了世界大綱

There is a tech experiment that I long to do. It is to set up fake online personas for a Hitler-worshipper and a Stalin fan, then wait to see what merchandise the likes of Facebook and Amazon’s robotic helpers serve up for their delight.

我很想做一次科技實驗：在網絡上設置兩個虛假用戶，分別爲希特勒(Hitler)崇拜者和斯大林(Stalin)迷，然後拭目以待Facebook、亞馬遜(Amazon)等互聯網公司的機器人助手會推薦什麼樣的商品來討好他們。

I actually quite appreciate web companies’ suggestions, based on my browsing history, for stuff I might like. It is like having a friendly idiot savant scanning the horizon, with a slightly too binary version of my preferences, but nonetheless often hitting the spot.

我其實非常感謝互聯網公司基於我的瀏覽歷史，爲我推薦我可能喜歡的物品。這就像讓一個友善的“白癡天才”（idiot savant，有認知障礙，但在某方面有超乎常人的能力——譯者注）懷着對我的偏好的過於機械的理解，去搜索海量信息，不過也常常可以切中我的需求。

I am interested in how these robots work, although I demur at their being called smart. Surely stupid, able and willing is more apt and preferable? Genuinely smart software would be terrifying.

我對這些機器人如何工作很感興趣，雖然我不認爲應該稱它們“智能”。愚蠢、能幹、樂於助人，用這樣的詞來形容它們當然更恰當、聽起來也更舒服吧？真正智能的軟件將令人恐懼。

Yet technologists have promised that 2020 to 2030 will herald The Singularity, the time when computers become smarter than humans.

然而，技術專家曾誓言，2020年至2030年將預示着“奇點”(The Singularity)——電腦變得比人類更聰明的時刻——的到來。

So when the chance came up to meet Ralf Herbrich, Amazon’s Berlin-based head of machine learning, I was excited to hear from one of the world’s most qualified people whether superhuman, conscious computers are a likelihood — and a mortal danger to humanity as Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk among others say.

所以，當有機會面見亞馬遜機器學習研究負責人、在柏林生活的拉爾夫•赫布里希(Ralf Herbrich)時，我很興奮。他是世界上最有資格談論這一問題的專家之一，我很想聽他談談是否有可能出現超越人類、且有意識的電腦，這樣的電腦是否會如斯蒂芬•霍金(Stephen Hawking)、比爾•蓋茨(Bill Gates)、埃隆•馬斯克(Elon Musk)等人所說，對人類構成毀滅性威脅。

Amazon does not use only machine learning to help us buy more stuff. It offers the intelligence developed by Mr Herbrich’s team to users of its Web Services, the part of the empire that, white-labelled, runs many big websites including this one — and that Jeff Bezos expects soon to be bigger than Amazon’s retail estate.

亞馬遜並不僅僅用機器學習幫我們購買更多物品。它還向旗下雲端運算服務Amazon Web Services（簡稱AWS）的用戶提供赫布里希團隊開發的智能產品。AWS是一個雲端運算帝國的一部分，亞馬遜創始人傑夫•貝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)期望這個帝國能夠很快超過亞馬遜的零售業務。亞馬遜的雲端運算服務以“白標”(white-labelled)方式，運營着包括AWS在內的許多大型網站。

Those who disapprove of Amazon may be amused to know that, but for a twist of history, Mr Herbrich would likely now be working for the Stasi. A rebellious, computer-obsessed teenager in East Germany, he was shunted into a factory electrician job at 16.

那些不喜歡亞馬遜的人知道這一點也許會覺得好笑：如果歷史不發生轉折，赫布里希如今很可能正在爲史塔西（Stasi，前東德情報和祕密警察機構——譯者注）工作。16歲時的他是一名癡迷電腦的叛逆東德少年，被分配到一家工廠做電工。

He says the pressure to help out the secret police with the skills he learnt on a broken Sinclair ZX81 sent by a relative in the west may ultimately have been irresistible — had the wall not come down six weeks into his apprenticeship.

他說，如果不是自己的學徒期開始六週後柏林牆就被推到了的話，他可能最終無法頂住要求他爲祕密警察賣力的壓力——利用從西德親戚給的一臺破辛克萊(Sinclair)ZX81型電腦上學到的技能。

Since then, he has become a research fellow at Cambridge and worked in machine learning for Microsoft and Facebook.

後來，他在劍橋大學(Cambridge)成爲一名研究員，在微軟(Microsoft)、Facebook從事過機器學習研究工作。

Conveniently, on the office tour, I saw a real-life machine learning issue. An automatic translation from German-language Amazon to English had changed a USB cable into a “USB rope”. “There is always a need for human intervention,” Mr Herbrich observed.

在辦公室參觀期間，我不經意間發現了機器學習在實際應用中的一個問題。在將德文亞馬遜網站譯成英文時，自動翻譯軟件將USB線纜(USB cable)譯成了“USB繩子”(USB rope)。“總是需要進行人工干預，”赫布里希表示。

He has no desire or expectation for bots to take over the world. A phrase he used was “the sliver of achievability”.

他並不渴望或者期望機器人接管世界。他的說法是“可能性微乎其微”。

“The Singularity? It didn’t happen,” he said and went on to explain that it won’t be happening, either.

“奇點？它沒有出現過，”他說，並繼續解釋道，將來也不會出現。

“People are really good at seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing. Machines are not good at that. We’re just getting to the point where algorithms can recognise still images of cats and mice. But the brain does it much better.”

“人類非常擅長看、嘗、聞、聽。機器人並不擅長這些。我們剛剛達到可以讓算法識別貓和老鼠的靜態圖像的水平。但人腦在這方面厲害得多。”

To my surprise, Mr Herbrich agreed computers are really glorified adding machines. “Yes, and the brain is a very coarse information processing machine.

令我驚訝的是，赫布里希竟然贊同電腦只是被美化了的計算器的說法。“是的，而人腦是一個非常粗糙的信息處理器。”

“Computers can emulate intelligent behaviour. We’re seeing a lot of that and it’s impressive that when we put it in the cloud, we’re able to perform highly complex tasks.

“電腦可以模擬智能行爲。此類模擬正在大量進行，令人印象深刻的是，當我們把模擬行爲置於雲端時，我們就能夠完成高度複雜的任務。”

“But all that’s happening is that they combine patterns. Machines learn the hard way. They can’t replicate creativity; recombining higher-level abstractions and imagining futures based on very little information or example. They can’t have a hunch, like even scientists do. The algorithms we’re studying today are crude approximations because they don’t rely on the same principles as the brain.”

“但正在發生的不過是它們把各種模式合併起來。機器人學得很吃力。它們無法複製創造力；無法重組更高級的抽象概念，無法基於很少的信息或事例想象未來。它們沒有直覺，而所有人類、包括科學家都是有直覺的。我們今天研究的算法只是簡陋的模擬，因爲它們賴以運轉的機理與大腦的工作機理不一樣。”

So what about the idea of superhuman computers taking on a life of their own? “No. A computer is a tool and only humans can build computers. People write programs. A computer can’t write a program. There will be no self-propelling computer.”

那麼，怎麼看超人類電腦自己獲得生命的觀點？“不會。電腦是一種工具，只有人類能夠製造電腦。人類能編寫程序，電腦不能。不會出現有自我意志的電腦。”

By happy coincidence, or perhaps Oxford University Press has been monitoring my search history, I got home to find the publisher had sent a book on artificial intelligence, AI by Professor Margaret Boden.

巧合的是——或許牛津大學出版社(Oxford University Press)一直在監視我的搜索歷史——回家後，我發現該出版社寄來一本瑪格麗特•博登(Margaret Boden)教授撰寫的關於人工智能的書。

I expected this to be another bots-are-taking over manifesto. Instead, it is an elegant demolition of the notion of the superhuman computer. “Near-apocalyptic visions of AI’s future are illusory,” Prof Boden concludes.

我原以爲這本書會是又一份“機器人將接管世界”的宣言。然而不是——該書對超人類電腦的概念進行了精彩的駁斥。博登教授總結道：“對人工智能未來的末日式想象是錯誤的。”

Again, how refreshing. It seems the (sensible) humans are fighting back.

又一個多麼令人舒暢的結論。似乎（理智的）人類正在進行反擊。