造福社會影響文明 你不必與科技爲敵大綱
Every one of today’s smartphones has thousands of times more processing power than the computers that guided astronauts to the moon. And if Moore’s law – the theory that computing capacity doubles roughly every two years – continues to be accurate, tomorrow’s computers will be even stronger.
與當年指導宇航員登月的計算機相比，今天每一部智能手機的數據處理能力都要勝出幾千倍。如果摩爾定律依舊準確，未來計算機將更加強大。根據摩爾定律，計算能力大約每兩年增加一倍
But Americans today dream less often of feats that computers will help us to accomplish; more and more we have nightmares about computers taking away our jobs. The optimism that many felt in the 1960s over labour-saving technology is giving way to a fearful question: will your labour be good for anything in the future? Or will you be replaced by a machine?
但今日的美國人較少再幻想計算機將幫人類實現豐功偉績，而是越來越恐懼計算機將奪走我們的工作。20世紀60年代時，許多人對節省人力的技術抱持樂觀態度，而今這種樂觀已讓位於一個可怕的問題：你的勞動在未來有利用價值嗎？或者是，你會被機器取代嗎？
Fear of replacement is not new. Fifteen years ago American workers were worried about competition from cheaper Mexican substitutes. In 1992 US presidential candidate Ross Perot predicted that a “giant sucking sound” would be heard along the country’s southern border as soon as the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed.
這種害怕被取代的情緒並不新鮮。15年前，美國工人曾擔心來自墨西哥廉價勞力的競爭。1992年美國總統候選人羅斯•佩羅(Ross Perot)曾預言，一旦《北美自由貿易協定》(North American Free Trade Agreement)簽訂，那麼沿着美國南部邊境，人們將聽到一個“巨大的吮吸聲”。
Today people think they can hear that sound once more – but they trace it to server farms in Texas instead of cut-rate factories in Tijuana. Americans fear the technology of the near future because they see it as a replay of the globalisation of the near past.
今天人們認爲自己又再度聽到這個聲音，但當他們循聲追蹤，找到的卻不是蒂華納（Tijuana，墨西哥西北部城市）的廉價工廠，而是得克薩斯州的服務器羣。美國人害怕“不久的將來”的科技，因爲他們將此視作“不久的以前”出現的全球化的重演。
But the situations are very different: unlike fellow humans of different nationalities, computers are not substitutes for American labour. Men and machines are good at different things. People form plans and make decisions in complicated situations. We are less good at making sense of enormous amounts of data. Computers are exactly the opposite: they excel at efficient data processing but struggle to make basic judgments that would be simple for any human.
但兩種情況有很大不同：電腦不像他國人類同胞，它們無法取代美國勞工。人和機器擅長的事情是不同的。人類可以在複雜情況下制定計劃和作出決定。我們不擅長分析海量數據。計算機則正相反，它們擅長高效處理數據，但很難作出任何人都能輕易作出的基本判斷。
I came to understand this from my experience as chief executive of PayPal. In mid-2000 we had survived the dotcom crash and we were growing fast but we faced one huge problem: we were losing upwards of $10m a month to credit card fraud. Since we were processing hundreds or even thousands of transactions each minute, we could not possibly review each one. No human quality control team could work that fast.
我是從擔任Paypal首席執行官的經驗中得出這一結論的。在21世紀頭十年中期，我們挺過了互聯網泡沫破滅，得到了快速增長，但我們遇到了一個大問題：我們每月因信用卡欺詐起碼要損失1000萬美元。由於我們每分鐘要處理成百上千筆交易，所以不可能對每筆交易進行審查。由人力構成的質量管理團隊絕不可能審查得這麼快。We tried to solve the problem by writing software that would automatically identify bogus transactions and cancel them in real time. But it quickly became clear that this approach would not work: after an hour or two, the thieves would catch on and change their tactics to fool our algorithms.
我們試過用編寫軟件來解決這一問題，該軟件可以自動識別虛假交易，並實時取消。但事實很快證明這種方法行不通，只一兩個小時後，竊賊們就搞懂了軟件，然後改變策略以欺騙我們的算法。
Human analysts, however, were not easily fooled by criminals’ adaptive strategies. So we rewrote the software to take a hybrid approach: the computer would flag the most suspicious transactions, and human operators would make the final judgment.
然而人工分析師不會輕易被犯罪分子的適應性策略騙過。因此我們採取混合的方法重新編寫了軟件，先由計算機標記出最可疑的交易，再由人工操作者作出最終判斷。
This kind of man-machine symbiosis enabled PayPal to stay in business, which in turn enabled hundreds of thousands of small businesses to accept the payments they needed to thrive on the internet.
這種人機合作令Paypal得以維持經營，反過來又讓幾十萬家小企業能夠收到付款，令它們得以在互聯網上茁壯成長。
It would have been impossible without the man-machine solution – even though most PayPal customers would never even hear about it, thinking of us simply as a software company. Fascinated by automation, most people still overlook the role that humans play in running software that would be worthless on its own.
儘管大多數Paypal客戶以爲我們只是一家軟件公司，他們甚至從沒聽過人機合作解決方案，但沒有它的話，我們不可能獲得這樣的成績。大多數人因對自動化的着迷，而忽視人類在軟件運行中的作用，忘記如果沒有人類操作，軟件自身毫無價值。
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has declared: “Software is eating the world.” But it is irrational to be so afraid of being devoured.
風險投資家馬克•安德烈森(Marc Andreessen)曾宣稱：“軟件正吞噬整個世界。”但這種擔心是缺乏理性的。
We seem to have forgotten that computers do not eat. Their desires – for work or for anything else – are not just different. They are non-existent. All computers require is a small amount of electricity – and they are not smart enough to want even that.
我們似乎已經忘了計算機不會吃東西。無論是對工作還是其他任何事物，它們都沒有任何慾望。它們是不存在的。計算機所需要的不過是少許電力，而且就連這點需求它們都沒聰明到主動提出。
Unlike computers, people do eat: whether shark fins in Shanghai or fish tacos in San Diego, everyone needs food. Humans also drink, drill for oil and mine for minerals – all on the same planet.
與計算機不同的是，人類確實要吃東西：無論是上海的魚翅還是聖地亞哥的魚肉玉米餅，人人都需要食物。人類還要喝飲料、鑽石油、開採礦藏——而這些物資都在同一顆行星上。
So while American consumers have benefited from access to cheap toys and textiles from a newly globalised China, they have had to pay higher prices for the petrol newly desired by millions of Chinese motorists.
所以美國消費者一方面得益於中國新近的全球化，能夠買到便宜的玩具和紡織品，另一方面也要支付更高昂的油錢，因爲中國新興車主們的需求推高了汽油價格。
And desire does not stop at subsistence: people will demand ever more as globalisation continues. Now that millions of Chinese peasants can finally enjoy a secure supply of basic calories, they want more of them to come from pork than grain.
而且人類的慾望並不僅限於維持生存，隨着全球化推進，人們的要求將越來越多。中國數億農民既然終於可以吃飽，他們自然希望肉的比例能夠提高。
Spiralling demand for resources of which our world contains a finite supply is the great long-term threat posed by globalisation. That is why we need new technology to relieve it.
這個世界的資源是有限的，全球化帶來的一大長期威脅就是資源需求急劇上升。所以我們需要新技術來減輕這一威脅。
The alternative to working with computers in the new businesses they make possible is not a placid world where all the old jobs stay the same. It is one in which wages decline and prices rise as the whole world competes both to work and to spend.
人類與電腦合作，將可以致力於因爲電腦而出現的新事務，倘非如此，我們將處於一個不平靜的世界。在這個世界裏，所有舊式工作將保持不變，工資將下降，物價將上漲，因爲整個世界的人們將競相工作，競相消耗物資。
We are our own greatest enemies. Our most important allies are the machines that enable us to do new things.
人類最大的敵人是人類自己，人類最重要的盟友是機器，它們讓我們能夠去做新的事情。
The writer is an investor, entrepreneur and author of ‘Zero to One’
本文作者爲投資家、企業家，著有《從無到有》(Zero to One)一書
