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.我很想要做到一次科技实验：在网络上设置两个欺诈用户，分别为希特勒(Hitler)崇拜者和斯大林(Stalin)爱好者，然后拭目以待Facebook、亚马逊(Amazon)等互联网公司的机器人助手不会引荐什么样的商品来亲近他们。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.我只不过非常感谢互联网公司基于我的网页历史，为我引荐我有可能讨厌的物品。这就像让一个友好的“白痴天才”（idiot savant，有认知障碍，但在某方面有惊人常人的能力——译者录）怀著对我的偏爱的过分机械的解读，去搜寻海量信息，不过也经常可以切中我的市场需求。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.我对这些机器人如何工作很感兴趣，虽然我不指出应当称之为它们“智能”。

可笑、能干、乐于助人，用这样的词来形容它们当然更加合理、听得一起也更加难受吧？确实智能的软件将令人不安。Yet technologists have promised that 2020 to 2030 will herald The Singularity, the time when computers become smarter than humans.然而，技术专家曾誓言，2020年至2030年将伴随着“奇点”(The Singularity)——电脑显得比人类更聪明的时刻——的来临。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，当有机会谒见亚马逊机器学习研究负责人、在柏林生活的拉尔夫赫布里希(Ralf Herbrich)时，我很激动。

他是世界上最有资格谈论这一问题的专家之一，我很想要听得他谈谈否有可能经常出现打破人类、且有意识的电脑，这样的电脑否不会如斯蒂芬霍金(Stephen Hawking)、比尔盖茨(Bill Gates)、埃隆马斯克(Elon Musk)等人所说，对人类包含毁灭性威胁。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.亚马逊并某种程度用机器学习老大我们出售更加多物品。它还向旗下云端运算服务Amazon Web Services（全称AWS）的用户获取赫布里希团队研发的智能产品。

AWS是一个云端运算帝国的一部分，亚马逊创始人杰夫贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)希望这个帝国需要迅速多达亚马逊的零售业务。亚马逊的云端运算服务以“白标”(white-labelled)方式，运营着还包括AWS在内的许多大型网站。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.那些不讨厌亚马逊的人告诉这一点或许不会实在有趣：如果历史不再次发生巨变，赫布里希如今很有可能正在为史塔西（Stasi，前东德情报和秘密警察机构——译者录）工作。

16岁时的他是一名着迷电脑的放纵东德少年，被分配到一家工厂做到电工。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.他说道，如果不是自己的学徒期开始六周后柏林墙就被推向了的话，他有可能最后无法顶着拒绝他为秘密警察卖力的压力——利用从西德亲戚给的一台斩辛克莱(Sinclair)ZX81型电脑上学到的技能。Since then, he has become a research fellow at Cambridge and worked in machine learning for Microsoft and Facebook.后来，他在剑桥大学(Cambridge)沦为一名研究员，在微软公司(Microsoft)、Facebook专门从事过机器学习研究工作。

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.在办公室参观期间，我不经意间找到了机器学习在实际应用于中的一个问题。在将德文亚马逊网站翻译成英文时，自动翻译成软件将USB线缆(USB cable)翻译成了“USB绳子”(USB rope)。

“总是必须展开人工干预，”赫布里希回应。He has no desire or expectation for bots to take over the world. A phrase he used was “the sliver of achievability”.他并不渴求或者希望机器人接管世界。他的众说纷纭是“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.“奇点？它没经常出现过，”他说道，并之后说明道，将来也会经常出现。

“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.”“人类十分擅长于看、辄、言、听得。机器人并不擅长于这些。我们刚超过可以让算法辨识猫和老鼠的静态图像的水平。

但人脑在这方面得意得多。”To my surprise, Mr Herbrich agreed computers are really glorified adding machines. “Yes, and the brain is a very coarse information processing machine.令其我吃惊的是，赫布里希居然赞成电脑只是被美化了的计算器的众说纷纭。

“是的，而人脑是一个十分坚硬的信息处理器。”“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.“电脑可以仿真智能不道德。

此类仿真正在大量展开，令人印象深刻印象的是，当我们把仿真不道德置放云端时，我们就需要已完成高度简单的任务。”“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.”“但正在再次发生的不过是它们把各种模式拆分一起。机器人学得很吃力。

它们无法拷贝创造力；无法重组更加高级的抽象概念，无法基于很少的信息或事例想象未来。它们没直觉，而所有人类、还包括科学家都是有直觉的。

我们今天研究的算法只是破旧的仿真，因为它们赖以运转的机理与大脑的工作机理不一样。”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.”那么，怎么看超强人类电脑自己取得生命的观点？“会。电脑是一种工具，只有人类需要生产电脑。人类能编写程序，电脑无法。

会经常出现有自我意志的电脑。”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.凑巧的是——也许牛津大学出版社(Oxford University Press)仍然在监控我的搜寻历史——回家后，我找到该出版社相赠来一本玛格丽特博登(Margaret Boden)教授编写的关于人工智能的书。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.我原以为这本书不会是又一份“机器人将接管世界”的宣言。然而不是——该书对超强人类电脑的概念展开了精彩的反驳。

博登教授总结道：“对人工智能未来的末日式想象是错误的。”Again, how refreshing. It seems the (sensible) humans are fighting back.又一个多么令人脱俗的结论。或许（理智的）人类正在展开反攻。

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