How stands the world economy? The answer, as my colleague Tej Parikh noted recently, is that it is confusing. That should not be surprising. Quite apart from some evident macroeconomic uncertainties — disturbing trends in fiscal deficits and debts in many important countries, to take one example — we are witnessing two huge events: the abdication of the US as global hegemon and the uncontrolled onset of what could prove to be the most important of all humanity’s technological innovations, artificial intelligence. No wonder we are confused. The remarkable thing, however, is how well the world economy has coped with the shocks and the uncertainty, at least so far.
世界經濟形勢如何？答案正如我的同事泰杰?帕里克(Tej Parikh)最近指出的，令人困惑。這么說應該不會讓人感到奇怪。除了宏觀經濟層面一些顯而易見的不確定性——舉個例子，許多重要國家的財政赤字和債務呈現令人不安的趨勢——我們正目睹兩大巨變：美國走下全球霸主之位；人工智能（也許將是整個人類歷史上最重要的技術變革）以一種失控的架勢開始爆火。難怪我們會困惑。然而不同尋常的是，世界經濟頂住了這些沖擊和不確定性，至少到目前為止表現良好。