2017年8月經濟學人官譯：演算法的王國
Artificial intelligence
人工智慧
Thealgorithm【1】kingdom
演算法的王國
【1】algorithm：[??lɡ?r?e?m]Analgorithmis a series of mathematical steps, especially in a computer program, which will give you the answer to a particular kind of problem or question.（尤指電腦程序中的）演算法，運演算法則
China』sdeep pool of datameans it has a chance to lead in artificial intelligence
中國數據資源豐富，有機會在人工智慧領域佔據領先地位
AT THE start of this year,two straws in the windcaught the attention of those who follow the development of artificial intelligence (AI) globally. First, Qi Lu, one of the bosses of Microsoft, said in January that he would not return to the world』s largest software firm after recovering from a cycling accident, but instead would become chief operating officer at Baidu, China』s leading search engine. Later that month,the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligencepostponed its annual meeting. The planned date for the event in January conflicted with the Chinese new year.
今年年初，關注全球人工智慧（AI）發展動向的人注意到兩件小事。先是微軟高管之一陸奇在1月表示，自己從自行車事故中恢復後不會回歸這家世界最大的軟體公司，而是將加入中國領先的搜索引擎百度，擔任該公司的首席運營官。當月晚些時候，國際人工智慧協會推遲了年會舉辦的時間。會議原計劃在1月舉行，但時間與中國新年發生了衝突。
These were the latest signals that China couldbe a close second toAmerica—and perhaps even ahead of it—in some areas of AI,widely considered vital to everythingfrom digital assistants to self-driving cars.China is simply the place to be, explains Mr Lu, and Baidu the country』s most important player. 「We have an opportunity to lead in the future of AI,」 he says.
這兩件事再度顯現了一種可能性：在人工智慧的某些領域，中國將緊隨美國而位居第二，甚至可能趕超美國。人們普遍認為，從數字助手到自動駕駛汽車，人工智慧對一切事物都至關重要。陸奇解釋說，中國無疑是未來的熱點所在，而百度是這個國家最重要的玩家。「我們有機會引領人工智慧的未來。」他說。
Other evidence supports the claim. In October 2016 the White House noted in a report that China had overtaken America in the number of published journal articles on deep learning, a branch of AI.PwC, a consultancy, predicts that AI-related growth will boost global GDP by $16trn by 2030; nearly half of thatbonanza【2】willaccrue【3】toChina, it reckons. The number of AI-related patent submissions by Chinese researchers has increased by nearly 200% in recent years, although America is still ahead in absolute numbers (see chart).
其他證據支持他的這一說法。2016年10月，白宮在一份報告中提到，中國在深度學習（人工智慧的一個分支）領域的期刊論文發表數量已超過美國。諮詢公司普華永道預測，到2030年，與人工智慧有關的增長將令全球GDP增長16萬億美元。它估計這筆「橫財」有將近一半都將流向中國。近年來，中國研究人員提交的與人工智慧相關的專利申請數量已增加近200%，儘管美國在絕對數量上仍然領先（見圖表）。
【3】bonanza：[b??n?nz?]You can refer to a sudden great increase in wealth, success, or luck as abonanza. 財運；鴻運；好運
【4】accrue：If things such as profits or benefitsaccrue tosomeone, they are added to over a period of time. （利潤、好處等）累積，積聚，增加
To understandwhy China is so well placed, consider the inputs needed for AI. Of the two most basic, computing power and capital, it has an abundance. Chinese firms, from giants such as Alibaba and Tencent to startups such as CIB FinTech and UCloud, are building data centres as fast as they can. The market forcloud computinghas been growing by more than 30% in recent years and will continue to do so, according to Gartner, a consultancy. In 2012-16 Chinese AI firms received $2.6bn in funding, according to the Wuzhen Institute, a think-tank. That is less than the $17.9bn that poured into their American peers, but the total is growing quickly.
要了解中國為何佔據優勢，不妨試想一下人工智慧所需的投入。其中最基本的兩種投入——計算能力和資本，在中國十分充裕。從阿里巴巴和騰訊這樣的巨頭到興業數金和UCloud等創業公司都在儘可能快地打造數據中心。諮詢公司高德納（Gartner）稱，近年中國雲計算市場保持了超過30%的增速，而且這一勢頭還將繼續。據烏鎮智庫的數字，2012年至2016年，中國的人工智慧公司獲得了26億美元的資金投入。這一數字少於美國同行獲得的179億美元，但總額正在迅速增長。
Yet it is two other resources that truly make Chinaa promised landfor AI. One is research talent. As well as strong skills in maths, the country has a tradition in language and translation research, says Harry Shum, who leads Microsoft』s AI efforts. Findingtop-notch【4】AI experts is harder in China than in America, says Wanli Min, who oversees 150 data scientists at Alibaba. But this will change over the next couple of years, he predicts, because most big universities have launched AI programmes. According to some estimates, China has more than two-fifths of the world』s trained AI scientists.
然而，真正讓中國成為人工智慧福地的其實是另外兩大資源。一是研究人才。微軟人工智慧事業部門的負責人沈向陽說，中國除了數學很強，還有語言及翻譯研究的傳統。阿里巴巴的閔萬裏手下有150名數據科學家。他說，在中國，尋找頂尖的人工智慧專家要比在美國難。不過他預測這種局面在兩三年里就會發生改變，因為多數大型高校都開設了人工智慧項目。據一些估計數字，全世界培養的人工智慧科學家中，超過五分之二在中國。
top-notch:If you describe someone or something astop-notch, you mean that they are of a very high standard or quality.一流的;頂尖的
【4】notch:[nɑ?t?]You can refer to a level on a scale of measurement or achievement as anotch.等級;檔次
The second advantage for China is data, AI』s most important ingredient. In the past, software and digital products mostly obeyed rules laid down in code,giving an edge tothose countries with the best coders. With the advent of deep-learning algorithms, such rules are increasingly based on patterns extracted fromreams of data.The more data are available, the more algorithms can learn and the smarter AI offerings will be.
中國的第二個優勢是數據，這也是人工智慧最重要的「原料」。過去，軟體和數字產品主要是按代碼編寫的規則行事，因而擁有最優秀的編程人員的國家佔據優勢。隨著深度學習演算法的出現，這些規則日益建立於從大量數據中提取的各種規律之上。供試用的數據越多，演算法能學到的東西就越多，人工智慧所提供的服務也就越智能。
China』s sheer size and diversity providepowerful fuelfor this cycle. Just by going about their daily lives, the country』s nearly 1.4bn people generate more data than almost all other nations combined. Even in the case of a rare disease, there are enough examples to teach an algorithm how to recognise it. Because typing Chinese characters is morelaborious【5】than Western ones, people also tend to use voice-recognition services more often than in the West, so firms have more voicesnippets【6】with which to improve speech offerings.
中國的體量和多樣性為這樣的循環提供了強勁的動力。單靠開展日常生活，該國近14億人口就能產生大量數據，幾乎超過其他所有國家的總和。就算是某種罕見病，在中國也能獲得足夠的病例去訓練演算法識別該疾病。由於輸入中國的漢字要比西方國家的字母費時費力，人們使用語音識別服務的頻率通常也高於西方國家，企業也就獲得了更多的語音片段來改善語音服務。
【5】laborious：[l??b??ri?s]If you describe a task or job aslaborious, you mean 耗時費力的；辛苦的；艱難的
TheSaudi Arabiaof data
數據的沙烏地阿拉伯
What reallysets China apartis that it has more internet users than any other country: about 730m. Almost all go online from smartphones, which generate far more valuable data than desktop computers, chiefly because they contain sensors and are carried around. In the big coastal cities, for instance, cash has all but disappeared forsmall purchases: peoplesettle with（解決）their devices using services such as Alipay and WeChat Pay.
真正令中國與眾不同的一點是，它的互聯網用戶比任何國家都多：大約有7.3億人。幾乎所有網民都用智能手機上網，產生的數據比來自台式電腦的數據有價值得多。這主要是因為智能手機包含感測器，而且由機主隨身攜帶。以沿海大城市為例，在進行小額交易時幾乎已經沒人使用現金了，通過手機上的支付寶和微信支付等服務就可以搞定。
Chinese do not seem to be terribly concerned about privacy, which makes collecting data easier. The country』sbike-sharing services, which havetaken big cities by storm, for example, not only provide cheap transport but are what is known as a 「data play」. When ridershire a bicycle, some firms keep track of renters』 movements using a GPS device attached to the bike.
中國人似乎不是特別擔心隱私的問題，這就使得收集數據變得更容易了。例如，風靡該國各大城市的共享單車服務不僅提供了廉價的交通方式，而且還是個所謂的「數據遊戲」。一些公司會在用戶租用自行車時利用裝在車上的GPS設備追蹤租車者的活動。
Young Chinese appear particularly keen on AI-powered services and relaxed about use of their data. Xiaoice, anupbeat【6】chatbot operated by Microsoft, now has more than 100m Chinese users. Most talk to it between 11pm and 3am, often about the problems they had during the day. It is learning from interactions and becoming cleverer. Xiaoice no longer just provides encouragement and tells jokes, but has created the first collection ofpoemswritten with AI, 「Sunshine Lost Its Window」, which caused a heated debate in Chinese literary circles over whether there can be such a thing as artificialpoetry.
年輕的中國人似乎尤其熱衷由人工智慧驅動的服務，對於自身數據被使用也比較淡然。微軟運營的聊天機器人、陽光正向的小冰如今有超過一億個中國用戶，多數都是在晚上11點到凌晨3點和它聊天，通常都是談論自己在白天遇到的問題。小冰從互動中學習，過程中又變得更聰明。如今它不再只是給人鼓勵和講笑話，還運用人工智慧創作出了首部詩集——《陽光失了玻璃窗》。中國的文學界為此展開了激烈的爭論，探討人工智慧生成的詩歌算不算詩歌。
【6】upbeat：If people or their opinions areupbeat, they are cheerful and hopeful about a situation. 達觀的；樂觀的；充滿希望的
Tips：poem、poetry與verse:
poem 通常指一首詩或詩體文。
poetry 指詩的總稱。
verse 多指詩句、詩行或詩節，也可作詩歌、韻文的總稱。
Another important source of support for AI in China is the government. The technology figures prominently in the country』s current five-year plan. Technology firms are working closely with government agencies: Baidu, for example, has been asked to lead a national laboratory for deep learning. It is unlikely that the government will burden AI firms with over-strict regulation. The country has more than 40 laws containing rules about the protection of personal data, but these are rarely enforced.
中國的人工智慧還有一個重要的支持力量：政府。在該國當前的五年計劃中，科技是其中的重點。科技公司正與政府部門開展密切的合作，例如，百度已受命領導一個深度學習的國家級實驗室。政府也不大可能用過於嚴格的監管增加人工智慧公司的負擔。中國有40多部法律包含了個人數據保護規則，但很少執行。
Entrepreneurs aretaking advantage ofChina』s talent and data strengths. Many AI firmsgot goingonly a year or two ago, but plenty have been progressing more rapidly than their Western counterparts. 「Chinese AI startups ofteniterate【7】and execute more quickly,」 explains Kai-Fu Lee, who ran Google』s subsidiary in China in the 2000s and now leadsSinovationVentures, a venture-capital fund.
創業者正在利用中國的人才及數據優勢。許多人工智慧公司一兩年前才開始運營，但其中有不少公司發展速度都快過西方的同類。李開復解釋說，「中國的AI創業公司通常有更快的迭代及執行速度。」他在本世紀初曾負責管理谷歌在中國的子公司，如今領導風險投資基金創新工場。
【7】iterate：[??t?re?t]to repeat amathematicalorcomputingprocess or set of instructions again and again, each time applying it to the result of the previous stage迭代(數學或計算過程,或一系列指令)
百科知識：
李開復：
李開復，1961年12月3日出生於台灣省新北市中和區，祖籍四川成都，現已移居北京市。李開復曾就讀於卡內基梅隆大學，獲計算機學博士學位，後擔任副教授。他是一位信息產業的經理人、創業者和電腦科學的研究者。曾在蘋果、SGI、微軟和Google等多家IT公司擔當要職。2009年9月從谷歌離職後創辦創新工場，並任董事長兼首席執行官。2013年9月，李開復對外宣布罹患淋巴癌。2013年10月21日稱最近化療後身體檢查結果有幾項指數未降反升，需要更加嚴格的遵照醫囑，專註於治療和休養。不得不大幅度減少在社交媒體上的時間。2015年2月13日，據創新工場聯合創始人王肇輝的朋友圈狀態顯示，李開復在患病離開北京17個月後回到了創新工場的北京辦公室，與員工進行交流。2015年11月6日，由李開復創辦的創新工場(北京)企業管理股份有限公司於今日在股轉系統披露公開轉讓說明書，正式衝刺新三板。2017年1月，參演《奇葩大會》。
As a result, China already hasa herd ofAIunicorns【8】, meaning startups valued at more than $1bn. Toutiao, a news aggregator based in Beijing, employs machine learning to recommend articles using information such as a reader』s interests and location; it also uses AI tofilter outfake information (which in China mainly meansdubious【9】health-care announcements). Another AI startup,iFlytek, has developed a voice assistant that translates Mandarin into several languages, including English and German, even if the speaker uses slang and talks over background noise. AndMegvii Technology』s face-recognition software, Face++, identifies people almost instantaneously.
結果是，中國已經出現了一批人工智慧獨角獸公司，即估值超過十億美元的創業公司。總部位於北京的新聞聚合器「頭條新聞」根據讀者的興趣及位置，利用機器學習來推薦文章，還運用人工智慧過濾掉虛假信息（在中國，這類信息主要是各種可疑的養生資訊）。另一家人工智慧創業公司科大訊飛開發了一款語音助手，可將普通話翻譯成包括英語和德語在內的若干種語言，即使說話者話語間夾雜俚語或背景有雜音也沒影響。曠視科技的人臉識別軟體Face++幾乎可以瞬間將人識別出來。
【8】unicorn：[?ju?n?k??rn]In stories and legends, aunicornis an imaginary animal that looks like a white horse and has a horn growing from its forehead. （故事和傳說中的）獨角獸
【9】dubious：[?du?bi?s]If you describe something asdubious, you mean that you do not consider it to be completely honest, safe, or reliable. 可疑的;靠不住的;曖昧的
（榮譽、名聲等）不好的,不光彩的 If you say that someone has thedubioushonour or thedubiouspleasureofdoing something, you are indicating that what they are doing is not an honour or pleasure at all, but is, in fact, unpleasant or bad.
Skynet lives
「天網」恢恢
At Megvii』s headquarters, visitors are treated to a demonstration. A video camera in the lobby does away with the need for showing ID: employees just walk in without showing theirbadges【10】. Similar devices are positioned all over the office and their feeds are shown on a video wall. When a facepops upon the wall, it is immediately surrounded by a whiterectangle【11】and some text giving information about that person. In the upper right-hand corner of the screen big letters spell 「Skynet」, the name of the AI system in the Terminator films that seeks toexterminate【12】the human race. The firm already enables Alipay and Didi, aride-hailingfirm, to check the identity of new customers (their faces are compared with pictures held by the government).
在曠視科技的總部，公司向來訪者做了一番演示。大堂里的一個攝像機省去了展示身份證件的必要：員工不用出示工作牌就可進入公司。辦公樓各處都安置了類似的裝置，其所收集的數據顯示在一面視頻牆上。當牆上跳出一張人臉時，周圍立刻就出現一個白色方框，以及關於這個人的一些文字信息。屏幕的右上角，幾個大大的字母拼寫出「Skynet」（天網），也就是《終結者》系列電影中那個試圖消滅人類的人工智慧系統的名字。曠視科技已向支付寶以及網約車公司滴滴提供支持，幫助它們核查新客戶的身份（將他們的面孔與政府持有的照片做對比）。
【10】badge：Any feature which is regarded as a sign of a particular quality can be referred to as abadge. 標誌；標記；象徵
【11】rectangle：[?rekt??ɡlArectangleis a four-sided shape whose corners are all ninety degree angles. Each side of a rectangle is the same length as the one opposite to it. 長方形；矩形
【12】exterminate：[?k?st??rm?ne?t]Toexterminatea group of people or animals means to kill all of them. 消滅;滅絕;根除
Reacting to the success of such startups, China』stech giants, too, have begun to invest heavily in AI. Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, collectively called BAT, are working on many of the same services, includingspeech- and face-recognition. But they are also trying to become dominant in specific areas of AI, based on their existing strengths.
眼見創業公司取得了成功，中國的科技巨頭也開始大舉投資人工智慧。百度、阿里巴巴和騰訊（合稱為BAT）正在開發許多類似的服務，包括語音及人臉識別。不過它們也在試圖利用現有優勢成為特定人工智慧領域裡的主導力量。
Tencent has so farkept the lowest profile; it established its AI labs only in recent months. But itis bound to develop abig presencein AI: it has more data than the other two. Its WeChat messenger service has nearly 1bn accounts and is also the platform for thousands of services, from payments and news to city guides and legal help. Tencent is also a world-beater in games with blockbusters such asLeague of LegendsandClash of Clans, which have more than 100m players each globally.
目前來看，騰訊最為低調，直到最近幾個月才建立起自己的人工智慧實驗室。不過它擁有的數據比百度和阿里巴巴都要多，勢必會在人工智慧領域佔據重要地位。其即時通訊服務微信有近10億用戶，同時還是數千種服務的平台，例如支付、新聞、城市指南以及法律諮詢等。騰訊還是全球最大的遊戲公司，其大熱遊戲《英雄聯盟》和《部落衝突》在全球的玩家都超過一億人。
Alibaba is already abehemoth【13】in e-commerce and is investing billions to become number one in cloud computing. At a conference in June in Shanghai it showed off an AI service called 「ET City Brain」 that uses video recognition tooptimise traffic in real time. It usesfootagefrom roadside cameras to predict the behaviour of cars and can adjust traffic lightson the spot（現場的，當場的）. In its home town of Hangzhou, Alibaba claims, the system has already increased the average speed of traffic by 11%. Alibaba is also planning tobeef up【14】what it calls 「ET Medical Brain」, which will offer AI-powered services to discover drugs anddiagnose medical images. It hassigned up（與...簽約）a dozen hospitals to get the data it needs.
已是電商巨頭的阿里巴巴正豪擲數十億元，力爭在雲計算領域取得領先。6月於上海舉行的一次會議上，阿里巴巴展示了一項名為「ET城市大腦」的人工智慧服務，可利用視頻識別來實時優化交通。該服務運用路邊攝像頭拍攝的視頻片段來預測車輛的行為，即刻調整交通信號燈。阿里巴巴聲稱，在其總部所在地杭州，該系統使交通的平均速度提高了11%。該公司還計劃加強其「ET醫療大腦」系統，提供各種人工智慧服務來幫助研發新葯和診斷醫學影像。為獲取所需數據，公司已與十幾家醫院簽約。
【13】behemoth：[b??hi?m??θ]If you refer to something as abehemoth, you mean that it is extremely large, and often that it is unpleasant, inefficient, or difficult to manage. 龐然大物；巨獸
【14】beef up：If youbeef upsomething, you increase, strengthen, or improve it.改善；加強；改進；提高
But it is Baidu whose fate is most tied to AI, in part because the technology may be its main chance to catch up with Alibaba and Tencent. It is putting most of its resources into autonomous driving: it wants to get a self-driving car onto the market by 2018 and to provide technology for fully autonomous vehicles by 2020. On July 5th the firm announced a first version of its self-driving-car software, called Apollo, at a developer conference in Beijing.
不過，自身命運與人工智慧最休戚相關的還是百度，這在某種程度上是因為這項技術也許是它追上阿里巴巴和騰訊的主要機會。如今它將大部分資源都投入到了自動駕駛技術上，目標是在2018年前將無人駕駛汽車投放市場，到2020年為全自動駕駛汽車提供技術。7月5日，百度在北京的一次開發者大會上推出了其首款自動駕駛汽車軟體「阿波羅」。
Getting Apollo right will not only involve cars safely navigating the streets, but managing a project that is open to outsiders. Rivals such as Waymo, Google』s subsidiary, and Tesla, an electric-car firm, jealously guard their software and the data they collect. Baidu is planning not only topublish therecipe【15】forits programs (making them 「open-source」, in the jargon), but to share data. The idea is that carmakers that use Baidu』s technology will do the same, creating an open platform for data from self-driving cars—the 「Android for autonomous vehicles」, in the words of Mr Lu.
阿波羅系統不僅涉及安全行駛汽車，還要管理一個向外部人士開放的項目。競爭對手如谷歌的子公司Waymo和電動汽車公司特斯拉都對自己的軟體和收集來的數據嚴防死守。而百度不僅計劃公開自己項目的「秘方」（用行話說就是將它們「開源」），還計劃共享數據。百度的設想是，採用百度技術的汽車製造商也會效法，從而打造出一個無人駕駛汽車數據的開放平台——用陸奇的話說，就是「自動駕駛汽車領域的安卓系統」。
【15】recipe[?res?pi]：Arecipeis a list of ingredients and a set of instructions that tell you how to cook something. 烹飪配方；食譜
原因 If you say that something isa recipe fora particular situation, you mean that it is likely to result in that situation.
Drive like a Beijinger
像北京人那樣開車
It remains to be seen how successful Chinese firms will be in exporting their AI products—for now, only a tiny handful are used abroad. In theory they should travel well: a self-driving car trained on China』s chaotic streets ought to have no problem navigating the more civilised traffic in Europe (in contrast, a vehicle trained in Germany may not get far beyond the first intersection in Beijing). Butconsumers in the Westmay hesitate to use self-driving cars that have been trained in alaxer【16】safety environment that is more tolerant of accidents. Chinese municipalities are said to befalling over themselves to【17】be testing grounds for autonomous vehicles.
至於中國公司將自己的人工智慧產品推向海外時成績如何，仍有待觀察。就目前而言，只有少數產品走向了海外。理論上說，這些產品的海外之旅應該很順利，比如在中國混亂的道路上訓練出來的自動駕駛汽車，在歐洲更文明有序的交通環境中行駛時應該也沒問題（相反，在德國受訓的汽車到了北京，過了一個十字路口可能就寸步難行了）。不過，中國的對道路安全的要求不如西方嚴格，對事故的容忍度更高，西方國家的消費者對在如此環境中訓練出來的汽車可能有所顧慮。據說，中國城市都在力爭成為自動駕駛汽車的測試場。
【16】laxer：If you say that a person"s behaviour or a system islax, you mean they are not careful or strict about maintaining high standards. 鬆懈的；馬虎的；不嚴格的
【17】fall over yourself to do something：to try very hard or want very much to do sth
There is another risk. Data are the most valuable input for AI at the moment, but their importance may yet diminish. AI firms have started to use simulated data, including those from video games. New types of algorithms maybe capable ofgetting smart with fewer examples. 「The danger is that we stop innovating in algorithms because of our advantage in data,」 warns Gansha Wu, chief executive of UISEE, a Beijing startup which is developing self-driving technology. For now, though,China looks anything but complacent. In the race for pre-eminence in AI, it will run America close.
還有一個風險。眼下數據還是人工智慧最重要的因素，但數據的重要性也許會減弱。人工智慧公司已開始使用模擬數據，包括來自視頻遊戲的數據。新型的演算法也許用較少的數據就能變得智能。趨勢科技的CEO吳甘沙警告說：「怕就怕我們會因為自己在數據上的優勢而停止在演算法上的創新。」這是北京的一家創業公司，開發自動駕駛技術。不過，目前來看，中國毫無自滿之意。在爭奪人工智慧卓越地位的競賽中，中國將是美國的勁敵。
HenryAndTessa
2017年4月7日
8.13至12.25，12,27至1，14（打烊）
2018年1月21日
第127天+8
堅持學習英語
好事下一刻就會發生
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