《经济学人》双语：ChatGPT 聊天机器人会威胁到谷歌搜索引擎的地位吗？（Part 2）

原文标题：
The battle for search
What do AI chatbots mean for the lucrative business of searching the internet?
搜索之战
人工智能聊天机器人对互联网搜索行业意味着什么？

Will the AI chatbots eat Google’s lunch?
AI聊天机器人会吞掉谷歌的市场吗？

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ChatGPT often gets things wrong. It has been likened to a mansplainer: supremely confident in its answers, regardless of their accuracy.

ChatGPT经常出错。它像是一个好为人师的大男子：无论答案准确与否，都对自己的回答迷之自信。

Unlike search engines, which mostly direct people to other pages and make no claims for their veracity, chatbots present their answers as gospel truth.

搜索引擎主要将人们引导到其他页面，而不担保内容的真实性。与之不同的是，聊天机器人会将自己的回答作为绝对真理呈现出来。

Chatbots must also grapple with bias, prejudice and misinformation as they scan the internet. There are sure to be controversies as they produce incorrect or offensive replies.
聊天机器人还必须处理互联网上各种偏见和虚假信息。如果它们提供错误或冒犯性的回答，势必引发争议。

(Google is thought to have held back the release of its chatbot over such concerns, but Microsoft has now forced its hand.)
（实际上，谷歌正是出于这些考虑而迟迟不愿发布自己的聊天机器人，但现在被微软抢先一步了。）

ChatGPT already gives answers that Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, would consider unacceptably woke.
ChatGPT已经给出了佛罗里达州州长罗恩·德桑蒂斯无法接受的答案。

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Chatbots must also tread carefully around some tricky topics.
聊天机器人也要格外谨慎处理一些敏感话题。

Ask ChatGPT for medical advice, and it prefaces its reply with a disclaimer that it “cannot diagnose specific medical conditions”;
如果问ChatGPT医疗建议，它会声明“不能作为诊断具体疾病的依据”。

it also refuses to give advice on, say, how to build a bomb.But its guardrails have proved easy to circumvent (for example, by asking for a story about a bombmaker, with plenty of technical detail).

它还拒绝对“如何制造炸弹”等问题给出答案。但事实证明，人们很容易绕开这样的“护栏”（例如，把“如何制造炸弹”改成“炸弹制造者的故事”，它就能提供大量技术细节）。

As tech firms decide which topics are too sensitive, they will have to choose where to draw the line. All this will raise questions about censorship, objectivity and the nature of truth.

当科技公司思考哪些话题属于敏感话题时，必须严格划定清晰的界限。稍有不慎，就会在内容审查、客观性和真实性方面遭到质疑。

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Can tech firms make money from this?

聊天机器人能为科技公司盈利吗？

OpenAI is launching a premium version of ChatGPT, which costs $20 a month for speedy access even at peak times.

OpenAI正在推出ChatGPT的付费服务，每月20美元即可享有高峰期快速访问的权益。

Google and Microsoft, which already sell ads on their search engines, will show ads alongside chatbot responses—ask for travel advice, say, and related ads will pop up.

谷歌和微软已经在各自的搜索引擎中出售广告，他们也可能在聊天机器人的答案旁显示广告——例如，当你询问旅行建议时，相关的广告就会弹出来。

But that business model may not be sustainable. Running a chatbot requires more processing power than serving up search results, and therefore costs more, reducing margins.
但这种商业模式恐怕难以持久。因为聊天机器人所需的处理能力远超搜索引擎，成本越高，利润也就越少。

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Other models will surely emerge: charging advertisers more for the ability to influence the answers that chatbots provide, perhaps, or to have links to their websites embedded in responses.

其他变现模式也肯定会陆续出现：例如，向广告商多收点费用，允许广告商影响聊天机器人所提供的答案，或者在回答中嵌入广告商的网站链接。

Ask ChatGPT to recommend a car, and it will reply that there are lots of good brands, and it depends on your needs. Future chatbots may be more willing to make a recommendation.

现在你问ChatGPT购车建议的话，它会列出许多好车品牌，最终由你自行决定。而未来的聊天机器人可能更愿意给你提供最终建议。

But will people use them if their objectivity has been compromised by advertisers? Will they be able to tell? Behold, another can of worms.
但如果广告商破坏了聊天机器人的客观性，人们还会继续使用吗？人们能分辨出来吗？瞧，又是一个棘手问题！

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Then there is a question of competition.

另外还有竞争问题。

It is good news that Google is being kept on its toes by upstarts like OpenAI. But it is unclear whether chatbots are a competitor to search engines, or a complement.

谷歌对OpenAI这样的新创企业保持警惕是好事。但聊天机器人究竟是搜索引擎的竞争对手，还是补充助手？目前尚未有定论。

Deploying chatbots initially as add-ons to search, or as stand-alone conversation partners, makes sense given their occasional inaccuracies.

鉴于聊天机器人会偶尔出错，初期阶段最好还是将其作为搜索引擎的附加组件，或作为独立的对话服务。

But as their capabilities improve, chatbots could become an interface to all kinds of services, such as making hotel or restaurant reservations, particularly if offered as voice assistants, like Alexa or Siri.

但随着聊天机器人的不断改善，它最终可能会成为各种服务的接口，例如预订酒店或预订餐厅，特别是可能会以Alexa或Siri等语音助手的形式出现。

If chatbots’ main value is as a layer on top of other digital services, though, that will favour incumbents which provide such services already.

如果聊天机器人的主要价值建立在其他数字服务之上，那么现有的服务提供商就会享受到红利。

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Googling the future 

搜索未来

Yet the fact that today’s upstarts, such as Anthropic and OpenAI, are attracting so much attention (and investment) from Google and Microsoft suggests that smaller firms have a shot at competing in this new field. They will come under great pressure to sell.一个事实是，Anthropic和OpenAI这样的新秀企业吸引了谷歌和微软等科技巨头的密切关注（和投资），这说明小公司也有能力在这个新领域大展拳脚。尽管如此，他们还是会面临巨大的出售压力。

But what if an upstart chatbot firm develops superior technology and a new business model, and emerges as a new giant?That, after all, is what Google once did.
但是，如果其中一家聊天机器人新创公司开发出卓越的技术和全新的商业模式，并成长为新的科技巨头，情况又会怎样呢？毕竟，谷歌就是这样发展壮大的。

Chatbots raise hard questions, but they also offer an opportunity to make online information more useful and easier to access.
尽管聊天机器人带来了一些棘手的问题，但它们也带来了价值，即人们有机会在网络世界中获得更有用的信息和更便捷的访问方式。

As in the 1990s, when search engines first appeared, a hugely valuable prize—to become the front door to the internet—may once again be up for grabs.

正如上世纪90年代搜索引擎首次出现时一样，一个极具诱惑的奖励可能再次出现——成为互联网的新门户。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量617/1104左右）
原文出自：2023年2月11日《The Economist》Leaders版块。

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路

本文翻译整理: Irene

本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自于网络）
“AltaVista”这名称代表“从高处望下”，是全球最知名的搜索引擎公司之一，同时提供搜索引擎后台技术支持等相关产品。AltaVista是一个以网页全文检索为主、同时提供分类目录的搜索引擎。内容极其丰富，真正可以称海量信息检索。AltaVista于1995年由迪吉多公司创立。2003年被 Overture 以1.4亿美元现金加股票的形式购得，同年转手给雅虎   。2013年6月29日，雅虎宣布于2013年7月8日关闭搜索引擎AltaVista服务。

Anthropic成立于2021年，已经吸引了7亿美元的投资，主要来自对冲基金。与OpenAI一样，它也在致力于开发生成式AI，这种技术可以从简单的文本提示中开发高质量的内容。2月6日消息，谷歌向人工智能初创公司Anthropic投资了约3亿美元，谷歌获得了Anthropic10%的股份，目前估值为50亿美元。谷歌云成为Anthropic的首选云提供商。此次合作涉及谷歌Cloud为Anthropic构建大规模GPU和TPU集群，以训练其AI系统。
 
【重点句子】（3 个）
Unlike search engines, which mostly direct people to other pages and make no claims for their veracity, chatbots present their answers as gospel truth.
搜索引擎主要将人们引导到其他页面，而不担保内容的真实性。与之不同的是，聊天机器人会将自己的回答作为绝对真理呈现出来。

But that business model may not be sustainable. Running a chatbot requires more processing power than serving up search results, and therefore costs more, reducing margins.
但这种商业模式恐怕难以持久。因为聊天机器人所需的处理能力远超搜索引擎，成本越高，利润也就越少。

As in the 1990s, when search engines first appeared, a hugely valuable prize—to become the front door to the internet—may once again be up for grabs.
正如上世纪90年代搜索引擎首次出现时一样，一个极具诱惑的奖励可能再次出现——成为互联网的新门户。