深度學習奏效了

大家好，我是章北海

向大家推薦一篇昨日OpenAI創始人Sam的新文章：《智能時代》

以下是英中對照翻譯版

In the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents.在接下來的幾十年裡，我們將能夠做一些在祖父母看來不可思議的事情。

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.這一現象並不新鮮，但會加速。隨着時間的推移，人們的能力已經大大提高；我們現在已經可以完成前人認爲不可能完成的事情。

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.我們更有能力不是因爲基因變化，而是因爲我們受益於社會基礎設施比我們任何人都更聰明、更有能力；在一個重要意義上，社會本身就是一種先進智能的形式。我們的祖父母——以及他們之前的幾代人——建造並取得了偉大的成就。他們爲人類進步的腳手架做出了貢獻，我們都從中受益。人工智能將爲人們提供解決難題的工具，並幫助我們在腳手架上添加我們自己無法解決的新支柱。進步的故事將繼續，我們的孩子將能夠做我們做不到的事情。

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.這不會一蹴而就，但我們很快就能與人工智能合作，幫助我們完成比沒有人工智能更大的成就；最終，我們每個人都可以擁有一個個人人工智能團隊，由不同領域的虛擬專家組成，共同創造幾乎任何我們能想象到的東西。我們的孩子將有虛擬導師，他們可以用任何科目、任何語言、以任何他們需要的速度提供個性化指導。我們可以想象類似的想法，比如更好的醫療保健、創造人們能想象到的任何類型軟件的能力，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.有了這些新能力，我們可以實現共同繁榮，其程度在今天看來是不可想象的。未來，每個人的生活都可能比現在更好。僅僅繁榮不一定會讓人幸福——有很多悲慘的富人——但它會有意義地改善世界各地人民的生活。

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.用一種狹隘的方式來看待人類歷史：經過幾千年的科學發現和技術進步，我們已經弄清楚瞭如何融化沙子，添加一些雜質，以驚人的精度以極小的尺寸排列成計算機芯片，通過它運行能量，最終形成能夠創造越來越強大的人工智能的系統。

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.這可能是迄今爲止歷史上最重要的事實。我們有可能在幾千天內擁有超級智能 (!) ; 可能需要更長的時間，但我相信我們會到達那裡。

How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity?我們是如何邁向下一次繁榮飛躍的？

三個字：深度學習奏效了。

In 15 words: deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale, and we dedicated increasing resources to it.用15個詞來說：深度學習奏效了，隨着規模的擴大，可以預見地變得更好了，我們投入了越來越多的資源。

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.真的是這樣。人類發現了一種算法，可以真正學習任何數據分佈（或者實際上，產生任何數據分佈的潛在“規則”）。令人震驚的是，可用的計算和數據越多，它在幫助人們解決難題方面就越好。我發現無論我花多少時間思考這個問題，我都無法真正理解它的後果有多嚴重。

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.我們還有很多細節需要弄清楚，但被任何特定的挑戰分散注意力是錯誤的。深度學習有效，我們將解決剩餘的問題。關於接下來可能發生的事情，我們可以說很多，但最主要的是人工智能會隨着規模的擴大而變得更好，這將給世界各地人們的生活帶來有意義的改善。

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.人工智能模型將很快充當自主個人助理，代表我們執行特定任務，比如代表你協調醫療保健。在未來的某個時候，人工智能系統會變得如此出色，以至於它們幫助我們製造更好的下一代系統，並全面取得科學進步。

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.科技把我們從石器時代帶到農業時代，再到工業時代。從這裡開始，通往智能時代的道路是由計算、能源和人類意志鋪成的。

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.如果我們想讓儘可能多的人掌握人工智能，我們需要降低計算成本，讓它變得豐富（這需要大量的能源和芯片）。如果我們不建立足夠的基礎設施，人工智能將是一個非常有限的資源，戰爭會爭奪它，它將主要成爲富人的工具。

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.我們需要明智而堅定地行動。智能時代的到來是一個重大的發展，伴隨着非常複雜和極其高風險的挑戰。這不會是一個完全積極的故事，但好處是如此巨大，以至於我們應該爲自己和未來想出如何駕馭我們面前的風險。

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.我相信未來將是如此光明，以至於沒有人能通過現在寫它來公正地對待它；智能時代的一個決定性特徵將是巨大的繁榮。

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.儘管這將逐步發生，但令人震驚的勝利——修復氣候、建立太空殖民地和發現所有物理學——最終將變得司空見慣。憑藉近乎無限的智慧和豐富的能量——產生偉大想法的能力，以及實現這些想法的能力——我們可以做很多事情。

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.正如我們在其他技術上所看到的那樣，也會有缺點，我們需要現在就開始工作，以最大限度地發揮AI的好處，同時將其危害降至最低。作爲一個例子，我們預計這項技術可以在未來幾年內導致勞動力市場（好的和壞的）發生重大變化，但大多數工作的變化將比大多數人想象的要慢，我也不擔心我們會無事可做（即使它們在今天的我們看來並不像“真正的工作”）。人們有與生俱來的創造和對彼此有用的願望，而AI將讓我們以前所未有的方式放大自己的能力。作爲一個社會，我們將回到一個不斷擴大的世界，我們可以再次專注於玩正和遊戲。

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.我們今天所做的許多工作在幾百年前的人們看來都是微不足道的浪費時間，但是沒有人回顧過去，希望自己是一個點燈人。如果點燈人能看到今天的世界，他會認爲他周圍的繁榮是不可想象的。如果我們能從今天快進一百年，我們周圍的繁榮也會同樣難以想象。