（下）《降临》原著作者：ChatGPT的局限与受捧原因、人工智能定义、科幻与写作意义
6月2日，《降临》原著（《你一生的故事》）作者、科幻作家特德·姜接受了《金融时报》记 者专访，谈到了ChatGPT的局限与受捧的原因、人工智能的定义、 科幻与写作的意义。
他如此着迷与语言与智能的关系，让我不禁好奇他对AI写作的看法，比如利用类似ChatGPT那样的AI工具生成文本。我问他，机器生成的文字将如何改变我们所做的写作的类型？在我们的对话中，我第一次看到他闪现出一丝不悦的情绪。“它们的回答是在回应对方吗？我的意思是，是否有任何ChatGPT生成的文章，是发自内心在回应对方？”他说道。
Chiang’s view is that large language models (or LLMs), the technology underlying chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, are useful mostly for producing filler text that no one necessarily wants to read or write, tasks that anthropologist David Graeber called “bullshit jobs”. AI-generated text is not delightful, but it could perhaps be useful in those certain areas, he concedes.
姜认为，像ChatGPT和谷歌的Bard这样的聊天机器人，它们背后的大语言模型（LLM）主要用于生成那些，没有真正想读或想写的填充文本，这些任务被人类学家大卫·格雷伯称为“bullshit jobs”。他承认，AI生成的文本并不令人愉悦，但在某些特定领域可能是有用的。
“But the fact that LLMs are able to do some of that — that’s not exactly a resounding endorsement of their abilities,” he says. “That’s more a statement about how much bullshit we are required to generate and deal with in our daily lives.”
“但事实上，大语言模型就算能够实现一些任务，也不能完全肯定它们的能力，”他说。“它们更像是证明了，我们在日常生活中被要求产生和应对的任务，有多少属于bullshit jobs。”
Chiang outlined his thoughts in a viral essay in The New Yorker, published in February, titled “ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web”. He describes language models as blurred imitations of the text they were trained on, rearrangements of word sequences that obey the rules of grammar. Because the technology is reconstructing material that is slightly different to what already exists, it gives the impression of comprehension.
Chiang在今年2月发表在《纽约客》上的一篇名为《ChatGPT是网上所有文本的模糊图像》的热门文章中概述了他的思考。他将语言模型描述为对其训练数据中的文本的模糊模仿，是按照语法规则，对文本词句的重新排列。由于这项技术对与现有文本略有不同的材料进行了重构，它给人一种已理解文本含义的印象。
As he compares this to children learning language, I tell him about how my five-year-old has taken to inventing little one-line jokes, mostly puns, and testing them out on us. The anecdote makes him animated.
“Your daughter has heard jokes and found them funny. ChatGPT doesn’t find anything funny and it is not trying to be funny. There is a huge social component to what your daughter is doing,” he says.
当他将ChatGPT的运作方式与孩子的语言学习进行对比时，我告诉他，我五岁的女儿喜欢编造一些一句话的小笑话，大多是双关语，并在我们身上试验它们。这个故事让他活跃了起来。
“你的女儿听到笑话觉得好笑。但ChatGPT不会觉得任何东西好笑，它也不会尝试去搞笑。你女儿所做的事情具有很强的社交属性，”他说。
Meanwhile ChatGPT isn’t “mentally rehearsing things in order to see if it can get a laugh out of you the next time you hang out together”. Chiang believes that language without the intention, emotion and purpose that humans bring to it becomes meaningless. “Language is a way of facilitating interactions with other beings. That is entirely different than the sort of next-token prediction, which is what we have [with AI tools] now.”
与此同时，ChatGPT并没有「在心理上对某些事情进行预演，以便看看下次和你在一起时能否把你逗笑」。姜认为，语言如果没有被人类赋予意图、情感和目的，那么就毫无意义。“语言是促进与他人互动的一种方式。这与现在我们目前（利用AI工具）做的，所谓对下一个token的预测完全不同。”
It’s a glorious day for a walk in the park, especially this verdant space with bright pink hydrangea bushes and expansive water features. We start off at a brisk pace, discussing why science fiction matters. Although he doesn’t write in order to incite, he sees how sci-fi could be a radicalising force. “Science fiction is about change, and helping people imagine the world is different than it is now,” he says.
访谈当天的天气很好，适合在公园散步，特别是在这片翠绿的空间中，绣球花丛鲜艳粉红，湖景开阔。我们开始快步前行，讨论科幻小说的重要性。尽管他写作的目的并非为了激发什么东西，但他认识到科幻小说可能成为一种推进变革的力量。他说：“科幻小说关乎变革，它帮助人们想象世界与现在的不同。”
It’s like what Mark Fisher, the British cultural critic and political theorist, once said. Chiang paraphrases: the role of emancipatory politics is to reveal that the things we are told are inevitable are in fact contingent. And the things that we are told are impossible are in fact achievable. “I think the same thing could be said about science fiction.”
正如英国文化评论家和政治理论家马克·费舍（Mark Fisher）所说，姜引述：解放政治的作用是为我们揭示，那些所谓的无法避免之事，实际都是历史的偶然。而所谓的不可能之事，其实都能够实现。“我认为同样的话也可以用来形容科幻小说。”
Although Chiang doesn’t mix politics with his fiction, he does worry that AI is a “force multiplier” for capitalism. In an essay for BuzzFeed in 2017, he compared technologists to their supposedly superintelligent AI creations: entities that “[pursue] their goals with monomaniacal focus, oblivious to the possibility of negative consequences”.
尽管姜的小说不谈政治，但他仍会担心人工智能会成为资本主义的“力量增幅器”。在2017年为 BuzzFeed 写的一篇文章中，他将技术人员与他们所创造的被认为是超级智能的人工智能进行了比较，他说，这些人工智能“以狂热的专注追求自己的目标，以至于对可能产生的负面后果毫不在意”。
His fear isn’t about a doomsday scenario, like researchers predict, where AI takes over the world. He is far more worried about increasing inequality, exacerbated by technologies such as AI, which concentrates power in the hands of a few.
他担忧的并非是像研究人员预测的那种末日情景，即人工智能接管世界。他更担心的是由人工智能等技术加剧的不平等问题，这使得权力集中在少数人手中。
By now, we’ve done a few laps of the park, and I begin to recognise some of the other walkers: a mother-and-daughter duo, a lady with a two-legged dog, and people sitting on benches, with books, magazines and ice-creams. I turn to Chiang, asking how he imagines the world will change when people routinely communicate with machines.
现在，我们已经在公园里走了几圈，我开始认出了一些其他的散步者：一对母女，一位带着只有两条腿的狗散步的女士，手拿书本、杂志和冰淇淋，坐在长椅上的人。我转向姜，问他，如果有一天，人们与机器交流成为一种日常，那么世界将会发生什么的变化。
We walk in silence for a few minutes and then suddenly he asks me if I remember the Tom Hanks film Cast Away. On his island, Hanks has a volleyball called Wilson, his only companion, whom he loves. “I think that that is a more useful way to think about these systems,” he tells me. “It doesn’t diminish what Tom Hanks’ character feels about Wilson, because Wilson provided genuine comfort to him. But the thing is that . . . he is projecting on to a volleyball. There’s no one else in there.”
我们如此静默地走了几分钟，之后他突然问我，是否记得汤姆·汉克斯主演的电影《荒岛余生》。他去的荒岛上，汉克斯有一个名叫威尔逊的排球，是他唯一的伴侣，他深爱着威尔逊。“我认为从这一角度出发，更适合思考这些事，”他告诉我。“排球的属性并没有削弱汤姆·汉克斯扮演的那个角色对威尔逊的感情，因为威尔逊给他带来了真正的安慰。但问题是……他把自己的情感投射到一个排球上，是因为荒岛没有其他人。”
He acknowledges why people may start to prefer speaking to AI systems rather than to one another. “I get it, interacting with people, it’s hard. It’s tough. It demands a lot, it is often unrewarding,” he says. But he feels that modern life has left people stranded on their own desert islands, leaving them yearning for companionship. “So now because of this, there is a market opportunity for volleyballs,” he says. “Social chatbots, they could provide comfort, real solace to people in the same way that Wilson provides.”
他理解大家为什么可能会更喜欢与人工智能交谈，而不是与彼此交流。“我明白，人际交往并非易事，往往要求苛刻，却毫无回报，”他说。但他觉得现代生活让人们感到被困在自己的孤岛上，渴望着陪伴。“因此，出现了排球的市场需求，”他说。“社交聊天机器人可以像威尔逊一样为人们提供真正的慰藉。”
But ultimately, what makes our lives meaningful is the empathy and intent we get from human interactions — people responding to one another. With AI, he says: “It feels like there’s someone on the other end. But there isn’t.”
然而，最终为生活赋予意义的，是我们在人际互动中得到的共情和对彼此的沟通回应。而人工智能，他说：“它让你感觉有人在另一端，而实际上并没有。”
source: https://www.ft.com/content/c1f6d948-3dde-405f-924c-09cc0dcf8c84
