AI改变世界的三种方式 · AI: The indefatigable helper｜经济学人双语精选

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说到人工智能，认为未来可能出现大范围失业和邪恶AI的威胁论已经层出不穷，但更乐观的可能往往被忽略了。其实，变化已经在多个领域发生，AI很有希望从至少三个方面显著改善我们现有的世界。

人工智能：不知疲倦的助手
AI: The indefatigable helper

AI可显著改善我们的世界。这里举三个例子：首先，AI可以改变交通和城市生活，这会从无人驾驶汽车开始。如果随时都能招到一部车，人们就无需自己拥有汽车，极大地减少路上行驶车辆的数量，基本消除道路交通事故死亡。污染水平也会降低，以前用于停车场的空间可以重新改造成公园、住房和自行车道，城市环境将焕发新生。

AI dramatically changes the world for the better. So here are three examples.First, AI could transform transport and urban life, starting with self-drivingvehicles. 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 roaddeaths. Urban environments will enjoy a renaissance as pollution declines andspace previously devoted to parking is reallocated to parks, housing andbicycle paths.

其次，AI很快可以让人们与各式各样的物品对话，最明显的就是他们的家和汽车，就像电影《星际迷航》中人们与一台没有实体的电脑对话一样，而且还能与企业及其他组织的AI化身、信息服务、AI顾问和家教等进行交流。各种AI驱动的个人助理——如Alexa、Cortana、Siri和Viv——已经开始搏位争宠，并有可能和它们之前的浏览器和触屏技术一样，成为与计算机互动和获取信息的重要新途径。仅通过语音与计算机互动并不总是最好的方式，所以这种人机对话往往伴以图形（可能是以叠加在视野上的“增强现实”形式）。同时，通过为使用不同语言的人们提供实时翻译，AI还具有促进交流的巨大潜力。这项技术的基础版本已经存在，未来还将不断完善。

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 disembodiedcomputer in “Star Trek”, but also AI avatars of companies and otherorganisations, information services, AI advisers and tutors. A host of AI-poweredpersonal assistants, such as Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Viv, are already jostlingfor position, and could become an important new way to interact with computersand access information, like the web browser and touchscreen before them.Speech alone is not always the best way to interact with a computer, so suchconversations will often be accompanied by graphics (perhaps in the form of“augmented reality” overlays on people’s vision). AI also has huge potential tohelp humans talk to one another, by facilitating real-time translation betweenpeople using different languages. Basic versions of this technology existtoday, and will get better.

第三，AI可以助力科学和医疗研究，产生巨大影响。Deepmind的德米斯·哈萨比斯（Demis Hassabis）说：“最让我感到振奋的是利用AI帮助我们加速取得科学突破。”他认为，从癌症研究到气候变化的各个领域里，AI都可担任不知疲倦的研究助理，通过筛选数据、阅读成千上万的科研论文、提出假设或指出值得研究的关联关系，帮助科学家解决问题。IBM已在这一领域展开工作，利用其沃森（Watson）AI技术分析大量医疗数据。深度学习将被用于分析英格兰国民保健署（NHS）中正在进行的“十万基因组”项目中的数据。同样的技术还可以帮助物理学家筛选粒子对撞机中的海量数据，以便获得新的发现。

Third, AI could make a big difference by turbocharging scientific and medicalresearch. “The thing that excites me the most is using AI to help speed upscientific breakthroughs,” says Demis Hassabis of DeepMind. An AI could act asa relentless research assistant, he reckons, in fields from cancer research toclimate change, helping solve problems by sifting through data, readingthousands of scientific papers and suggesting hypotheses or pointing outcorrelations that might be worth investigating. IBM is already working in thisarea, 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 techniquescan help physicists sift reams of data from particle colliders for new discoveries.

 

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