Artificial Intelligence already rules the world. It has for hundreds of years. The greatest trick AI ever pulled was convincing you that it didn’t already exist.

一个 rtificial智能已经统治世界。 它已经有数百年的历史了。 AI有史以来最大的技巧就是说服您它不存在。

Of course it does.

当然可以。

My country was colonized by AI, 400 years ago. Today, AI is thriving while Americans die. Corporations won’t invent AI in the distant future. Corporations are AI right now, and have been for years.

400年前，我国被AI殖民。 今天，在美国人死亡的同时，人工智能正在蓬勃发展。 公司不会在不久的将来发明人工智能。 公司 现在 是AI ，并且已经使用了很多年。

等等但是 (Wait but what)

When Mitt Romney said “corporations are people, my friend” people laughed at him. But he was right. Corporations are legal persons. This is not an analogy or a metaphor but a legal fact. Corporate personhood has been accepted since ancient India, through Rome, to the present day.

当罗姆尼(Mitt Romney)说“公司是人，我的朋友”时，人们嘲笑他。 但是他是对的。 公司是法人 。 这不是类比或隐喻，而是法律事实。 自古印度到罗马，企业法人地位一直被接受。

Corporations can buy property, enter contracts, and are treated generally the same as ‘natural’ persons in the eyes of the law. They even have the right to free speech, including influencing elections. Corporations are artificial persons. Therefore (since we assume people are intelligent), they are artificially intelligent. Corporations are AI.

公司可以购买财产，订立合同，并且在法律上通常被视为与“自然人”相同。 他们甚至有权发表言论自由， 包括影响选举 。 公司是自然人。 因此(因为我们假设人们是聪明的)，所以他们是人工智能的。 公司就是人工智能。

人是计算机 (Human beings are computers)

Wait, you’ll say, but AI is computers. OK. Then what’s a computer? Until the late 1960s, a computer was a human being.

等一下，您会说，但AI是计算机。 好。 那是什么电脑呢？ 直到1960年代后期，计算机才是人类。

The word computer has been a job description since the 1600s. Computers were a bunch of boys in a room doing astronomical computations. Or black women, like Katherine Johnson at proto-NASA in 1952.

自1600年代以来，计算机一词一直是工作描述 。 电脑是一群男孩在房间里进行天文计算。 或者说黑人女性，例如1952年美国国家航空航天局(NASA)的凯瑟琳·约翰逊(Katherine Johnson)。

“I heard that Langley was looking for black women computers,” she said.“We wrote our own textbook, because there was no other text about space,” she says. “We just started from what we knew. We had to go back to geometry and figure all of this stuff out. Inasmuch as I was in at the beginning, I was one of those lucky people.”That luck came in large part because she was no stranger to geometry. It was only natural that she calculate the trajectory of Alan Shepard’s 1961 trip into space, America’s first. (When Computers Wore Skirts)

The computers that first sent men to space were not machines. They were black women.

首先将人们送往太空的计算机不是机器。 他们是黑人妇女。

Computation has always been a collective task, and it has always involved human beings. The modern myth of a lone inventor creating AI is as unrealistic as Pygmalion fucking a statue. AI has always been a network, and it uses every computer available — including human brains.

计算一直是一项集体任务，它一直涉及人类。 一个孤独的发明家创造 AI的现代神话与Pygmalion操雕像一样不现实。 人工智能一直是一个网络，它使用所有可用的计算机，包括人的大脑。

If you think, wait, I’m using a computer now and there’s no human being involved, just look in the black mirror. You’re the computer. Who said you’re using the network? Maybe it’s using you.

如果您认为，等一下，我现在正在使用计算机，没有人参与，只是看着黑色的镜子。 你是电脑。 谁说您正在使用网络？ 也许是在用你。

殖民主义是公司 (Colonialism was corporate)

The 1600s also saw the birth of the most rapacious and successful corporations in human history. When we speak of the history of AI it is important to talk about colonialism, because this was really the birth of superpowered AI. People like me were not colonized by men or even by nations. We were colonized by corporations.

1600年代也见证了人类历史上最贪婪和成功的公司的诞生。 当我们谈论AI的历史时，重要的是谈论殖民主义，因为这确实是超能力AI的诞生。 像我这样的人并没有被人甚至国家所殖民。 我们被公司殖民。

The same administrative technology that enabled people to plot the stars also enabled them to transform companies from local organizations to globe-spanning behemoths that bought and sold human beings.

使人们能够绘制星星的相同管理技术还使他们能够将公司从本地组织转变为遍布全球的买卖人类的庞然大物。

These AI were very real. In fact, they were painted and displayed in public. The Dutch East India Company (VoC), for example, was often depicted as a Queen, seated on a throne.

这些AI是非常真实的。 实际上，它们是在公共场所绘画和展示的。 例如，荷兰东印度公司(VoC)通常被描绘成坐在宝座上的女王。

Here’s the company painted by Nicolaas Verkolje on her 100th birthday.

这是Nicolaas Verkolje诞辰100周年时画的公司。

She was often depicted this way — as a Queen — and this was not just propaganda. The VoC was a legal person. This was in fact the best way of visualizing reality. To the colonized she was as real and cruel as Queen Victoria would be.

通常以这种方式描绘她-作为女王-这不只是宣传。 VoC是法人。 实际上，这是可视化现实的最佳方法。 在殖民地，她像维多利亚女王一样真实而残酷。

These paintings were a representation, but the VoC was a person in legal fact. These corporations really were people in the eyes of the law whereas slaves, for example, were not. And they truly ruled the world. The VoC alone was worth more than today’s Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and AliBaba combined.

这些画作是代表，但VoC是有法律根据的人。 这些公司实际上是法律眼中的人，而奴隶则不是。 他们真正统治了整个世界。 仅VoC的价值就超过了今天的Apple，Amazon，Microsoft，Google，Facebook和AliBaba的总和。

The VoC (1637) was worth $8 trillion in today dollars. The Mississippi Co (1720), $7 trillion. The South Sea Co, $4.5 trillion. These are staggering amounts which dwarf the Fortune 100 today.

VoC(1637)的今天价值为8万亿美元。 密西西比州公司(1720)，7万亿美元。 南海公司(South Sea Co)，4.5万亿美元。 这些惊人的数字使今天的《财富》 100强相形见war。

For the first time in history this was empire not of men but of artificial beings — legally coded in joint stock companies — who lived for hundreds of years. This more than anything was the birth of AI, and they were wildly successful. In that sense a world ruled by AI isn’t science fiction. It’s historical fact.

这是有史以来的第一次，这不是人类的帝国，而是人类的帝国，这个人类存在了数百年。 这比AI的诞生更重要，而且它们取得了巨大的成功。 从这个意义上讲，由AI统治的世界不是科幻小说。 这是历史事实。

公司就是人工智能。 真 (Corporations are AI. Really)

I mention colonialism because it shows what happens if you remove modern biases about AI (it must be a robot) and look at it objectively and historically. At what point did artificial persons A) emerge B) have agency C) display intelligence? By these standards it is clear that AI is not something in the future, it is in the past and very much in the present day.

我之所以提到殖民主义，是因为它表明了如果消除现代关于AI的偏见(它必须是机器人)并客观客观地观察它会发生什么。 人造人A)在什么时候出现B)代理商C)展示出什么情报？ 根据这些标准，很明显，AI不再是将来，而是过去，而现在已经很多。

You can say ‘no, we don’t recognize corporations as people’ but we do. We have for centuries. The US Supreme Court literally gave them free speech rights in Citizens United. You can say that corporations can’t act on their own, but they do, they just use a vast network of machine and human computers. You can say that corporations aren’t intelligent, but they are. They perceive, process, and act on more of the world’s information than any human in history. Indeed, you cannot say these things because they are not true.

您可以说：“不，我们不承认公司为人”， 但我们确实如此 。 我们有几个世纪了。 美国最高法院从字面上给了他们在公民联合会的言论自由权。 您可以说公司不能独自行动，但他们可以这样做 ，它们只是使用庞大的机器和人机网络。 您可以说公司不是很聪明，但是他们很聪明。 他们对世界信息的感知，处理和作用比历史上任何人类都要多。 确实，您不能说这些话，因为它们不是真的。

It is a fact. Corporations are AI.

这是事实。 公司就是人工智能。

You can put it to the test. The gold standard for general AI is the Turing Test, can it have a conversation. Today, we talk to corporations all the time. Judges for example, have well documented interactions with corporate persons going back centuries. You could say that these interactions were through lawyers, but the same is true of human beings. In the legal record, natural and artificial persons are indistinguishable.

您可以对其进行测试。 通用AI的金标准是图灵测试，可以进行对话。 今天，我们一直在与公司交谈。 例如，法官与上百年来与公司人员的互动都有据可查的文档。 您可以说这些互动是通过律师进行的， 但人类也是如此 。 在法律记录中，自然人和人造人是无法区分的。

We also regularly have interactions with corporate brands through their customer service arms and social media and even chatbots. Using a human computer would be cheating in a Turing Test, but I argue that this is just a difference of scale. We’ve always pictured AI at an individual scale, when in reality it operates at a collective level. To ‘talk down’ to us a corporation uses human computers, but legally and in effect, it is the corporation that talks. The intelligence is there, it’s just at a higher level.

我们还定期通过企业客户服务部门，社交媒体甚至聊天机器人与企业品牌进行互动。 使用人机会在图灵测试中作弊，但我认为这只是规模上的差异。 我们总是以单个规模来描述AI，而实际上它是在集体层面上运作的。 与我们“交谈”的公司使用的是人机，但从法律上说，实际上是与公司交谈。 情报在那里，只是更高层次。

Again, this is something that we recognize legally. I am simply asking you to see it for yourself.

同样，这是我们在法律上承认的。 我只是想让您自己看看。

还讨厌你 (Also, it hates you)

Because we are looking for silicon we have missed the paper gods walking among us for years. Hollywood, for example, gets AI all wrong. They often depict AI as slaves, which is a joke. AI owns slaves.

因为我们正在寻找硅，所以我们已经错过了走在我们中间多年的纸神。 例如好莱坞，就把人工智能弄错了。 他们经常将AI描绘成奴隶，这是个玩笑。 AI拥有奴隶。

Hollywood also depicts humans banding together to either oppress or fight malevolent AI, but that’s a joke as well. There was never any need to fight. AI could just buy out 1% with board seats and money and they’d sell the rest of humanity out.

好莱坞还描绘了人类团结起来压迫或与恶毒的AI战斗，但这也是一个笑话。 永远不需要战斗。 AI可以用董事会席位和金钱买断1％的股份，然后将其余的人类卖掉。

This is not a prediction. It’s already happened.

这不是一个预测。 已经发生了。

In the United States corporations have taken over both parties, including the Republican Party wholesale. In numerous crashes, corporate assets have been bailed out while people are left out to dry (and die). Now — as they enter their Greatest Depression — stock prices are soaring while people are hungry and out of work. The one thing that corporations don’t have is the vote, but it doesn’t matter. They already have power.

在美国，公司已接管了双方，包括共和党批发 。 在无数次空难中，公司资产被保释，而人们被晾干(死)。 现在，当他们进入最大的萧条时期时，股价却在飙升，而人们却饿着肚子而失业。 公司没有的一件事是投票，但这并不重要。 他们已经拥有力量。

It is not just that Corporate AIs are also human. They are more than human. They are already more powerful than you. I’ve said that they hate you, but that’s not quite true. They’re indifferent, which is worse.

企业AI不仅是人类。 他们不仅仅是人 。 他们已经比您强大。 我说过他们恨你，但这不是真的。 他们无动于衷，更糟的是。

下一步发展 (The next evolution)

This is really just evolution in action. Life was single celled for billions of years until a few cells decided to specialize and get together. Then more and more groups of cells formed colonies, and eventually plants and animals. The end result is something like a human, which we call an individual, but which is really a supercomputer running on trillions of parallel machines. We call ourselves higher beings, but objectively we’re just spaceships for bacteria.

这实际上只是行动的演变。 生命是单细胞的，已经存在了数十亿年，直到少数细胞决定专门化并聚集在一起。 然后越来越多的细胞群形成菌落，最终形成动植物。 最终结果是像人类的东西，我们称其为个人，但实际上它是在数万亿台并行计算机上运行的超级计算机。 我们称自己为高等生物，但客观上我们只是细菌的宇宙飞船。

So in that sense, AI is already here. It already rules. Honestly, forget Earth. AI has already begun colonizing the stars.

因此，从这个意义上讲，人工智能已经存在。 它已经规则了。 老实说，忘记地球。 人工智能已经开始殖民星星 。