2024-09-23 Sam Altman.The Intelligence Age

In the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents.

在未来几十年里，我们将能做到的事情，在祖辈们的眼中会近乎魔法。

This phenomenon is not new, but it will be newly accelerated. People have become dramatically more capable over time; we can already accomplish things now that our predecessors would have believed to be impossible.

这不新鲜，但它将迎来前所未有的加速。随着时间推移，人类的能力已经急剧增强；我们今日已能做到之事，在前人眼中曾是不可能。

We are more capable not because of genetic change, but because we benefit from the infrastructure of society being way smarter and more capable than any one of us; in an important sense, society itself is a form of advanced intelligence. Our grandparents – and the generations that came before them – built and achieved great things. They contributed to the scaffolding of human progress that we all benefit from. AI will give people tools to solve hard problems and help us add new struts to that scaffolding that we couldn’t have figured out on our own. The story of progress will continue, and our children will be able to do things we can’t.

人类能力的增强，并非来自基因的变化，而是得益于社会基础设施的极大智能化，它远比我们中的任何人更聪明，更强大；有一个重要的理解角度：这个社会本身，已经成为一种形式的高级智能。我们的祖辈——以及更早的几代人——创造了伟大的成就。他们为人类进步的阶梯搭建了基础，而我们正从中受益。AI将授予人类解决难题的工具，协助我们在这进步的阶梯上增添新的、单靠人类自身无法完成的支柱。人类进步的故事将向前延续，我们的后代将实现我们未曾实现的伟业。

It won’t happen all at once, but we’ll soon be able to work with AI that helps us accomplish much more than we ever could without AI; eventually we can each have a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine. Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personalized instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need. We can imagine similar ideas for better healthcare, the ability to create any kind of software someone can imagine, and much more.

这一切不会一蹴而就。但不久之后，我们将能够与AI合作，取得远超单凭人类无法达成的成就；最终，每个人都可以拥有一支由不同领域的AI专家组成的私人AI团队，人机合作，携手共创人类能想象的几乎一切。我们的孩子将拥有AI导师，能够在任何学科、使用任何语言、根据他们所需的任何节奏，因材施教，个性化教学。我们还可以设想类似的进步发生在更多领域：更优质的医疗服务，更强大的软件开发能力，开发一个人所能想象的任何软件，等等。

With these new abilities, we can have shared prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today; in the future, everyone’s lives can be better than anyone’s life is now. Prosperity alone doesn’t necessarily make people happy – there are plenty of miserable rich people – but it would meaningfully improve the lives of people around the world.

拥有这些新能力后，我们将能够实现共享繁荣，共享今日无法想象的高度繁荣；未来，每个人的生活都将比当下任何人的生活更加美好。仅有繁荣未必能带来幸福——世界上有太多富裕却不快乐的人——但它将以一种富有深远意义的方式，实实在在地改善全球人们的生活。

Here is one narrow way to look at human history: after thousands of years of compounding scientific discovery and technological progress, we have figured out how to melt sand, add some impurities, arrange it with astonishing precision at extraordinarily tiny scale into computer chips, run energy through it, and end up with systems capable of creating increasingly capable artificial intelligence.

我对人类历史有一个狭小的理解视角：经过数千年科学发现和技术进步的复合效应，人类学会了如何融化沙子，加入一些杂质，在无比微小的尺度上，以无比惊人的精度，将其雕琢成计算芯片，再接通能量，最终创造出越来越强大的AI系统。

This may turn out to be the most consequential fact about all of history so far. It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I’m confident we’ll get there.

这可能是迄今为止整个人类历史中最具影响力的事实。人类可能会在几千天内（！）拥有超级AI；即便时间可能更长，我依然坚信我们终将抵达这一时刻。

How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity?

人类繁荣的下一次飞跃迎面而来，我们是如何走到门口的？

In three words: deep learning worked.

六个字总结：深度学习，成了。

In 15 words: deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale, and we dedicated increasing resources to it.

一句话解释：深度学习成了，随着神经网络规模扩大，智能水平可预测地增强，我们也不断增加资源投入。

That’s really it; humanity discovered an algorithm that could really, truly learn any distribution of data (or really, the underlying “rules” that produce any distribution of data). To a shocking degree of precision, the more compute and data available, the better it gets at helping people solve hard problems. I find that no matter how much time I spend thinking about this, I can never really internalize how consequential it is.

真的，就这么简单；人类发现了一种算法，能够真正、彻底地学习任何数据分布（或者更确切地说，学习产生任何数据分布的底层“法则”）。在令人震惊的精度上，随着计算力和数据增加，AI帮助人类解决难题的能力不断增强。我发现，无论我花多少时间思考它的影响之深远，我始终无法完全内化其意义之巨大。

There are a lot of details we still have to figure out, but it’s a mistake to get distracted by any particular challenge. Deep learning works, and we will solve the remaining problems. We can say a lot of things about what may happen next, but the main one is that AI is going to get better with scale, and that will lead to meaningful improvements to the lives of people around the world.

仍有许多细节问题需要我们解决，但此时被其他任何挑战分散注意力都是错误。深度学习成了，剩下的问题将迎刃而解。对于未来可能发生之事，我们可以有许多猜想，但核心只有一个：随着神经网络规模扩大，AI将越来越强大, 并为全球人类的生活带来深远的改善。

AI models will soon serve as autonomous personal assistants who carry out specific tasks on our behalf like coordinating medical care on your behalf. At some point further down the road, AI systems are going to get so good that they help us make better next-generation systems and make scientific progress across the board.

很快，AI模型将成为自主的个人助理，替人类执行各种特定任务，比如为你协调医疗事宜。未来某个时刻，AI系统将强大到能够帮助我们开发出更先进的下一代AI系统，并推动各个科学领域的全面进步。

Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the Intelligence Age is paved with compute, energy, and human will.

技术带领人类走出石器时代，走入农业时代，再跨入工业时代。如今，通往智能时代的道路已经在我们面前铺展，而铺就这条道路的，是计算力、能源，以及人类的意志。

If we want to put AI into the hands of as many people as possible, we need to drive down the cost of compute and make it abundant (which requires lots of energy and chips). If we don’t build enough infrastructure, AI will be a very limited resource that wars get fought over and that becomes mostly a tool for rich people.

如果我们希望AI惠及尽可能多的人类，就必须降低算力成本，使其丰饶充足（这需要海量的能源和芯片）。不建立足够的基础设施，AI将会沦为极其有限的、需要动用战争来抢夺的资源，最终沦为富人专属的工具。

We need to act wisely but with conviction. The dawn of the Intelligence Age is a momentous development with very complex and extremely high-stakes challenges. It will not be an entirely positive story, but the upside is so tremendous that we owe it to ourselves, and the future, to figure out how to navigate the risks in front of us.

我们必须明智行事，同时保持坚定信念。智能时代的黎明，象征着人类进步的伟大里程碑，伴随而来的挑战极其复杂，风险也异常巨大。这注定不会是一个全然正面的故事，但其益处之巨大，不容忽视。为了我们自己和未来，我们有责任找出应对眼前风险的正确路径。

I believe the future is going to be so bright that no one can do it justice by trying to write about it now; a defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be massive prosperity.

我坚信，未来将会如此光辉灿烂，任何人如今所作的描绘都无法真正展现其全貌；智能时代的本质特征之一，必将是前所未有的繁荣。

Although it will happen incrementally, astounding triumphs – fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics – will eventually become commonplace. With nearly-limitless intelligence and abundant energy – the ability to generate great ideas, and the ability to make them happen – we can do quite a lot.

尽管这一切会逐步实现，但那些令人惊叹的胜利——解决气候危机、建立太空殖民地、发现所有物理学原理——最终将成为司空见惯。依靠近乎无限的智能和充沛的能源——既有能力产生伟大的想法，又能将这些想法付诸实施——我们能够做到的事情将超乎想象。

As we have seen with other technologies, there will also be downsides, and we need to start working now to maximize AI’s benefits while minimizing its harms. As one example, we expect that this technology can cause a significant change in labor markets (good and bad) in the coming years, but most jobs will change more slowly than most people think, and I have no fear that we’ll run out of things to do (even if they don’t look like “real jobs” to us today). People have an innate desire to create and to be useful to each other, and AI will allow us to amplify our own abilities like never before. As a society, we will be back in an expanding world, and we can again focus on playing positive-sum games.

正如我们在其他技术发展中所见，AI也会带来负面影响，因此我们需要现在开始努力，争取最大化AI的好处，同时最小化其危害。举例来说，我们预期AI将在未来几年对劳动力市场产生巨大影响（既有利也有弊），但大多数工作岗位的应变速度会比人们预期得更缓慢，即便如此，但我不担心人类会无事可做（虽然新工作在今天看来不像“真正的工作”）。人类有着与生俱来的渴望，渴望创造，渴望对彼此有用，而AI将允许我们以前所未见的方式放大自身的能力。在社会层面，人类将重回一个不断扩展的世界，我们在其中再次专注于正和博弈的游戏。

Many of the jobs we do today would have looked like trifling wastes of time to people a few hundred years ago, but nobody is looking back at the past, wishing they were a lamplighter. If a lamplighter could see the world today, he would think the prosperity all around him was unimaginable. And if we could fast-forward a hundred years from today, the prosperity all around us would feel just as unimaginable.

我们今天所从事的许多工作，在几百年前的人们眼中，可能显得微不足道，仿佛是在浪费时间，然而，回望过去，没有人会希望自己的工作是当一个傍晚手动点亮路灯的点灯人。如果当年的点灯人看到今日的世界，他会感到自己被无法想象的繁荣全面包围。而如果我们能快进到一百年后的世界，我们同样会感受到自己被无法想象的繁荣全面包围。

2024-09-23 Sam Altman.The Intelligence Age

2024-09-23 Sam Altman.The Intelligence Age

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