启蒙如何终结？（基辛格2018《大西洋月刊》撰文）（上）

How the Enlightenment Ends

Philosophically, intellectually—in every way—human society is unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence.

By Henry A. Kissinger

启蒙如何终结？

人类社会无论在哲学还是知识层面——总之，在任何层面——都没有为人工智能的兴起做好准备。

亨利·A·基辛格

一

Three years ago, at a conference on transatlantic issues, the subject of artificial intelligence appeared on the agenda. I was on the verge of skipping that session—it lay outside my usual concerns—but the beginning of the presentation held me in my seat.

在3年前召开的一场关于跨大西洋问题的国际会议上，我发现会议日程里安排了一个以“人工智能”为主题的环节。由于人工智能并不在我通常关注的领域之内，我本想跳过那一场讨论，但主讲人开场的几句话却把我留在了位子上。

The speaker described the workings of a computer program that would soon challenge international champions in the game Go. I was amazed that a computer could master Go, which is more complex than chess. In it, each player deploys 180 or 181 pieces (depending on which color he or she chooses), placed alternately on an initially empty board; victory goes to the side that, by making better strategic decisions, immobilizes his or her opponent by more effectively controlling territory.

主讲人向听众宣告，一个计算机程序很快就将向围棋界的国际冠军发起挑战，随后他介绍了那个计算机程序的运行方式。电脑竟然能够掌握比国际象棋更加复杂的中国围棋的对弈规则？这令我十分吃惊。在中国围棋的比赛中，每一位棋手手执180枚或181枚棋子（这取决于两位棋手选择黑白何种颜色的棋子，黑子181枚，白子180枚），比赛开始时棋盘是空的，随后两位棋手轮流在棋盘上落子。判定围棋取胜的标准是，看哪位棋手能通过更加高明的策略更有效地占据棋盘上的空位，从而最终困死对手。

The speaker insisted that this ability could not be preprogrammed. His machine, he said, learned to master Go by training itself through practice. Given Go’s basic rules, the computer played innumerable games against itself, learning from its mistakes and refining its algorithms accordingly. In the process, it exceeded the skills of its human mentors. And indeed, in the months following the speech, an AI program named AlphaGo would decisively defeat the world’s greatest Go players.

主讲人表示，计算机程序并非在编制过程中就获得了高超的对弈能力，这种能力是在实践过程中通过自我训练逐渐习得的。在围棋规则的框架下，计算机程序已经与自己对弈了无数局，它从错误中吸取了教训并借此完善了算法。经过这一过程之后，计算机程序的围棋水平已经远远超过了为其编程的工程师。就在演讲结束几个月之后，一个名为“阿尔法狗”（AlphaGo）的人工智能计算机程序毫无困难地战胜了世界上最顶尖的围棋选手。

As I listened to the speaker celebrate this technical progress, my experience as a historian and occasional practicing statesman gave me pause. What would be the impact on history of self-learning machines—machines that acquired knowledge by processes particular to themselves, and applied that knowledge to ends for which there may be no category of human understanding? Would these machines learn to communicate with one another? How would choices be made among emerging options? Was it possible that human history might go the way of the Incas, faced with a Spanish culture incomprehensible and even awe-inspiring to them? Were we at the edge of a new phase of human history?

当我听到主讲人为这一技术进步喝彩时，作为一名历史学家和客串政治家，我的思路不再跟随他的话语，而是停在了那里。那些能够自主学习的机器能够通过独特的方式获得知识，并且能够将获得的知识应用在可能超出人类理解的领域，这会对人类历史产生怎样的影响呢？这些机器之间能够互相交流吗？在从未遇到过的行为选项面前，这些机器又会如何作出判断呢？面对西班牙文化，印加人（南美洲安第斯山区克丘亚族的一支，讲克丘亚语，他们的“王”被称为“印加”；1532年，最后一任印加帝国国王被西班牙侵略者处以死刑，随后印加帝国沦为了西班牙的殖民地——观察者网注）曾是感到迷惑甚至心怀畏惧的；如今面对人工智能的崛起，人类会步印加人的后尘吗？人类是否正处于一个新的历史阶段的起点呢？

Aware of my lack of technical competence in this field, I organized a number of informal dialogues on the subject, with the advice and cooperation of acquaintances in technology and the humanities. These discussions have caused my concerns to grow.

由于我自身缺乏在人工智能领域的专业能力，在几位分别来自相关技术行业和人文领域的朋友的建议和配合下，我组织了几场关于人工智能技术的非正式对话会。经过对话会上的讨论之后，我对这个问题的忧虑反而加深了。

Heretofore, the technological advance that most altered the course of modern history was the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, which allowed the search for empirical knowledge to supplant liturgical doctrine, and the Age of Reason to gradually supersede the Age of Religion. Individual insight and scientific knowledge replaced faith as the principal criterion of human consciousness. Information was stored and systematized in expanding libraries. The Age of Reason originated the thoughts and actions that shaped the contemporary world order.

迄今为止，改变现代历史发展轨迹程度最深的技术进步莫过于15世纪印刷机的发明，它使仪式性的教条被对经验知识的探索所取代，它使宗教时代落幕，使理性时代得以开启。人类对自然的理解和科学体系的建立取代了宗教信仰，它们成为判定人类意识觉醒的重要标准。人们将信息存储起来，而且信息在规模日益扩大的图书馆中得以系统化。塑造当代世界秩序的思想和行为正是发端自理性时代。

But that order is now in upheaval amid a new, even more sweeping technological revolution whose consequences we have failed to fully reckon with, and whose culmination may be a world relying on machines powered by data and algorithms and ungoverned by ethical or philosophical norms.

不过在当下这场全新的、甚至更加彻底的技术革命中，当代世界秩序正面临一场颠覆性的变革。我们很难充分判断这场变革的影响，这场变革甚至可能到达一个高潮，届时我们的世界将严重依赖由数据和算法驱动的人工智能机器人，而道德伦理和哲学规范将完全受到那些机器人的无视。

二

The internet age in which we already live prefigures some of the questions and issues that AI will only make more acute. The Enlightenment sought to submit traditional verities to a liberated, analytic human reason. The internet’s purpose is to ratify knowledge through the accumulation and manipulation of ever expanding data. Human cognition loses its personal character. Individuals turn into data, and data become regnant.

我们身处其中的互联网时代已经给人类带来了一些麻烦，而人工智能时代的到来很可能会使情况变得更加复杂。当年启蒙运动（the Enlightenment）所寻求的是将传统真理（traditional verities）置于已被解放的、具有分析能力的人类理性面前接受检验。而如今互联网则是通过对不断增加的数据的积累和处理来定义知识。在互联网时代，人类的认知能力失去了人的个性特征，一切都以数据形式存在，数据成了这个时代的统治者。

Users of the internet emphasize retrieving and manipulating information over contextualizing or conceptualizing its meaning. They rarely interrogate history or philosophy; as a rule, they demand information relevant to their immediate practical needs. In the process, search-engine algorithms acquire the capacity to predict the preferences of individual clients, enabling the algorithms to personalize results and make them available to other parties for political or commercial purposes. Truth becomes relative. Information threatens to overwhelm wisdom.

相较于在具体语境中思考信息的意义或将信息赋予明确的概念，互联网用户更看重信息的检索和处理。他们很少在互联网上就历史或哲学问题检索信息，一般来说，互联网用户的信息检索行为与他们当下的实际需求直接相关。在这一过程中，搜索引擎获得了互联网用户信息检索偏好的有关信息，这使其算法能够对搜索结果进行个性化处理，而搜索引擎甚至可能将用户的信息检索偏好提供给第三方，以用于政治或商业目的。真相变得不再绝对，在海量信息面前，智慧的作用恐怕也要弱化。

Inundated via social media with the opinions of multitudes, users are diverted from introspection; in truth many technophiles use the internet to avoid the solitude they dread. All of these pressures weaken the fortitude required to develop and sustain convictions that can be implemented only by traveling a lonely road, which is the essence of creativity.

互联网用户们变得不再擅长独立思考，他们开始被社交媒体上的各种观点所左右。事实上，许多网民使用互联网的目的仅在于通过上网来冲淡他们内心十分恐惧的孤独感。上述因素削弱了人们形成并维护自身信念的刚毅品质，只有孤独的行者才能一直坚持内心的信念，而创造力的本质正在于这种对自身信念孤独的坚持。

The impact of internet technology on politics is particularly pronounced. The ability to target micro-groups has broken up the previous consensus on priorities by permitting a focus on specialized purposes or grievances. Political leaders, overwhelmed by niche pressures, are deprived of time to think or reflect on context, contracting the space available for them to develop vision.

此外，互联网对政治的冲击尤为明显。互联网能够使社会上很多亚群体获得更多曝光度，他们的特殊诉求或苦衷能够通过网络获得更多人的了解，这打破了人们以往对何为政治优先事项的认识。但政治家们也由于受到这些散乱压力的影响，无暇思考问题产生的背景，这挤压了政治家们对未来进行长远规划的空间。

The digital world’s emphasis on speed inhibits reflection; its incentive empowers the radical over the thoughtful; its values are shaped by subgroup consensus, not by introspection. For all its achievements, it runs the risk of turning on itself as its impositions overwhelm its conveniences.

互联网时代的快速阅读不利于人们进行深度思考；互联网对夺人眼球的信息的影响力进行了放大，而那些经过缜密思考写就的文章却在网络上难以获得大面积传播；互联网时代的价值观受到亚群体观点的严重影响，而在这一过程中人们十分缺乏深入的思考。尽管互联网的出现为人类社会做出了巨大贡献，但由于其影响利弊相抵，它未来恐怕会将枪口对准自己也未可知。

三

As the internet and increased computing power have facilitated the accumulation and analysis of vast data, unprecedented vistas for human understanding have emerged. Perhaps most significant is the project of producing artificial intelligence—a technology capable of inventing and solving complex, seemingly abstract problems by processes that seem to replicate those of the human mind.

互联网的出现和计算能力的提高为海量数据的积累和分析提供了极大便利，人类的理解能力因此获得了前所未有的提升。在这一过程中，意义最为重大的技术创新出现在人工智能领域。人工智能技术能够通过类似人脑才具有的信息处理能力进行创新性思维并解决复杂的、看似抽象的问题。

This goes far beyond automation as we have known it. Automation deals with means; it achieves prescribed objectives by rationalizing or mechanizing instruments for reaching them. AI, by contrast, deals with ends; it establishes its own objectives. To the extent that its achievements are in part shaped by itself, AI is inherently unstable. AI systems, through their very operations, are in constant flux as they acquire and instantly analyze new data, then seek to improve themselves on the basis of that analysis. Through this process, artificial intelligence develops an ability previously thought to be reserved for human beings. It makes strategic judgments about the future, some based on data received as code (for example, the rules of a game), and some based on data it gathers itself (for example, by playing 1 million iterations of a game).

这已经远远超出了我们对“自动化”的理解。所谓“自动化”仅是针对手段而言，自动化技术通过对生产工具进行机械化或合理化改进来实现确定的生产目标。与自动化技术大为不同，人工智能技术是针对结果而言的，人工智能可以自行确定自身行为的目标。由于在某种程度上来说人工智能所实现的目标部分取决于其自身，所以人工智能具有一种内在的不稳定性。人工智能系统在实际运行过程中不断获取新的数据并即时对这些新数据进行分析，在分析结果的基础上，人工智能系统可以不断对自己的算法进行优化。所以说，人工智能系统是一个不断变化的、处于动态中的系统。在这一动态过程中，人工智能系统表现出了一种此前被认为仅有人类才会具有的信息处理能力。它可以对未来做出战略判断，有些判断是基于以代码形式事先注入的数据（围棋规则），有些判断则是基于人工智能系统自身所收集到的数据（与自己进行100万次对弈过程中出现的各种情况）。

The driverless car illustrates the difference between the actions of traditional human-controlled, software-powered computers and the universe AI seeks to navigate. Driving a car requires judgments in multiple situations impossible to anticipate and hence to program in advance. What would happen, to use a well-known hypothetical example, if such a car were obliged by circumstance to choose between killing a grandparent and killing a child? Whom would it choose? Why? Which factors among its options would it attempt to optimize? And could it explain its rationale? Challenged, its truthful answer would likely be, were it able to communicate: “I don’t know (because I am following mathematical, not human, principles),” or “You would not understand (because I have been trained to act in a certain way but not to explain it).” Yet driverless cars are likely to be prevalent on roads within a decade.

以无人驾驶汽车为例，它体现了传统上以软件驱动、完全受到人类控制的车载计算机行为与渗透进驾驶过程每一个细节的人工智能行为这两者之间的区别。人类驾驶汽车时需要面对数不清的各种情况，并需要在每一具体情况下做出特定的判断，我们根本不可能预先想到所有的情况并事先为每一种可能的情况编写程序。我们以一个十分有名的假设为例来进行说明：当一辆由人工智能控制的无人驾驶汽车不得不在一位老人和一个小孩之间做出选择必须撞向其中一人时，它会如何选择呢？其背后的原因何在？它在做出选择时会更看重哪些因素？它能够自圆其说吗？如果人工智能程序能够与人类交流的话，它很可能会这样回答上述问题：“我不知道，我驾驶汽车时遵循的是数学原理，我不懂人类的那套规则”，它也可能这样回答：“你搞不懂我的，我曾受到大量训练来应对各种驾驶情况，但我从未受到训练向人类解释为何我会那样应对那些情况”。这就是人工智能无人驾驶技术当下的现实，不过不出10年，无人驾驶汽车很可能将行驶在我们的每一条街道上。