By Cmichel67 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

作者：Cmichel 67-自己的作品，CC BY-SA 4. 0

Kevin Kelly is one of the thinkers who helped define the ethos of the tech industry from its early days. As an editor of the Whole Earth Catalog in the 1980s and the founding editor of Wired magazine, he helped to integrate environmentalism and optimistic techno-futurism into a worldview that deeply influenced generations of founders, engineers, and creators. His work is so wide-ranging that it’s hard to sum it up in simple terms (I asked ChatGPT for help, but it could only give me vague generalities). His books and articles are a mix of technological prediction, interpretation 83 of the current zeitgeist, and philosophical exploration. Interestingly, his most recent book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, is a book of life advice! His intellectual breadth and ability to synthesize various seemingly unrelated trends and ideas are something to 5 I can only aspire.

凯文·凯利（Kevin Kelly）是从科技行业早期就帮助定义其精神特质的思想家之一。作为20世纪80年代《全球目录》的编辑和《连线》杂志的创始编辑，他帮助将环境保护主义和乐观的技术未来主义整合成一种世界观，深深影响了几代创始人、工程师和创造者。他的工作范围非常广泛，很难用简单的术语来概括（我向ChatGPT寻求帮助，但它只能给予我模糊的概括）。他的书和文章是技术预测、对当前时代精神的解释和哲学探索的混合体。有趣的是，他最近的一本书《生活的绝佳建议：《我希望早点知道的智慧》是一本人生忠告的书！他的知识广度和综合各种看似无关的趋势和思想的能力是我只能向往的。

Essentially, if you look at the fast-changing world of technology and you ask “Where is this all headed?”, and “Where should this all be headed?”, then Kevin Kelly is a natural person to ask. And in the interview that follows, that is basically what I asked him. I especially focused on his idea of the “technium”, which is all of human technology acting together as a single natural system or organism. We talk about whether this technium exists in competition with Earth’s natural environment, or whether the two can exist in harmony. We also discuss AI, social media crypto, and we talk about whether and how technological development can be actively steered. He also dispenses a bit of helpful life advice.

从本质上讲，如果你看到快速变化的技术世界，你会问“这一切将走向何方？"和“这一切应该走向何方？"，凯文·凯利是个很自然的问题。在接下来的采访中，这基本上就是我问他的问题。我特别关注他的“技术元素”的想法，即所有人类技术作为一个单一的自然系统或有机体共同作用。我们讨论的是技术元素是否与地球的自然环境竞争，还是两者能够和谐共存。我们还讨论了人工智能、社交媒体加密，我们讨论了是否以及如何积极引导技术发展。他还提供了一些有益的生活建议。

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N.S.: So first let's talk about your new book, Excellent Advice for Living. What made you decide to write a book of life advice?

注：首先，我们来谈谈你的新书《生活的最佳建议》。是什么让你决定写一本人生忠告的书？

K.K.: It’s an inadvertent book. Writing a book of advice was never on my bucket list. But I like pithy quotes. When I want to change my own behavior, I need to repeat little behavior-modifying mantras as reminders. I have found that memorable proverbs give me a way to grab hold of lofty advice. So if I can distill a whole book’s worth of advice into a sentence, that gives me the handle for it, to easily bring the lesson forward when needed. With that in mind I started the habit of compressing a lot of useful information into a short memorable tip. Advice is best when directed at a specific person, so I decided to aim my advice at my adult son, who was in his early twenties. Once I started writing tiny bits of advice down for him, I discovered I had a lot to say — as long as I could telegraph it into a tweet. Most of my advice is ancient wisdom, evergreen notions that have been circulating since forever. But I try to put everything into my own words, as few as possible. Most of my writing time on the project was trying to remove words and reduce the advice even further until it is less than 140 characters.

K. K.：这是一本无心之失的书。写一本忠告书从来不在我的遗愿清单上。但我喜欢简洁的引用。当我想改变自己的行为时，我需要重复一些行为调整的咒语作为提醒。我发现，令人难忘的谚语给予了我一个抓住崇高建议的方法。所以，如果我能把整本书的建议提炼成一句话，那就给了我处理它的方法，在需要的时候很容易地把教训提上来。考虑到这一点，我开始习惯于把大量有用的信息压缩成一个简短的、令人难忘的提示。针对特定的人提出建议是最好的，所以我决定把我的建议对准我成年的儿子，他才20出头。一旦我开始给他写一些小建议，我发现我有很多话要说--只要我能把它发到推特上。我的大多数建议都是古老的智慧，万年青的观念，一直流传至今。但我试着把一切都用自己的话说出来，尽可能少。 我在这个项目上的大部分写作时间都在试图删除单词，并进一步减少建议，直到它不到140个字符。

I like an old Irish custom where you give others a present on your birthday. So on my 68th birthday, I gifted 68 short bits of advice to my son, and while I was at it, I shared it with the rest of my extended family and without any expectations, posted it on my blog. The list ricocheted around the internet. So in the following year I started jotting down more adages aimed at my two grown daughters. As I was composing them I kept asking myself a couple of questions: is this advice practical and actionable? Can I stand behind it as true for me? Is this something I wished I had known earlier? If a bit passed these three filters, I’d add it to my list. On my next two birthdays I shared more insights I wished I had known earlier. I must have been getting better because these maxims reached escape velocity and were picked up by bloggers, newsletters and podcasters. They even made it onto the op-ed page of the New York Times.

我喜欢爱尔兰的一个古老习俗，在你生日时给予人一份礼物。所以在我68岁生日的时候，我给了我儿子68条简短的建议，当我在做的时候，我把它分享给了我的大家庭，没有任何期望，把它贴在了我的博客上。这份名单在互联网上迅速传播开来。所以在接下来的一年里，我开始记下更多针对我两个成年女儿的格言。当我在创作它们的时候，我不断地问自己几个问题：这个建议是否切实可行？我能站在它后面，对我来说是真实的吗？ 这是不是我希望早点知道的事？如果一个比特通过了这三个过滤器，我会把它添加到我的列表中。在接下来的两个生日，我分享了更多我希望早点知道的见解。我一定是越来越好了，因为这些格言达到了逃逸速度，被博客、时事通讯和播客所采纳。他们甚至登上了纽约时报的专栏版。

It’s handy to have blog posts to point to, but I wanted a really easy way to pass these lessons onto a young person or someone young at heart. Thus a small printed book of 450 bits of unsolicited advice that I wished I had known earlier, or Excellent Advice for Living. To be published by Viking/Penguin in May.

有博客文章可供参考是很方便的，但我想用一种非常简单的方法把这些经验教训传授给年轻人或内心年轻的人。因此，一本450位不请自来的建议的小印刷书，我希望我早一点知道，或极好的生活建议。将于五月由维京海盗/企鹅出版社出版。

N.S.: You've spent much of your life as a writer and editor. So your advice should be particularly relevant for me! What are one or two pieces of advice from the book that I should take to heart?

注：你一生中大部分时间都在做作家和编辑。所以你的建议应该对我特别有意义！书中有哪一两条建议是我应该铭记在心的？

K.K.: Here are a few I learned the hard way:

K. K.：以下是我从惨痛的经历中学到的几点：

Most articles and stories are improved significantly if you delete the first page of the manuscript draft. Immediately start with the action.

大多数文章和故事，如果你删除手稿草稿的第一页，就会有显著的改进。立即开始行动。

Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you write the first draft, don’t let the judgy editor get near. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment.

把创造和改进的过程分开。你不能同时写作和编辑，或雕刻和润色，或制作和分析。如果这样做，编辑器将停止创建者。你写初稿的时候，别让吹毛求疵的编辑接近你。一开始，造物主的思想必须从判断中解放出来。

To write about something hard to explain, write a detailed letter to a friend about why it is so hard to explain, and then remove the initial “Dear Friend” part and you’ll have a great first draft.

要写一些难以解释的东西，给朋友写一封详细的信，解释为什么它如此难以解释，然后去掉开头的“亲爱的朋友”部分，你就有了一个很好的初稿。

To be interesting just tell your story with uncommon honesty.

要想有趣，就用不同寻常的诚实来讲述你的故事。

N.S.: Thanks! I will keep those in mind. You're somewhat of a role model for me, since you've managed to weave together surprisingly disparate interests -- technology, environmentalism, foreign cultures -- into a cohesive worldview, mainly through writing and editing, which is something I'd like to do as well. So anyway, let's talk a bit about that. One of your basic ideas is that technology itself makes up a natural system, which you call the technium. When did you first come up with this idea, and what made you think of it?

注：谢谢！我会记住的。你在某种程度上是我的榜样，因为你成功地将令人惊讶的不同兴趣--技术，环保主义，外国文化--编织成一个有凝聚力的世界观，主要是通过写作和编辑，这也是我想做的事情。不管怎样，我们来谈谈这个。你的一个基本观点是，技术本身构成了一个自然系统，你称之为技术元素。你什么时候第一次想到这个主意，是什么让你想到这个主意的？

K.K.: First let me define what I mean by the technium. I call our human made system of all technologies working together, the technium. Each technology can not stand alone. It takes a saw to make a hammer and it takes a hammer to make a saw. And it takes both tools to make a computer, and in today’s factory it takes a computer to make saws and hammers. This co-dependency creates an ecosystem of highly interdependent technologies that support each other. The higher the technologies the more intertwined, complex, and codependent they become. At this point in our evolution we need farmers to support indoor plumbing and plumbing to support banks, and banks to enable farmers, and round and round

K. K.：首先让我定义一下我所说的技术元素。我把我们所有技术共同工作的人造系统称为技术元素。每一项技术都不能单独存在。用锯子做锤子，用锤子做锯子。这两种工具都可以用来制造电脑，而在今天的工厂里，制造锯子和锤子都需要电脑。这种相互依赖性创造了一个高度相互依赖的技术生态系统，这些技术相互支持。技术越高，它们就越相互交织、复杂和相互依赖。在我们进化的这一点上我们需要农民来支持室内管道系统和管道系统来支持银行，而银行又使农民能够，周而复始

You might call this network of technologies “culture” because it is the sum of everything that humans make. But the technium is more than just the sum of everything that is made. It differs from culture in that it is a persistent system with agency. Like all systems, the technium has biases and tendencies toward action, in a way that the term “culture” does not suggest. The one thing we know about all systems is that they have emergent properties and unexpected dynamics that are not present in their parts. So too, this system of technologies (the technium) has internal leanings, urges, behaviors, attractors that bend it in certain directions, in a way that a single screwdriver does not. These systematic tendencies are not extensions of human tendencies; rather they are independent of humans, and native to the technium as a whole. Like any system, if you cycle through it repeatedly, it will statistically favor certain inherent patterns that are embedded in the whole system. The question I keep asking is: what are the tendencies in the system of technologies as a whole? What does the technium favor?

你可以把这种技术网络称为“文化”，因为它是人类创造的一切的总和。但是技术元素不仅仅是所有被创造出来的东西的总和。它与文化的不同之处在于它是一个具有能动性的持久系统。像所有的系统一样，技术元素也有偏向和倾向于行动，这是“文化”一词所没有暗示的。关于所有系统，我们知道的一件事是，它们都具有涌现的特性和意外的动力学，而这些特性和动力学在它们的部分中并不存在。同样，这个技术系统（技术元素）也有内在的倾向、冲动、行为和吸引力，它们使它向某些方向弯曲，而这是一把螺丝刀所不能做到的。这些系统化的倾向不是人类倾向的延伸;相反，它们是独立于人类的，是整个技术元素的原生。像任何系统一样，如果你反复循环，它将在统计上有利于嵌入整个系统中的某些固有模式。 我一直在问的问题是：整个技术体系的发展趋势是什么？技术元素偏爱什么？

This idea kind of arrived from reading the critics of technology, such as Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, or Lewis Mumford, or Langdon Winner. They argued that our human-made artifacts create a deep web of interdependencies which give the technosphere its own agency, and I found their arguments convincing. They see the strength of this system as getting increasingly stronger, with great non-human agency, which I also agree with. But where I depart from the critics is that they are convinced that this network of technologies, this technium, is hostile to both nature and in particular antithetical to us humans, its creators. In fact, in their view, the technium is so antagonistic, and so powerful, yet beyond our control, that we need to dismantle it, or at least diminish it, or unplug it. In the eyes of the Unabomber and other anti-civilizationists, we need to destroy the technium before it destroys us.

这个想法是从阅读技术评论家的作品中产生的，比如泰德·卡钦斯基，《尤那邦摩》，或者刘易斯·芒福德，或者兰登·赢家。他们认为，我们的人造物品创造了一个相互依赖的深层网络，这给予了技术圈自己的代理权，我发现他们的论点令人信服。他们认为这个系统的力量越来越强大，有着巨大的非人类机构，我也同意。但我与批评者不同的地方是，他们确信这种技术网络，这种技术元素，对自然是敌对的，特别是对我们人类，它的创造者。事实上，在他们看来，技术元素是如此的敌对，如此的强大，却又超出了我们的控制，以至于我们需要拆除它，或者至少减少它，或者拔掉它。在尤那邦摩和其他反文明主义者看来，我们需要在技术元素摧毁我们之前摧毁它。

On the other hand, I see this technium as an extension of the same self-organizing system responsible for the evolution of life on this planet. The technium is evolution accelerated. A lot of the same dynamics that propel evolution are also at work in the technium. At its core the technium is an ecosystem of inventions capable of evolving entirely new forms of being that wet biology alone can not reach. Our technologies are ultimately not contrary to life, but are in fact an extension of life, enabling it to develop yet more options and possibilities at a faster rate. Increasing options and possibilities is also known as progress, so in the end, what the technium brings us humans is progress.

另一方面，我把这种技术元素看作是负责这个星球上生命进化的同一个自组织系统的延伸。技术元素正在加速进化。许多推动进化的动力学因素也在技术元素中起作用。技术元素的核心是一个发明的生态系统，能够进化出湿生物学无法达到的全新形式。我们的技术最终并不与生命相对立，而是生命的延伸，使其能够以更快的速度发展更多的选择和可能性。增加选择和可能性也被称为进步，所以最终，技术元素带给我们人类的是进步。

N.S.: You talk about the emergent properties of the technium. What are some of these emergent properties? Are we capable of confirming their existence with data and writing down simple, explicable rules that predict the evolution and/or the behavior of the technium itself?

注：你谈到了技术元素的涌现特性。这些涌现的特性有哪些？我们是否有能力用数据证实它们的存在，并写下简单的、可解释的规则来预测技术元素本身的演化和/或行为？

K.K.: One unexpected emergent property of the technium is that most inventions and innovations are co-invented multiple times, simultaneously and independently. That is, more than one person will honestly invent the next new thing about the same time. This means that the popular image of the lone mad inventor or heroic scientist is just wrong. For instance 23 other inventors created electric incandescent light bulbs prior to Thomas Edison. Edison is renowned primarily because he was the first to figure out the business model of electric lighting. Simultaneous independent invention is the norm, true for minor as well as major leaps like calculus, steam engines and the transistor. Because each and every technology is not a single standalone idea but a web of many ideas, the technium itself emerges as a significant partner in invention. Libraries, journals, communication networks, and the accumulation of other technologies help create the next idea, beyond the efforts of a single individual. If Alexander Graham Bell had not secured the patent for inventing the telephone, Elisha Gray would have gotten it because they both applied for the telephone patent on the same day (Feb 14, 1876). There is plenty of data and confirmation about this emergent phenomenon, and we can predict with pretty good accuracy that lone inventors will become increasingly rare, and that invention and innovation will increasingly operate at a higher institutional level.

K. K.：技术元素一个意想不到的涌现特性是，大多数发明和创新都是多次同时独立地共同发明的。也就是说，不止一个人会诚实地在同一时间发明下一个新事物。这意味着，孤独的疯狂发明家或英雄科学家的流行形象是错误的。例如，在托马斯·爱迪生之前，其他23位发明家创造了白炽灯泡。爱迪生之所以出名，主要是因为他是第一个发现电力照明商业模式的人。同时独立发明是常态，无论是微积分、蒸汽机还是晶体管等重大飞跃，都是如此。因为每一项技术都不是一个独立的想法，而是许多想法的网络，技术本身就成为发明的重要伙伴。 图书馆、期刊、通信网络和其他技术的积累有助于创造下一个想法，而不仅仅是一个人的努力。如果亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔没有获得发明电话的专利，以利沙·格雷就会得到它，因为他们在同一天（1876年2月14日）申请了电话专利。关于这一新兴现象，有大量的数据和证实，我们可以相当准确地预测，孤独的发明家将变得越来越罕见，发明和创新将越来越多地在更高的制度层面上运作。

To be even more precise, quantitative, and rule-ish, we’d need to have more than a single example of the technium. Right now we have only one technium and so we have an N=1 study, which yields meager reliable rules. But in pre-history, when there was scarce communication between the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, we had a N=5 case. The sequence of inventions on each continent were highly correlated locally, with the order of 60 ancient technologies such as pottery, weaving, and dog domestication appearing in a similar pattern on each separate continent. We also see near-identical parallel inventions of tricky contraptions like slingshots and blowguns. However, because it was so ancient, we don’t have a lot of data for this behavior. What we would really like is to have a N=100 study of hundreds of other technological civilizations in our galaxy. From that analysis we’d be able to measure, outline, and predict the development of technologies. That is a key reason to seek extraterrestrial life.

为了更精确、更定量和更有规律，我们需要不止一个技术元素的例子。现在我们只有一个技术元素，所以我们有一个N=1的研究，它产生了微薄的可靠规则。但在史前，当美洲、欧洲、亚洲、非洲和澳大利亚之间缺乏交流时，我们有一个N=5的病例。每个大陆的发明顺序在当地高度相关，60种古代技术，如陶器，编织和狗的驯化，在每个独立的大陆上都以类似的模式出现。我们也看到了类似的类似发明，比如弹弓和吹箭枪。然而，因为它太古老了，我们没有太多关于这种行为的数据。我们真正想要的是对我们银河系中数百个其他技术文明进行N=100的研究。通过这种分析，我们可以衡量、概述和预测技术的发展。 这是寻找外星生命的一个关键原因。

I think if we did have a robust set of techniums to inspect we’d find emergent phenomena like the rampant replication we see on this planet. At the core of the origin of life, and its ongoing billion-year metabolism, is its ability to replicate and copy information accurately. Life copies itself to live, copies to grow, copies to evolve. Life wants to copy. We could say the same about the technium, particularly the informational technium we are currently swimming in. Anything digital that can be copied, will be copied. To perform any kind of communication, information will be replicated perfectly, again and again. To send a message from one part of the globe to another requires innumerable copies along the route to be made. When information is processed in a computer, it is being ceaselessly replicated and re-copied while it computes. Information wants to be copied. Therefore, when certain people get upset about the ubiquitous copying happening in the technium, their misguided impulse is to stop the copies. They want to stamp out rampant copying in the name of "copy protection,” whether it be music, science journals, or art for AI training. But the emergent behavior of the technium is to copy promiscuously. To ban, outlaw, or impede the superconductivity of copies is to work against the grain of the system. It is a losing game. It’s like trying to work against the propensity of life to replicate. The “rule” then, is to flow with the copies. The prediction would be that innovations, agents, companies, and laws that embrace the easy flow of copies will prevail, while the innovations, agents, companies, and laws that try to thwart liberated ubiquitous copies will ultimately not prevail. This is not the quantitative, precise kind of prediction we’d like to have, but this kind of general emergent trend is the best we’ll do with a sample size of N1.

我认为如果我们有一套强大的技术来检查，我们会发现像我们在这个星球上看到的猖獗复制一样的紧急现象。生命起源的核心，以及它持续数十亿年的新陈代谢，是它准确复制和复制信息的能力。生命复制自己来生存，复制自己来成长，复制自己来进化。生活需要复制。我们也可以对技术元素说同样的话，特别是我们目前正在游泳的信息技术元素。任何可以被复制的数字，都会被复制。要执行任何类型的通信，信息将被完美地复制，一次又一次。要把一条信息从地球仪的一个地方发送到另一个地方，需要沿着制作无数的副本。当信息在计算机中处理时，它在计算的同时不断地被复制和重新复制。信息需要被复制。 因此，当某些人对技术元素中无处不在的复制感到不安时，他们被误导的冲动是阻止复制。他们希望以“版权保护”的名义杜绝猖獗的复制行为，无论是音乐、科学期刊还是人工智能培训的艺术。但技术元素的涌现行为是杂乱地复制。禁止、禁止或阻碍复制品的超导性，就是与系统的本质背道而驰。这是一场失败的游戏。这就像是试图对抗生命复制的倾向。“规则”，然后，是流动的副本。预测将是，创新，代理人，公司和法律，拥抱容易流动的副本将占上风，而创新，代理人，公司和法律，试图阻挠解放无处不在的副本最终不会占上风。 这不是我们想要的定量的、精确的预测，但这种一般的新兴趋势是我们在样本量为N1的情况下所能做的最好的预测。

N.S.: So let's talk about some of the current and near-future effects of the technium on our world. There's currently a big debate about how technology interfaces with the environment. On one side we have degrowthers, who think the environment -- including the climate, but also natural habitats -- can only be preserved by curbing economic growth, and thus see the impact of human technology on the natural world as fundamentally extractive. On the other side are the technologists, who hold that only technological innovation gives us a realistic chance of reducing our environmental footprint and averting truly disastrous climate change. What's your perspective on this debate?

注：那么，让我们来谈谈技术元素在当前和不久的将来对我们这个世界的影响。目前有一个关于技术如何与环境接口的大辩论。一方面，我们有退化论者，他们认为环境--包括气候，还有自然栖息地--只能通过抑制经济增长来保护，因此认为人类技术对自然世界的影响从根本上说是掠夺性的。另一方是技术专家，他们认为只有技术创新才能给我们一个现实的机会，减少我们的环境足迹，避免真正灾难性的气候变化。你对这场辩论的看法是什么？

K.K.: There is no question I favor the latter perspective: that while technology has gotten us into this mess (climate change) only technology can get us out of it. Only the technium (our technological system) is “big” enough to work at the global scale needed to fix this planetary sized problem. Individual personal virtue (bicycling, using recycling bins) is not enough. However the worry of some environmentalists is that technology can only contribute more to the problem and none to the solution. They believe that tech is incapable of being green because it is the source of relentless consumerism at the expense of diminishing nature, and that our technological civilization requires endless growth to keep the system going. I disagree.

K. K.：毫无疑问，我倾向于后一种观点：虽然技术让我们陷入了这个混乱（气候变化），但只有技术才能让我们摆脱它。只有技术（我们的技术系统）“大”到足以在全球范围内工作，以解决这个行星大小的问题。个人美德（骑自行车，使用回收箱）是不够的。然而，一些环保人士担心，技术只能对问题做出更多贡献，而不能解决问题。他们认为，技术无法成为绿色，因为它是以减少自然为代价的无情消费主义的源泉，我们的技术文明需要无休止的增长来保持系统的运转。我不同意。

In English there is a curious and unhelpful conflation of the two meanings of the word “growth.” The most immediate meaning is to increase in size, or increase in girth, to gain in weight, to add numbers, to get bigger. In short, growth means “more.” More dollars, more people, more land, more stuff. More is fundamentally what biological, economic, and technological systems want to do: dandelions and parking lots tend to fill all available empty places. If that is all they did, we’d be well to worry. But there is another equally valid and common use of the word “growth" to mean develop, as in to mature, to ripen, to evolve. We talk about growing up, or our own personal growth. This kind of growth is not about added pounds, but about betterment. It is what we might call evolutionary or developmental, or type 2 growth. It’s about using the same ingredients in better ways. Over time evolution arranges the same number of atoms in more complex patterns to yield more complex organisms, for instance producing an agile lemur the same size and weight as a jelly fish. We seek the same shift in the technium. Standard economic growth aims to get consumers to drink more wine. Type 2 growth aims to get them to not drink more wine, but better wine.

在英语中，“增长”一词的两个含义被奇怪而无益地混为一谈。 最直接的意思是增加尺寸，或增加周长，增加重量，增加数字，变得更大。简而言之，增长意味着“更多”更多的钱，更多的人，更多的土地，更多的东西。从根本上讲，更多的是生物、经济和技术系统想要做的事情：蒲公英和停车场往往填补所有可用的空地方。如果这就是他们所做的一切，我们就该担心了。但是，“成长”一词还有另一种同样有效和常见的用法，即指发展，如成熟、成熟、进化。 我们谈论成长，或者我们自己的个人成长。这种增长不是增加体重，而是改善。这就是我们所说的进化或发展，或2型增长。而是用更好的方式使用相同的成分。 随着时间的推移，进化将相同数量的原子排列成更复杂的模式，产生更复杂的有机体，例如产生了与水母大小和重量相同的敏捷狐猴。我们在技术元素中寻求同样的转变。标准的经济增长旨在让消费者喝更多的葡萄酒。第二类增长的目的是让他们不喝更多的酒，而是喝更好的酒。

The technium, like nature, excels at both meanings of growth. It can produce more, rapidly, and it can produce better, slowly. Individually, corporately and socially, we’ve tended to favor functions that produce more. For instance, to measure (and thus increase) productivity we count up the number of refrigerators manufactured and sold each year. More is generally better. But this counting tends to overlook the fact that refrigerators have gotten better over time. In addition to making cold, they now dispense ice cubes, or self-defrost, and use less energy. And they may cost less in real dollars. This betterment is truly real value, but is not accounted for in the “more” column. Indeed a tremendous amount of the betterment in our lives that is brought about by new technology is difficult to measure, even though it feels evident. This “betterment surplus” is often slow moving, wrapped up with new problems, and usually appears in intangibles, such as increased options, safety, choices, new categories, and self actualization — which like most intangibles, are very hard to pin down. The benefits only become more obvious when we look back in retrospect to realize what we have gained. Part of our growth as a civilization is moving from a system that favors more barrels of wine, to one that favors the same barrels of better wine.

技术元素，就像自然一样，在生长的两个意义上都表现出色。它可以生产更多，更快，也可以生产更好，更慢。从个人、公司和社会的角度来看，我们倾向于支持生产更多的功能。例如，为了衡量（从而提高）生产率，我们统计了每年制造和销售的冰箱数量。一般来说，越多越好。但这种计算往往忽略了冰箱随着时间的推移变得更好的事实。除了制冷外，它们现在还可以分配冰块，或者自动解冻，并且使用更少的能源。而且它们的真实的成本可能更低。这种改善是真正的真实的价值，但不计入“更多”一栏。事实上，新技术给我们的生活带来的巨大改善是难以衡量的，尽管它感觉很明显。 这种“改善盈余”通常进展缓慢，被新的问题所包裹，通常出现在无形资产中，如增加的选择、安全、选择、新的类别和自我实现--就像大多数无形资产一样，很难确定。 只有当我们回顾过去，认识到我们所取得的成就时，好处才会变得更加明显。我们作为一个文明的增长的一部分是从一个有利于更多桶葡萄酒的系统，一个有利于更好的葡萄酒相同的桶。

A major characteristic of sapiens has been our compulsion to invent things, which we have been doing for tens of thousands of years. But for most of history our betterment levels were flatlined, without much evidence of type 2 growth. That changed about 300 years ago when we invented our greatest invention -- the scientific method. Once we had hold of this meta-invention we accelerated evolution. We turned up our growth rate in every dimension, inventing more tools, more food, more surplus, more population, more minds, more ideas, more inventions, in a virtuous spiral. Betterment began to climb. For several hundred years, and especially for the last hundred years, we experience steady betterment. But that betterment — the type 2 growth — has coincided with massive expansion of “moreness.” We’ve exploded our human population by an order of magnitude, we’ve doubled our living space per person, we have rooms full of stuff our ancestors did not. Our betterment, that is our living standards, have increased alongside the expansion of the technium and our economy, and most importantly the expansion of our population. There is obviously some part of a feedback loop where increased living standards enables yearly population increases and more people create the technology for higher living standards, but causation is hard to parse. What we can say for sure is that as a species we don’t have much experience, if any, with increasing living standards and fewer people every year. We’ve only experience increased living standards alongside of increased population.

智人的一个主要特征是我们对发明事物的强迫性，这一点我们已经做了几万年了。但在历史上的大部分时间里，我们的改善水平都是持平的，没有太多证据表明是第二类增长。这种情况在大约300年前发生了变化，当时我们发明了最伟大的发明--科学方法。一旦我们掌握了这个元发明，我们就加速了进化。我们在各个方面都提高了增长率，发明了更多的工具，更多的食物，更多的盈余，更多的人口，更多的头脑，更多的想法，更多的发明，在一个良性的螺旋中。经济开始好转。几百年来，特别是最近几百年来，我们经历了稳步的改善。但这种改善--第二类增长--与“更多”的大规模扩张同时发生。我们的人口数量激增了一个数量级，我们的人均生活空间翻了一番，我们的房间里堆满了我们祖先没有的东西。 我们的改善，也就是我们的生活水平，随着技术和经济的发展而提高，最重要的是我们人口的增长。很明显，这是一个反馈循环的一部分，生活水平的提高使人口逐年增加，更多的人创造了更高生活水平的技术，但因果关系很难分析。我们可以肯定的是，作为一个物种，我们没有太多的经验，如果有的话，随着生活水平的提高和人口的减少。我们只经历了生活水平的提高和人口的增加。

By their nature demographic changes unroll slowly because they run on generational time. Inspecting the demographic momentum today it is very clear human populations are headed for a reversal on the global scale by the next generation. After a peak population around 2070, the total human population on this planet will start to diminish each year. So far, nothing we have tried has reversed this decline locally. Individual countries can mask this global decline by stealing residents from each other via immigration, but the global total matters for our global economy. This means that it is imperative that we figure out how to shift more of our type 1 growth to type 2 growth, because we won’t be able to keep expanding the usual “more.” We will have to perfect a system that can keep improving and getting better with fewer customers each year, smaller markets and audiences, and fewer workers. That is a huge shift from the past few centuries where every year there has been more of everything.

从本质上讲，人口变化的进展缓慢，因为它们是在一代人的时间内进行的。审视今天的人口势头，很明显，到下一代，全球人口将出现逆转。在2070年左右的人口高峰之后，这个星球上的总人口将开始每年减少。到目前为止，我们所做的任何尝试都没有扭转这种下降。个别国家可以通过移民从彼此那里偷走居民来掩盖这种全球衰退，但全球总量对我们的全球经济至关重要。这意味着我们必须找出如何将更多的第一型增长转变为第二型增长，因为我们将无法继续扩大通常的“更多”。 我们必须完善一个系统，使其能够在每年客户减少、市场和受众减少、工人减少的情况下不断改进和变得更好。这与过去几个世纪相比是一个巨大的转变，在过去的几个世纪里，每年都有更多的东西。

In this respect “degrowthers” are correct in that there are limits to bulk growth — and running out of humans may be one of them. But they don’t seem to understand that evolutionary growth, which includes the expansion of intangibles such as freedom, wisdom, and complexity, doesn’t have similar limits. We can always figure out a way to improve things, even without using more stuff — especially without using more stuff! There is no limit to betterment. We can keep growing (type 2) indefinitely.

在这方面，“退化者”是正确的，因为批量增长是有限度的--人类的减少可能是其中之一。但他们似乎不明白，进化增长，包括无形资产的扩张，如自由，智慧和复杂性，没有类似的限制。我们总是可以找到一种方法来改善事情，即使不使用更多的东西-特别是不使用更多的东西！改善是没有限制的。我们可以无限期地保持增长（类型2）。

The related concern about the adverse impact of the technology on nature is understandable, but I believe, can also be solved. The first phases of agriculture and industrialization did indeed steamroll forests and wreck ecosystems. Industry often required colossal structures of high-temperature, high pressure operations that did not operate at human or biological scale. The work was done behind foot-thick safety walls and chain link fences. But we have "grown.” We’ve learned the importance of the irreplaceable subsidy nature provides our civilizations and we have begun to invent more suitable technologies. Industrial-strength nuclear fission power will eventually give way to less toxic nuclear fusion power. The work of this digital age is more accommodating to biological conditions. As kind of a symbolic example, the raw ingredients for our most valuable products, like chips, require ultra cleanliness, and copious volumes of air and water cleaner than we’d ever need ourselves. The tech is becoming more aligned with our biological scale. In a real sense, much of the commercial work done today is not done by machines that could kill us, but by machines we carry right next to our skin in our pockets. We continue to create new technologies that are more aligned with our biosphere. We know how to make things with less materials. We know how to run things with less energy. We’ve invented energy sources that reduce warming. So far we’ve not invented any technology that we could not successfully make more green.

有关技术对自然的不利影响的相关担忧是可以理解的，但我相信，也可以解决。农业和工业化的第一阶段确实摧毁了森林，破坏了生态系统。工业通常需要巨大的高温、高压操作结构，而这些操作结构并不以人类或生物的规模进行操作。这项工作是在一英尺厚的安全墙和铁丝网围栏后面进行的。我们“成长”了。我们已经认识到大自然为我们的文明提供的不可替代的补贴的重要性，我们已经开始发明更合适的技术。工业强度的核裂变发电最终将给予于毒性较小的核聚变发电。这个数字时代的工作更适应生物条件。作为一个象征性的例子，我们最有价值的产品的原材料，比如薯片，需要超清洁，大量的空气和水比我们自己需要的还要干净。 这项技术越来越符合我们的生物规模。从真实的意义上说，今天的许多商业工作不是由可能杀死我们的机器完成的，而是由我们口袋里贴身携带的机器完成的。我们继续创造与我们的生物圈更加一致的新技术。我们知道如何用更少的材料制造东西。我们知道如何用更少的能量来运行事物。我们已经发明了减少变暖的能源。到目前为止，我们还没有发明任何技术，我们不能成功地使更多的绿色。

We have a ways to go before we implement these at scale, economically, with consensus. And it is not inevitable at all that we will grab the political will to make these choices. But it is important to realize that the technium is not inherently contrary to nature; it is inherently derived from evolution and thus inherently capable of being compatible with nature. We can choose to create versions of the technium that are aligned with the natural world. Or not. As a radical optimist, I work towards a civilization full of life-affirming high technology, because I think this is possible, and by imagining "what could be" gives us a much greater chance of making it real.

在我们大规模、经济地、协商一致地实施这些措施之前，我们还有很长的路要走。我们将抓住做出这些选择的政治意愿，这一点也不是不可避免的。但重要的是要认识到，技术元素并不是天生就与自然相违背的;它本质上是从进化中衍生出来的，因此本质上能够与自然相容。我们可以选择创造与自然世界一致的技术元素版本。或者不是。作为一个激进的乐观主义者，我致力于一个充满生命肯定的高科技的文明，因为我认为这是可能的，通过想象“可能是什么”，我们有更大的机会真实的。

N.S.: I really like that vision a lot. You and I are quite closely aligned on our basic techno-optimism, our view of growth, and our concept of the relationship between human civilization and nature. But I'd like to try to challenge this optimism a little bit. Since around 2010, there have been increasing concerns about the direction the technium has taken us -- toward smartphones that absorb all our attention and take us out of the world and foster loneliness, toward social networks that sow sociopolitical discord and create feelings of personal inadequacy. Do you think innovation took something of a wrong turn in the 2010s, or are these problems overstated?

注：我真的很喜欢这个愿景。你和我在基本的技术乐观主义、对增长的看法以及对人类文明与自然关系的概念上非常一致。但我想试着挑战一下这种乐观主义。自2010年左右以来，人们越来越担心技术元素将我们带向何方--智能手机吸引了我们所有的注意力，将我们带离世界，助长孤独感;社交网络播下了社会政治的不和谐，创造了个人的不足感。你认为创新在2010年代出现了一些错误的转折，还是这些问题被夸大了？

K.K.: These problems are overstated. The thing to remember when evaluating new technologies is we have to always ask “compared to what?.” Mercury-based dental fillings statistically caused some harm, but compared to what? Compared to cavities, they were a miracle. We tend to give existing technologies a pass from the degree of scrutiny we give new technologies. Social media can transmit false information at great range at great speed. But compared to what? Social media's influence on elections from transmitting false information was far less than the influence of the existing medias of cable news and talk radio, where false information was rampant. Did anyone seriously suggest we should regulate what cable news hosts or call in radio listeners could say? Bullying middle schoolers on social media? Compared to what? Does it even register when compared to the bullying done in school hallways? Radicalization on YouTube? Compared to talk radio? To googling?

K. K.：这些问题被夸大了。在评估新技术时要记住的是，我们必须始终问“与什么相比？”从统计数据来看，含汞的牙齿填充物造成了一些伤害，但与之相比呢？比起蛀牙，简直就是奇迹。我们倾向于给予现有技术一个通行证，从我们给新技术的审查程度。社交媒体可以在大范围内以极快的速度传播虚假信息。但是和什么相比呢？社交媒体传播虚假信息对选举的影响远远小于现有媒体有线新闻和谈话广播的影响，后者的虚假信息非常猖獗。有没有人认真地建议我们应该管制有线电视新闻主持人或打电话给电台听众的话？在社交媒体上欺负中学生？和什么相比？与学校走廊里的欺凌行为相比，这是否值得注意？YouTube上的激进？和电台谈话节目相比？去谷歌吗

The complexity of social media is akin to biology. It is not a coincidence that we speak of things going viral. Figuring out what is going on with these new platforms, what is harmful, what is beneficial, is as challenging as determining what is best for our health. Human bodies have so many interacting variables, all difficult to isolate, that we can’t rely on a single or even a few studies to determine our best health practices. Initial, honest, well-crafted medical studies are often proven wrong, sometimes embarrassingly wrong, many studies later. In fact it may take hundreds of studies before we can say a result is “true." Social media is equally complex, with even more variables, and it is still an infant. We are trying to evaluate a baby that is roughly 250 months old, and hoping to predict what it will be good for when it grows up.

社交媒体的复杂性类似于生物学。我们谈论的事情会像病毒一样传播并不是巧合。弄清楚这些新平台发生了什么，什么是有害的，什么是有益的，就像确定什么对我们的健康最好一样具有挑战性。人体有如此多的相互作用的变量，所有这些变量都很难分离出来，以至于我们不能依靠一项甚至几项研究来确定我们的最佳健康实践。最初的、诚实的、精心设计的医学研究往往被证明是错误的，有时是令人尴尬的错误，许多研究之后。事实上，在我们可以说一个结果是“真实的”之前，可能需要数百项研究。“社交媒体同样复杂，有更多的变数，它仍然是一个婴儿。我们正试图评估一个大约250个月大的婴儿，并希望预测它长大后会有什么好处。

A further complication is that we are judging a class of technologies based on what kids do with them. Kids are inherently obsessive about new things, and can become deeply infatuated with stuff that they outgrow and abandon a few years later. So the fact they may be infatuated with social media right now should not in itself be alarming. Yes, we should indeed understand how it affects children and how to enhance its benefits, but it is dangerous to construct national policies for a technology based on the behavior of children using it.

更复杂的是，我们正在根据孩子们用它们做什么来判断一类技术。孩子们天生就对新事物着迷，并且可能会对他们成长并在几年后放弃的东西深深着迷。因此，他们现在可能迷恋社交媒体的事实本身并不令人担忧。是的，我们确实应该了解它如何影响儿童以及如何提高其效益，但根据儿童使用技术的行为来制定国家政策是危险的。

Similarly, we should be wary of evaluating a technology within only one culture. So far, we are extremely biased because we have examined social media primarily in the US. There is little research on the effects — plus or minus — on users in other cultures. Since it is the same technology, inspecting how it is used in other parts of the world would help us isolate what is being caused by the technology and what is being caused by the peculiar culture of the US.

同样，我们也应该警惕只在一种文化中评估一项技术。到目前为止，我们非常有偏见，因为我们主要在美国研究社交媒体。在其他文化中，很少有关于用户的影响-正负-的研究。既然这是同一种技术，那么检查它在世界其他地方的使用情况将有助于我们区分出技术造成的后果和美国独特文化造成的后果。

There are surely new problems generated by social media. We can not use something for hours a day, every day, and have it not affect us. We have hints, but don’t really know. As we discover how it works, a wise society would modulate how this technology is used — by adults and children. As we begin to understand its tendencies, harms and benefits, we can devise incentives to continually re-design the tech to enhance democracy and well-being. All this must be done on the fly, in real time, because what we have learned over the past 100 years is that we can’t figure out, and can’t predict, what technologies will be good for simply by thinking and talking about them. New technologies are so complex they have to be used on the street in order to reveal their actual character. We are likely to guess wrong at first, as we have been wrong in the past when trying to guess what a new technology meant. We can laugh now at the moral panics over the degrading nature of novels, cinema, sports, music, dancing, TV, and comic books (the latter two prohibited in our house when I was growing up), but we know prohibitions never work in the long term. We should engage with social media, because we can only steer technologies while we engage them. Without engagement we don’t get to steer.

社交媒体肯定会产生新的问题。我们不可能一天几个小时、每天都使用某样东西，而让它不影响我们。我们有线索，但不知道。当我们发现它是如何工作的，一个明智的社会会调整这种技术是如何使用的-由成人和儿童。当我们开始了解它的趋势、危害和好处时，我们可以制定激励措施，不断重新设计技术，以增强民主和福祉。所有这一切都必须在飞行中真实的完成，因为我们在过去的100年里学到的是，我们不能简单地通过思考和谈论来计算出，也不能预测技术将有什么好处。新技术是如此复杂，他们必须在街上使用，以揭示其实际特征。我们很可能一开始就猜错了，就像我们过去试图猜测一项新技术的含义时一样。 我们现在可以嘲笑对小说、电影、体育、音乐、舞蹈、电视和漫画书（在我成长的过程中，后两种在我们家被禁止）的堕落本质的道德恐慌，但我们知道禁令永远不会起作用。我们应该参与社交媒体，因为我们只能在参与的同时引导技术。没有参与度我们就不能掌舵。

N.S.: When you say "only we can steer technologies", who does the "steering"? Should government be regulating new technologies more heavily, and if so, how? It seems hard for users themselves -- ourselves! -- to steer these technologies. I've been a heavy Twitter user for years, but I've never managed to do much about its tendency toward misinformation and performative, attention-seeking aggression. No one else has either. How can we steer big platforms?

注：当你说“只有我们才能驾驭技术”时，谁来“驾驭”？政府是否应该对新技术进行更严格的监管，如果是的话，应该如何监管？这对用户自己来说似乎很难--我们自己！来引导这些技术。多年来，我一直是Twitter的重度用户，但我从未设法对其错误信息和表演性，寻求注意力的侵略倾向做过很多事情。其他人也没有。如何驾驭大平台？

K.K.: There are 3 levels of steerage. Level 1, individually we (you) ARE steering Twitter when you decide to mute or not to mute, or ban or not ban. You are voting what you think is important by using it. Or some people vote by not using it. You don’t notice what difference you make because of the platform's humongous billions-scale. In aggregate your choices make a difference which direction it — or any technology — goes. People prefer to watch things on demand, so little by little, we have steered the technology to let us binge watch. Streaming happened without much regulation or even enthusiasm of the media companies. Street usage is the fastest and most direct way to steer tech.

K. K.：有三个级别的统舱。第一级，当你决定静音或不静音，或禁止或不禁止时，我们（你）正在单独操纵Twitter。你通过使用它来投票你认为重要的东西。或者有些人通过不使用它来投票。你没有注意到你因为这个平台的巨大的数十亿规模而产生的差异。总的来说，你的选择会影响它或任何技术的发展方向。人们更喜欢按需观看，所以一点一点地，我们已经引导技术让我们狂欢观看。流媒体的出现没有太多的监管，甚至没有媒体公司的热情。街头使用是引导科技最快、最直接的方式。

Level 2, is regulation by governments. This can work, and is often necessary to steer. The challenge is premature regulation. The panic cycle for tech begins on the first bit of news about possible harms to anyone, and first response is a call to regulate. But as we just discussed, because it’s a newborn, it is easy — if not certain — that our first impressions about the tech are wrong, and thus early regulations often tend to brake more than steer. We have some good case examples of regulating tech in the right direction. We steered DDT away from being used as a plantation-scale pesticide (poisoning entire wildlife ecosystems), and redirected to be used judiciously, carefully, in small amounts in villages to eliminate mosquito borne malaria, saving the lives of many millions with minimum effect on ecosystems. That took years to accomplish, but the evidence was vivid. We should require more than precautionary type of evidence in order to use regulation to steer.

第二层是政府监管。这可以工作，并且通常是必要的转向。挑战在于过早的监管。科技的恐慌周期始于第一条关于可能对任何人造成伤害的消息，第一反应是呼吁监管。但正如我们刚刚讨论的那样，因为它是一个新生儿，很容易-如果不是肯定的话-我们对技术的第一印象是错误的，因此早期的法规往往倾向于制动而不是引导。我们有一些很好的案例，可以说明如何在正确的方向上监管科技。我们将滴滴涕从种植园规模的杀虫剂（毒害整个野生动物生态系统）转向明智、谨慎地在村庄少量使用，以消除蚊子传播的疟疾，在对生态系统影响最小的情况下挽救了数百万人的生命。这花了几年时间才完成，但证据是生动的。我们应该要求更多的预防性证据，以便利用监管来引导。

The third level of steerage is through innovation and entrepreneurship. When new problems are seen, new solutions are invented. Sometimes engineers in the host companies offer technical remedies, or shift directions. Often times solutions come from startups outside. Occasionally new directions are developed by the customers themselves. Vibrators instead of the cacophony of ringing bells on cell phones is one example of a marketplace technological solution. The marketplace needs regulation to keep it level, clean, optimal, and fertile for innovations to flourish. This is probably the more important role for regulation in steering.

第三个层次是通过创新和创业。当发现新问题时，就会发明新的解决方案。有时候，东道国公司的工程师会提供技术补救措施，或改变方向。很多时候，解决方案来自外部的初创公司。有时候，客户自己会开发新的方向。用振动器代替手机上刺耳的铃声是市场技术解决方案的一个例子。市场需要监管，以保持其水平，清洁，最佳和肥沃的创新蓬勃发展。这可能是监管在转向方面更重要的作用。

It’s a messy process. And as messy as it has been to steer social media, it will be even messier to steer AIs and genetic engines, principally because they are so close to our identity as human and because we are so ignorant of what humans are good for. Consensus of a preferred direction will be very slow in coming. And slow should be mandatory regulation.

这是个混乱的过程尽管操纵社交媒体已经很混乱，但操纵人工智能和基因引擎将更加混乱，主要是因为它们与我们作为人类的身份如此接近，而且因为我们对人类的好处一无所知。对一个首选方向的共识将是非常缓慢的。而慢则应该是强制性的监管。

N.S.: In fact, that's a good segue into the topic of AI, which of course everyone is talking about, given the recent success of chatbots and AI art programs. Where do you land on the spectrum of enthusiasm. Does this new technology change everything, or is it overhyped? What do you expect to change as a result of the new efflorescence of AI? Will the relationship between humanity and the technium fundamentally alter?

注：事实上，这是一个很好的切入点，进入人工智能的话题，当然每个人都在谈论，考虑到最近聊天机器人和人工智能艺术程序的成功。你在热情的光谱上落在哪里。这项新技术是否改变了一切，或者它被夸大了？你认为人工智能的蓬勃发展会带来什么变化？人类和技术元素之间的关系会从根本上改变吗？

K.K.: Despite the relentless hype, I think AI overall is underhyped. The long-term effects of AI will affect our society to a greater degree than electricity and fire, but its full effects will take centuries to play out. That means that we’ll be arguing, discussing, and wrangling with the changes brought about by AI for the next 10 decades. Because AI operates so close to our own inner self and identity, we are headed into a century-long identity crisis.

K. K.：尽管大肆宣传，但我认为AI总体上被低估了。人工智能的长期影响将比电和火更大程度地影响我们的社会，但它的全部影响需要几个世纪才能发挥出来。这意味着我们将在未来10年内争论、讨论和争论人工智能带来的变化。由于人工智能的运作如此接近我们的内在自我和身份，我们正陷入长达一个世纪的身份危机。

This span is particularly notable because we have been discussing the effects of AI for 100 years already. In fact, never before have humans so thoroughly rehearsed something as far ahead as AI. Long before it arrives, we’ve been imagining its pros and cons, and trying to anticipate it for several generations. This serious rehearsal is an improvement in our culture, and a pattern we should continue for other technologies like genetic engineering, the metaverse, and so on. The upside to a long rehearsal is that upon arrival, we should not be too surprised. The downside to a long rehearsal is that there are more ways something goes wrong than right, and we’ve had time to think of all of the horrible stuff, so that the positive conjectures feel mythical and unreal.

这个跨度特别值得注意，因为我们已经讨论了人工智能的影响100年了。事实上，人类从来没有像人工智能这样彻底地排练过。早在它到来之前，我们就已经在想象它的利弊，并试图预测它几代人。这种认真的排练是我们文化的一种进步，我们应该继续这种模式，用于其他技术，如基因工程、虚拟宇宙等。长时间排练的好处是，当我们到达时，我们不应该太惊讶。长时间排练的缺点是，事情出错的方式比正确的方式多，我们有时间去思考所有可怕的事情，所以积极的猜测感觉是神话和不真实的。

But now, here are chatbots, commercially available. However, in 30 years we will look back to 2023 and everyone then will agree that while something is happening with artificial smartness, we do not have anything like AI now. What we tend to call AI, will not be considered AI years from now. One useful corollary of this is that from the perspective of looking back 30 years hence, there are no AI experts today. This is good news for anyone starting out right now, because you have as much chance as anyone else of making breakthroughs and becoming the reigning experts.

但现在，这里有聊天机器人，商业上可用。然而，在30年后，我们将回顾2023年，每个人都会同意，虽然人工智能正在发生一些事情，但我们现在没有任何像人工智能这样的东西。我们倾向于称之为AI的东西，从现在起几年内不会被认为是AI。一个有用的推论是，从30年前的角度来看，今天没有人工智能专家。这对现在开始的人来说是个好消息，因为你和其他人一样有机会取得突破，成为统治者。

Nonetheless, right now machine learning is overhyped. It is not sentient, and not as smart as it seems. What we are discovering is that many of the cognitive tasks we have been doing as humans are dumber than they seem. Playing chess was more mechanical than we thought. Playing the game Go is more mechanical than we thought. Painting a picture and being creative was more mechanical than we thought. And even writing a paragraph with words turns out to be more mechanical than we thought. So far, out of the perhaps dozen of cognitive modes operating in our minds, we have managed to synthesize two of them: perception and pattern matching. Everything we’ve seen so far in AI is because we can produce those two modes. We have not made any real progress in synthesizing symbolic logic and deductive reasoning and other modes of thinking. It is those “others” that are so important because as we inch along we are slowly realizing we still have NO IDEA how our own intelligences really work, or even what intelligence is. A major byproduct of AI is that it will tell us more about our minds than centuries of psychology and neuroscience have.

尽管如此，现在机器学习被夸大了。它没有知觉，也不像它看起来那么聪明。我们正在发现，我们作为人类所做的许多认知任务比看起来更愚蠢。下棋比我们想象的要机械。围棋比我们想象的要机械。绘画和创造比我们想象的更机械。即使是用文字写一段话，结果也比我们想象的更机械。 到目前为止，在我们大脑中运行的十几种认知模式中，我们已经成功地综合了其中的两种：感知和模式匹配。到目前为止，我们在AI中看到的一切都是因为我们可以产生这两种模式。我们在综合符号逻辑、演绎推理和其他思维模式方面没有取得任何真实的的进展。 正是那些“他人”如此重要，因为当我们慢慢前进时，我们慢慢意识到我们仍然不知道我们自己的智能是如何工作的，甚至不知道智能是什么。人工智能的一个主要副产品是，它将比几个世纪以来的心理学和神经科学更能告诉我们关于大脑的信息。

There are books full of lessons waiting to be said about about AI as it is being born, so let me state just a few provocative points about what I expect:

有很多关于人工智能的书等着我们去讲述它的诞生，所以让我就我的期望陈述一些挑衅性的观点：

•We should prepare ourselves for AIs, plural. There is no monolithic AI. Instead there will be thousands of species of AIs, each engineered to optimize different ways of thinking, doing different jobs (better than a general AIs could do). Most of these AIs will be dumbsmarten: smart in many things and stupid in others. Expect frustration about how stupid they can be while being so smart.

·我们应该为人工智能做好准备。没有单一的AI。相反，将会有成千上万种人工智能，每种人工智能都被设计成优化不同的思维方式，做不同的工作（比一般的人工智能做得更好）。这些AI中的大多数将是愚蠢的：在很多事情上聪明，在其他事情上愚蠢。你可以想象他们在聪明的同时会有多么愚蠢。

• Theoretically any computer can emulate any other computer, but in practice it matters what substrate a computer runs on. No matter how fast or “smart” an AI may be, as long as it runs on silicon it will remain an alien. Its intelligence will be brilliant, but alien. Its humor will be sharp, but a little off. Its creativity will be intense, but a little otherworldly. The best framework for understanding complex AIs is to think of them as artificial aliens. Think of a robot Spock, super smart, but not quite human.

·理论上，任何计算机都可以模仿任何其他计算机，但实际上，计算机在什么样的基板上运行很重要。无论人工智能有多快或多“聪明”，只要它在硅上运行，它就仍然是外星人。它的智慧将是辉煌的，但外星人。它的幽默将是尖锐的，但有点小康。它的创造力将是激烈的，但有点超凡脱俗。理解复杂人工智能的最佳框架是将它们视为人造外星人。想象一下机器人斯波克，超级聪明，但不太像人类。

• Consciousness is a liability and not an asset in an AI. It is distracting and dangerous. We want our AIs to just drive, and not get anxious. Many expensive AIs will be advertised as “consciousness-free.”

·意识是一种责任，而不是AI的资产。这是分散注意力和危险。我们希望我们的人工智能只是开车，而不是焦虑。许多昂贵的人工智能将被宣传为“无意识”。

• The relationship AIs will have with us will tend towards being partners, assistants, and pets, rather than gods. This first round of primitive AI agents like ChatGPT and Dalle are best thought of as universal interns. It appears that the millions of people using them for the first time this year are using these AIs to do the kinds of things they would do if they had a personal intern: write a rough draft, suggest code, summarize the research, review the talk, brainstorm ideas, make a mood board, suggest a headline, and so on. As interns, their work has to be checked and reviewed. And then made better. It is already embarrassing to release the work of the AI interns as is. You can tell, and we’ll get better at telling. Since the generative AIs have been trained on the entirety of human work — most of it mediocre — it produces “wisdom of the crowd”-like results. They may hit the mark but only because they are average.

·人工智能与我们的关系将倾向于成为伙伴、助手和宠物，而不是上帝。像ChatGPT和Dalle这样的第一轮原始AI代理最好被认为是通用实习生。看起来，今年第一次使用这些人工智能的数百万人正在使用这些人工智能来做他们如果有一个私人实习生会做的事情：写草稿，建议代码，总结研究，回顾演讲，头脑风暴，制作情绪板，建议标题，等等。作为实习生，他们的工作必须被检查和审查。然后变得更好。按原样发布AI实习生的工作已经很尴尬了。你能看出来，我们会更好地告诉。由于生成式人工智能已经接受了人类工作的全部训练-其中大部分都是平庸的-它产生了“群众智慧”般的结果。他们可能会达到目标，但只是因为他们是平均水平。

• Because AIs are being trained on average human work, they exhibit the biases, prejudices, weaknesses, and vices of the average human. But we are not going to accept that. Nope. We want the ethics and values of AIs to be better than ours! They have to be less racist, less sexist, less selfish than we are on average. It is NOT difficult to program in ethical and moral guidelines into AIs — it is just more code. The challenge is that we humans have no consensus on what we mean by “better than us,” and exactly who “us” is. The problem is not the AIs. The problem is that the AIs have illuminated our own shallow and inconsistent ethics — even at our best. So making AIs better than us is a huge project.

·因为人工智能接受的是普通人类工作的训练，它们表现出了普通人的偏见、偏见、弱点和恶习。但我们不会接受的。没有。我们希望人工智能的道德和价值观比我们更好！他们必须比我们平均水平少一些种族主义，少一些性别歧视，少一些自私。将伦理和道德准则编程到AI中并不困难-它只是更多的代码。挑战在于，我们人类对“比我们更好”的含义以及“我们”到底是谁没有共识。问题不在于AI。问题是，人工智能照亮了我们自己肤浅和不一致的道德观-即使是在我们最好的时候。因此，让人工智能比我们更好是一个巨大的工程。

• I am not aware of any person who has lost their job to an AI so far. There may be a few professions — like the person paid to transcribe a talk into text — that will go away, but most jobs will shift their tasks to accommodate the emerging power of AI. Most of the worry about AI unemployment so far is third-person worry — people imagine some other person getting fired, not themselves.

·到目前为止，我不知道有任何人因为AI而失去了工作。可能会有一些职业--比如付费将谈话转录成文本的人--会消失，但大多数工作将改变他们的任务，以适应人工智能的新兴力量。到目前为止，大多数对人工智能失业的担忧都是第三人称的担忧--人们想象其他人被解雇，而不是他们自己。

• Different AIs will have different personalities. We already see this with image generators; some artists prefer working with one rather than another. It takes an extremely close intimacy to get your intern AI to help you produce great work. Some people are 10x and 100x better than others with these tools. They have become AI whisperers. Other people are repelled by this alienness and want nothing to do with it. That is fine. But 90% of AIs will never be encountered by anyone. That is because the bulk of AIs will run hidden in back offices. They will metaphorically reside in the walls so to speak, like plumbing and electrical wires -- vital but out of mind. This invisibility is the mark of the most successful technologies — to be ubiquitous but not seen.

·不同的人工智能有不同的个性。我们已经在图像生成器中看到了这一点;有些艺术家更喜欢与一个人合作而不是另一个人。它需要一个非常密切的亲密关系，让你的实习生AI帮助你生产伟大的工作。有些人使用这些工具比其他人好10倍和100倍。他们已经成为人工智能的耳语者。其他人被这种疏离感所排斥，不想与之有任何关系，这很好。但90%的人工智能永远不会被任何人遇到。这是因为大部分AI将隐藏在后台办公室中运行。可以说，它们将隐喻性地驻留在墙壁中，就像管道和电线一样--至关重要，但却不在脑海中。这种不可见性是最成功的技术的标志--无处不在，但看不到。

Before this becomes a book, I’ll stop there.

在这成为一本书之前，我会停在那里。

N.S.: I share your optimism about AI. But let's briefly talk about the times when futurism fails. Two years ago, a lot of people in the tech world were talking breathlessly about -- and throwing very large amounts of money at -- "web3", a catch-all name for crypto stuff. We heard wide-eyed tales about how crypto would usher in an era of permissionless commerce, a new ownership society, financial independence, a new efflorescence of online creativity. Instead, essentially everything created in that crypto boom turned out to be either a Ponzi scheme, a pump-and-dump scam, or simply wildly overoptimistic. To cite a less dramatic example, the gig economy was supposed to revolutionize human labor and income and land use, but its impact, while real, has been much more modest than people expected. Is there any systematic reason these technological visions fell short? Is it possible to tell in advance what new limbs our technium will see fit to graft onto its body? Or is it just a matter of taking a lot of shots on goal and seeing what works?

注：我和你一样对人工智能持乐观态度。但让我们简要地谈谈未来主义失败的时代。两年前，科技界的许多人都在气喘吁吁地谈论“web3”，并投入了大量资金，这是一个对加密技术包罗万象的名字。我们听到了令人瞠目结舌的故事，关于加密将如何迎来一个无需许可的商业时代，一个新的所有权社会，财务独立，一个新的在线创造力的繁荣。相反，基本上在加密繁荣中创造的一切都被证明是庞氏骗局，泵和转储骗局，或者只是过于乐观。举一个不那么戏剧性的例子，零工经济本应彻底改变人类的劳动力、收入和土地使用，但它的影响虽然真实的，却比人们预期的要温和得多。有没有什么系统性的原因导致这些技术愿景的失败？有没有可能提前知道我们的技术元素会把什么新的肢体移植到它的身体上？ 或者这只是一个在球门上投很多球，看看什么有效的问题？

K.K.: The baseball oracle once said: predictions are hard to make, especially about the future. I think it is hard enough to predict the present. If we could predict the present, we’d be half done. Most of my work is trying to see what is actually happening right now.

K. K.：棒球预言家曾经说过：预测是很难的，特别是对未来。我认为现在很难预测。如果我们能预测现在，我们就成功了一半。我的大部分工作都是想看看现在到底发生了什么。

Futurism fails all the time, but I actually think we are getting better at it. For one, we tend to over estimate change in the short term, and underestimate it over the longer term, and I see evidence of us beginning to learn that lesson and shift our expectations. Two, we’ve learned to expect that even nice technologies bite back. Now from the get-go we assume there will be significant costs and harms of anything new, which was not the norm in my parent's generation. Scenario planning, once esoteric, is now standard corporate planning procedure. Scenarios are less about predicting exactly what will happen and more about imagining the range of possible futures so that you are not surprised when one of them happens, and you can use the scenarios to generate contingency plans — what would we do if the world headed in this direction? This is a giant step forward in managing the future.

未来主义总是失败的，但我实际上认为我们正在变得更好。首先，我们倾向于高估短期变化，低估长期变化，我看到我们开始吸取教训并改变我们的期望的证据。第二，我们已经学会了即使是好的技术也会反咬一口。从一开始，我们就认为任何新事物都会有巨大的成本和危害，这在我父母那一代人中并不常见。情景规划曾经是一个深奥的概念，现在已经成为标准的企业规划程序。情景分析并不是要准确地预测将要发生的事情，而是要想象可能的未来，这样当其中一种情况发生时，你就不会感到惊讶，你可以利用情景分析来制定应急计划--如果世界朝着这个方向发展，我们会怎么做？这是管理未来的一大步。

This does not prevent a future fail like what happened with crypto. The astronomical volume of money and greed flowing through this frontier overwhelmed and disguised whatever value it may have had. If you prohibited the mention of “money”, “making money” or “saving money” from any discussion of crypto, it was always a very short conversation. I suspect there are some powerful ideas and tech possible using blockchain, but these value propositions are not going to show up until crypto is seen as an expense instead of a way of making money. It has to be valuable *while* it loses money, and that has not happened yet.

这并不能防止未来的失败，就像加密发生的那样。天文数字般的金钱和贪婪在这片边疆上流动，淹没并掩盖了它可能具有的任何价值。如果你禁止在任何关于加密的讨论中提到“钱”、“赚钱”或“省钱”，那总是一个很短的对话。我怀疑有一些强大的想法和技术可能使用区块链，但这些价值主张不会出现，直到加密被视为一种支出，而不是一种赚钱的方式。它必须是有价值的，而它却在赔钱，而这还没有发生。

I think the fail of crypto is less a failure of futurism than a flop in culture in general. When I first experienced virtual reality in 1989, I felt sure the world would change in the next 5 years. It’s been 30 years now and the state of VR is about the same. I was part of a small group of techno-enthusiasts who thought believable VR was imminent, and got it wrong. What’s been different about crypto is that the main boosters have not been a small group of techno-enthusiasts. Rather crypto has been promoted sky high by athletes, celebrities, shoe companies, day traders, politicians, and hustlers. Half of the usual technology evangelists, like myself, have been silent on crypto, or openly skeptical of it. For every tech promoter of crypto there’s been a very educated tech criticism of it. And I don’t mean the usual tech criticism of “this is bad,” I mean the tech criticism of “this does not work.” (I would cautiously add the word “yet”.) So to half of the tech and futurist community, it is only a half-fail. And taking to heart the lesson #1 above, crypto still has potential to be revolutionary in the long run. The sweet elegance of blockchain enables decentralization, which is a perpetually powerful force. This tech just has to be matched up to the tasks — currently not visible — where it is worth paying the huge cost that decentralization entails. That is a big ask, but taking the long-view, this moment may not be a failure. I would say the same about the gig economy — let’s give it more time to judge; it’s barely been around 5,000 days.

我认为加密货币的失败与其说是未来主义的失败，不如说是文化的失败。当我在1989年第一次体验虚拟现实时，我确信世界将在未来5年内发生变化。到现在已经30年了，VR的状态差不多是一样的。我是一小群技术爱好者中的一员，他们认为可信的VR即将到来，但他们错了。加密货币的不同之处在于，主要的推动者并不是一小群技术爱好者。相反，加密货币被运动员、名人、制鞋公司、日交易员、政客和骗子们推到了天上。像我这样的普通技术传道者，有一半对加密技术保持沉默，或者公开表示怀疑。对于每一个加密技术的技术推动者，都有一个非常有教养的技术批评。我指的不是通常的“这很糟糕”的技术批评，我指的是“这不起作用”的技术批评。（我会谨慎地加上“尚未”一词。因此，对于一半的科技和未来主义者来说，这只是一半的失败。记住上面的教训#1，从长远来看，加密货币仍然有可能成为革命性的。区块链的甜美优雅使去中心化成为可能，这是一种永远强大的力量。这项技术只需要与任务相匹配-目前还看不到-值得支付去中心化所带来的巨大成本。这是一个很大的要求，但从长远来看，这一刻可能不会失败。对于零工经济，我也会这么说--让我们给予它更多的时间来判断;才过了五千天

N.S.: I usually close these interviews by asking what someone is working on right now. In your case, I feel like I'll just read whatever it is when it comes out! So today I'll switch it up a bit. What do you think young people should be working on right now? What's exciting, new, and important in the world of 2023?

注：我通常会在面试结束时问某人现在在做什么。在你的情况下，我觉得我只是读什么，它是当它出来！所以今天我会稍微改变一下。你认为现在的年轻人应该做些什么？2023年的世界有什么令人兴奋、新的和重要的？

K.K.: My generic career advice for young people is that if at all possible, you should aim to work on something that no one has a word for. Spend your energies where we don’t have a name for what you are doing, where it takes a while to explain to your mother what it is you do. When you are ahead of language, that means you are in a spot where it is more likely you are working on things that only you can do. It also means you won’t have much competition.

K. K.：我对年轻人的一般性职业建议是，如果可能的话，你应该致力于做一些没有人能形容的事情。把你的精力花在我们没有为你所做的事情命名的地方，花点时间向你的母亲解释你在做什么。当你领先于语言时，这意味着你处于一个更有可能从事只有你才能做的事情的地方。这也意味着你不会有太多的竞争。

Possible occupations that are ahead of our language would be person-that-sits-with-you-when-you-are-ill, story-teller-for-the-company, AI-whisper, media-fact-check-verifier, wireless-troubleshooter, eugenic-adviser-diviner, roaming-robot-repair-person, influence-matchmaker, polyandry-therapist, applied-historian-in-residence, and maybe, full-time-note-taker.

超越我们的语言的职业可能是：当你生病时坐在你旁边的人、为公司讲故事的人、人工智能耳语者、媒体事实核查者、无线故障排除者、优生顾问预言者、漫游机器人修理者、有影响力的媒人、一妻多夫治疗师、常驻应用历史学家，也许还有全职笔记记录员。

My second bit of counsel is anti-career advice (taken from my new book Excellent Advice) and it goes like this:

我的第二个建议是反职业建议（摘自我的新书《优秀建议》），它是这样的：

Your 20s are the perfect time to do a few things that are unusual, weird, bold, risky, unexplainable, crazy, unprofitable, and looks nothing like “success.” The less this time looks like success, the better it will be as a foundation. For the rest of your life these orthogonal experiences will serve as your muse and touchstone, upon which you can build an uncommon life.

20多岁是做一些不寻常、怪异、大胆、冒险、无法解释、疯狂、无利可图、看起来一点也不像“成功”的事情的最佳时机。这一次看起来越不像成功，作为一个基础就越好。在你的余生中，这些正交的经历将成为你的缪斯和试金石，在此基础上，你可以建立一个不平凡的生活。