The fact that the Financial Times special series on robots has been framed around the question “Robots: friend or foe?” is fascinating to me. I understand that change is scary, and that the cyborg from The Terminator is really scary. But my reading of the evidence is that the rapid changes we are seeing in artificial intelligence, sensor development and many other fields are not sending us hurtling towards a future in which the machines become self-aware and take over. Worrying about that future is so misplaced that, as the AI pioneer Andrew Ng puts it, it is like worrying about overpopulation?.?.?.?on Mars.
英國《金融時(shí)報(bào)》關(guān)于機(jī)器人的特別系列報(bào)道一直圍繞著這樣一個(gè)問題：機(jī)器人是敵是友？這讓我很感興趣。我知道變化是可怕的，我也知道《終結(jié)者》(Terminator)中的半機(jī)器人確實(shí)可怕。但我讀到的證據(jù)表明，我們?cè)谌斯ぶ悄?AI)、傳感器開發(fā)以及其他很多領(lǐng)域看到的快速變化，并沒有在把我們快速推向一個(gè)機(jī)器產(chǎn)生自我意識(shí)并接管一切的未來。擔(dān)心這種未來毫無意義，就像人工智能先驅(qū)吳恩達(dá)(Andrew Ng)所說的那樣，這就好像擔(dān)心……火星上人口過多。