何谓技术奇点？—后人类时代的来临

原作者：
来源What is the Technological Singularity?
译者boxi

摩尔定律出现已有约46个年头。它是我们所看到的几十年的计算机硬件发展的描述符号，是指集成电路上所能容纳的晶体管的数目每两年翻一番，（至今仍）未有减缓的迹象。

The law is named after Gordon Moore, who described this pattern in 1965. He would know a thing or two about integrated circuits. He co-founded Intel in 1968.

该定律以戈登·摩尔（Gordon Moore）的名字命名，他在1965年描述了这一格局。此人通晓集成电路，于1968年与人共同创建了英特尔公司。

Moore has said in recent years that there’s about 10 or 20 years left in this trend, because “we’re approaching the size of atoms which is a fundamental barrier.” But then, he said, we’ll just make bigger chips.

摩尔最近几年曾说过这一趋势还能延续10到20年，因为“我们快接近原子大小的规模了，而这是一个根本性的障碍。”不过，他说，然后我们只需制造更大的芯片即可。

Ray Kurzweil, who we mentioned in last weekend’s piece on transhumanism, is known for his thoughts on another subject even more than he is known for his thoughts on transhumanism. That subject is the technological Singularity.

雷·库兹韦尔（Ray Kurzweil），此人我们在上周末的一篇有关超人类的文章中提到过，他以对有关超人类的思考而著称，实际上他有关另一个主题的思考更加出名。这个主题就是技术奇点（technologicalSingularity）。

The singularity comes after the time when our technological creations exceed the computing power of human brains, and Kurzweil predicts that based on Moore’s Law and the general trend of exponential growth in technology, that time will come before the mid-20th century.

这个奇点在我们的技术创造物超过了人类大脑的计算能力之后出现，库兹韦尔的预测是，根据摩尔定律及技术指数增长的总体趋势，此时间应该在二十世纪中叶之后（译注：怀疑作者搞错，应该是21世纪中叶才对，因为后文提到2045年这个时间点）。

We’ll see artificial intelligence that exceeds human intelligence around the same time, he says. But there’s more to it than just having created smarter intelligences. There are profound ramifications, but we’ll get to those soon.

与此同时，他说，我们将会看到人工智能超越人类智能。但是这不仅仅是创造出更聪明的智能而已。此事还有着更深远的影响，不过我们很快就会接触到那些东西的。

Technological singularity was a term coined by Vernor Vinge, the science fiction author, in 1983. “We will soon create intelligences greater than our own,” he wrote. “When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.”

技术奇点是科幻小说家弗诺·文奇（Vernor Vinge）1983年发明的一个术语。“我们不久将会创造出高于自己的智能”，他写道：“一旦此事发生，人类历史将会到达某种奇点，这种智力转变，就跟黑洞中心复杂的时空一样令人费解，而这样的世界远远超出了我们的理解”。

He was unifying the thoughts of many of his predecessors, Alan Turing and I. J. Good among them.

他统一了许多自己的前辈的思想，其中就包括阿兰·图灵（AlanTuring）和I. J.古德（I.J. Good）。

The idea is that when we become capable of creating beings more intelligent than us, it stands to reason that they — or their near-descendants — will be able to create intelligences more intelligent than themselves. This exponential growth of intelligences would work much like Moore’s Law — perhaps we can call it Kurzweil’s Law — but have more profound significance. When there are intelligences capable of creating more intelligent beings in rapid succession, we enter an age where technological advances move at a rate we can’t even dream of right now.

其想法是，要是我们能够创造出智能程度高于自己的东西的话，那么我们的创造物，或者其不远的后代，它们也能够创造出比其智能更高的智能也就变得合情合理。智能的指数增长将很类似于摩尔定律——也许我们可以把它叫做库兹韦尔定律，所不同的是其意义更为深远。一旦出现了能够创造出一连串比自身更智能的智能体，我们就迈入了这样的一个时代，其技术发展之快，甚至是我们现在甚至都无法想象的。

And that’s saying something: thanks to the nature of exponential growth, technological advance is already making headway at the fastest pace we’ve ever seen.

可以这么说：感谢指数增长的自然属性，技术发展已经在以我们从未见过的最快步伐在前进。

The singularity doesn’t refer so much to the development of superhuman artificial intelligence — although that is foundational to the concept — as it does to the point when our ability to predict what happens next in technological advance breaks down.

奇点跟超人类人工智能的关系不是太大，尽管那是这一概念的基础——因为它的确是到达了这个点上，也即我们对下一次技术发展会发生什么事情的预测失败的时候。

What Will the Singularity Look Like?

这个奇点将会是怎样的？

Singularitarians say that we simply can’t imagine what such a future would be like. It’s hard to flaw that logic. Imagine, in a world where human intelligence is near the bottom of the ladder, what the world would look like even a short decade later. The short answer is: you can’t! The point is that as more intelligent beings they’ll be capable of not just imagining, but creating things we can’t even dream about.

那样的未来会是怎样的？奇点学家（Singularitarian）说我们根本无法想象。这一逻辑你很难找到漏洞。在一个人类智能接近阶梯底部的世界里，就算是短短的十年之后世界会变成什么样，想象一下。扼要的回答是：无法想象。其要点是因为更为智能的智能体不仅能够想象，还能够创造出我们想象不到的东西。

We can speculate as to the changes the Singularity would bring that would enable that exponential growth to continue. Once we build computers with processing power greater than the human brain and with self-aware software that is more intelligent than a human, we will see improvements to the speed with which these artificial minds can be run. Consider that with faster processing speeds, these AIs could do the thinking of a human in shorter amounts of time: a year’s worth of human processing would become eight months, then eventually weeks, days, minutes and at the far end of the spectrum, even seconds.

我们可以对奇点所带来的变化是否将会使得那样的指数增长得以继续进行质疑。一旦我们建造出处理能力超过人类大脑，且具备自我感知软件的，智能超越人类的计算机，我们就能够看到这些人工智能运行速度的改进。考虑到处理速度越快，这些人工智能就能够以越短的时间来进行人类的思考：人类需要处理一年的将会变成8个月，然后最终缩短到数周、数天、数分钟，并在遥远的将来甚至数以秒计。

There is some debate about whether there’s a ceiling to the processing speed of intelligence, though scientists agree that there is certainly room for improvement before hitting that limit. As with speculation in general, nobody can really speculate as to where that limit may sit, but it’s still fascinating to imagine an intelligence doing the thinking that a human does in one year in one minute.

有关于智能处理速度是否存在极限有一些争论，尽管科学家一致认为，在到达这一极限之前尚存在一定的改进空间。就推断而言，总的看来，没人能够真正推断出这一极限到底在哪里，但是想象到一个智能体能够用一分钟的时间来完成人类一年的思考，这一点仍然令人意乱神迷。

With that superhuman intelligence and incredibly fast, powerful processing power, it’s not a stretch to imagine that software re-writing its own source code as it arrives at new conclusions and attempts to progressively improve itself.

有了超人类智能和快得难以置信的强大处理能力，软件就能够在形成新结论并试图逐步改进自己的时候去重写自身代码，这样的想象可以说毫不夸张。

The Age of the Posthuman

后人类时代

What’s interesting is that there is potential for such post-Singularity improvements to machine speed and intelligence to crossover to human minds. Futurists speculate that such advanced technology would enable us to improve the processing power, intelligence and accessible memory limits of our own minds through changing the structure of the brain, or ‘porting’ our minds on to the same hardware that these intelligences will run on.

有趣的是，此类对机器速度和智能的后奇点改进存在着对人类大脑跨界改进的可能性。未来学家推测，通过改变大脑结构、或者将我们的思维“导出”到那些智能体运行所在的相同硬件上，这种先进技术将会使得我们能够突破自身处理能力、智能以及通达性记忆的限制。

In last week’s piece I asked whether we’d be able to tell when we crossed the line from transhuman to posthuman, or whether that line would be ever-moving as we found new ways to augment ourselves.

在上周的文章中，我问了这样一个问题，我们是否能够预测超越超人类到达后人类的时间，或者说这个时间点会随着我们找到改善自身的新方法而一直推移。

But here’s another, contrary question: could the Singularity, should it arrive, bring the age of the posthuman? If we are able to create superhuman intelligence and then upgrade our own intelligence by changing the fundamental structure of our minds, is that posthuman enough?

不过这里还有一个处于对立面的问题：奇点，如果会到来的话，它是否能够带来后人类时代？如果我们能够创造出超人类智能，并随后通过改变自身大脑的基础结构来升级我们自身的智能的话，这样的后人类足够了吗？

Augmentation is one thing, and upgrading human blood to vasculoid and allowing us to switch off emotions when we need to avoid an impulse purchase are merely augmentations. Increasing our baseline intelligence and processing speed seems to me to be much more significant: an upgrade over an augment.

增强是一回事，将人类血液升级为机器血液（Vasculoid），并允许我们在需要避免购买冲动时抛却情绪只不过是一种增强。对我来说，提高我们的智能基础和处理速度其意义更为显著：那是一种在增强基础之上的升级。

There is, of course, no reason to think that our creations would have any interest in us or improving the hardware on which we currently run. Many science fiction authors have postulated that superhuman artificial intelligence would in fact want us extinct, given that our species’ behavior doesn’t lend itself to sustainability.

当然，没理由认为我们的创造物，会对我们或改进我们目前正在运行的硬件产生任何的兴趣。考虑到我们人类的行为并不适合于可持续性，许多科幻小说家都想当然地认定超人类智能实际上会希望我们人类灭绝。

Is the Singularity Near?

奇点将至？

The real question, of course, is whether such a technological singularity will ever happen. Just because it has been predicted by some doesn’t mean it will, and there’s plenty of debate on both sides of the argument. Ever the technological optimist, I’m going to avoid the question in this piece — though that’s not to say I don’t think it’s an important one. You can have a look at David Brin’s fantastic article, Singularities and Nightmares: Extremes of Optimism and Pessimism About the Human Future, for more discussion of that question. I’m fond of this quote from Brin’s piece:

当然，真正的问题是，那样的技术奇点是否会出现。仅仅因为有人预测过并不能保证它就会发生，正反双方都存在许多的争论。作为曾是技术乐观主义者的我在本篇中打算回避这个问题—尽管这并非说我认为它不重要。你可以看一看大卫·布林（DavidBrin）的奇篇怪论《奇点与噩梦：人类未来的悲喜两重天》，此文进一步讨论了这个问题。我喜欢布林这篇文章的这句话：

“How can models, created within an earlier, cruder system, properly simulate and predict the behavior of a later and vastly more complex system?”

“一个早期的、不那么成熟的系统所创造出来的模型又怎能正确地模仿和预测后期的、复杂得多得多的系统呢？”

Of course, if you accept that quote as the basis for any argument, it’s just as hard to map the progress of and towards the singularity as it is to deny that it will happen.

当然了，如果你把这句话作为任何论证的基础的话，指出奇点或向奇点演进的进程其困难程度就跟否认奇点会发生一样的困难。

According to Kurzweil’s predictions, we will see computer systems as powerful as the human brain in 2020. We won’t have created artificial intelligence until after 2029, the year in which Kurzweil predicts we will have reverse-engineered the brain. It’s that breakthrough that will allow us to create artificial intelligence, and begin to explore other ideas like that of mind uploading.

按照库兹韦尔的预测，到2020年我们将会看到计算机系统跟人类大脑一样强大。直到2029年之前我们仍无法创造出人工智能，此年库兹韦尔预计我们将能够对人类大脑进行逆向工程。这一突破将会使得我们得以创造出人工智能，并开始探索诸如意识上传这类的想法。

Current trends certainly don’t oppose such a timeline, and in 2009, Dr Anthony Berglas wrote in a paper entitled “Artificial Intelligence Will Kill Our Grandchildren” that:

当前的趋势当然还没有违背这样的时间线，在2009年的时候，安东尼·巴格拉斯（AnthonyBerglas）博士在一篇名为《人工智能将会杀死我们的孙辈》的文章中写道：

“A computer that was ten thousand times faster than a desktop computer would probably be at least as computationally powerful as the human brain. With specialized hardware it would not be difficult to build such a machine in the very near future.”

“速度万倍于桌面计算机的电脑将有可能至少跟人类大脑一样强大。通过专门的硬件，在不久的将来制造出那样的机器并非难事。”

Important to consider is that if Kurzweil’s predictions come true, in 2029 when we’ve reverse engineered the brain we would have already had nine years of improvement on those computer systems with brain-like power and capacity. In this timeline, as soon as we create artificial intelligence it will already be able to think faster and with faster access to more varied input than humans thanks to the hardware it runs on.

需要重点考虑的是，如果库兹韦尔的预测成为现实，到了2029年我们对大脑逆向工程成功的时候，我们已经对能力和容量类似大脑的那些计算机系统进行了9年的改进。那么在这一时间线上，只要我们创造出人工智能，由于其所运行的硬件，它们就已经能够以比人类更快的速度进行思考，并以更快的速度去访问更加多样化的输入了。

By 2045, Kurzweil says, we will have expanded the capacity for intelligence of our civilization — comprised by that stage of both software and people — one billion fold.

到了2045年，库兹韦尔说，我们文明的智能—包括那个阶段的软件和人在内，其能力将会被扩充十亿倍。

One only needs to look at history to see our capacity for rapid improvement in retrospect. One of my favorite metrics is life expectancy. In 1800, most people wouldn’t expect to live past 30. In 2000, the life expectancy in developed countries was 75 — and most of us have even met our grandparents, something that would have been quite unusual centuries ago.

只需回顾一下历史就能看到我们能力改善的快速。我喜欢的一个指标是平均寿命。1800年的时候，大多数人都不指望能活过30岁。而到了2000年，发达国家的平均寿命是75岁—我们当中的大部分人甚至都还能看到自己的祖父母，这在几个世纪之前是相当不寻常的。

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