造福社会影响文明你不必与科技为敌

2014-10-28 11:49:15来源：网络

　　Today people think they can hear that sound once more – but they trace it to server farms inTexas instead of cut-rate factories in Tijuana. Americans fear the technology of the near futurebecause they see it as a replay of the globalisation of the near past.

　　今天人们认为自己又再度听到这个声音，但当他们循声追踪，找到的却不是蒂华纳(Tijuana，墨西哥西北部城市)的廉价工厂，而是得克萨斯州的服务器群。美国人害怕“不久的将来”的科技，因为他们将此视作“不久的以前”出现的全球化的重演。

　　But the situations are very different: unlike fellow humans of different nationalities, computersare not substitutes for American labour. Men and machines are good at different things. Peopleform plans and make decisions in complicated situations. We are less good at making sense ofenormous amounts of data. Computers are exactly the opposite: they excel at efficient dataprocessing but struggle to make basic judgments that would be simple for any human.

　　但两种情况有很大不同：电脑不像他国人类同胞，它们无法取代美国劳工。人和机器擅长的事情是不同的。人类可以在复杂情况下制定计划和作出决定。我们不擅长分析海量数据。计算机则正相反，它们擅长高效处理数据，但很难作出任何人都能轻易作出的基本判断。

　　I came to understand this from my experience as chief executive of PayPal. In mid-2000 wehad survived the dotcom crash and we were growing fast but we faced one huge problem: wewere losing upwards of $10m a month to credit card fraud. Since we were processinghundreds or even thousands of transactions each minute, we could not possibly review eachone. No human quality control team could work that fast.

　　我是从担任Paypal首席执行官的经验中得出这一结论的。在21世纪头十年中期，我们挺过了互联网泡沫破灭，得到了快速增长，但我们遇到了一个大问题：我们每月因信用卡欺诈起码要损失1000万美元。由于我们每分钟要处理成百上千笔交易，所以不可能对每笔交易进行审查。由人力构成的质量管理团队绝不可能审查得这么快。

　　We tried to solve the problem by writing software that would automatically identify bogustransactions and cancel them in real time. But it quickly became clear that this approach wouldnot work: after an hour or two, the thieves would catch on and change their tactics to fool ouralgorithms.

　　我们试过用编写软件来解决这一问题，该软件可以自动识别虚假交易，并实时取消。但事实很快证明这种方法行不通，只一两个小时后，窃贼们就搞懂了软件，然后改变策略以欺骗我们的算法。

　　Human analysts, however, were not easily fooled by criminals’ adaptive strategies. So werewrote the software to take a hybrid approach: the computer would flag the mostsuspicious transactions, and human operators would make the final judgment.

　　然而人工分析师不会轻易被犯罪分子的适应性策略骗过。因此我们采取混合的方法重新编写了软件，先由计算机标记出最可疑的交易，再由人工操作者作出最终判断。

　　This kind of man-machine symbiosis enabled PayPal to stay in business, which in turn enabledhundreds of thousands of small businesses to accept the payments they needed to thrive onthe internet.

　　这种人机合作令Paypal得以维持经营，反过来又让几十万家小企业能够收到付款，令它们得以在互联网上茁壮成长。

　　It would have been impossible without the man-machine solution – even though most PayPalcustomers 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 runningsoftware that would be worthless on its own.

　　尽管大多数Paypal客户以为我们只是一家软件公司，他们甚至从没听过人机合作解决方案，但没有它的话，我们不可能获得这样的成绩。大多数人因对自动化的着迷，而忽视人类在软件运行中的作用，忘记如果没有人类操作，软件自身毫无价值。

　　Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has declared: “Software is eating the world.” But it isirrational to be so afraid of being devoured.

　　风险投资家马克•安德烈森(Marc Andreessen)曾宣称：“软件正吞噬整个世界。”但这种担心是缺乏理性的。

　　We seem to have forgotten that computers do not eat. Their desires – for work or for anythingelse – are not just different. They are non-existent. All computers require is a small amount ofelectricity – and they are not smart enough to want even that.

　　我们似乎已经忘了计算机不会吃东西。无论是对工作还是其他任何事物，它们都没有任何欲望。它们是不存在的。计算机所需要的不过是少许电力，而且就连这点需求它们都没聪明到主动提出。

本文关键字: 造福社会影响文明你不必与科技为敌