2018考博英语阅读经济学人文章每日精析：人工智能

2018考博英语阅读经济学人文章每日精析：人工智能

　　考博英语阅读大部分博士研究生招生院校都使用《经济学人》杂志文章作为题源，新东方在线考博频道为考博生们将其中的文章进行深度分析，希望能提高大家的考博英语阅读水平，读懂长难句。

　　Artificial intelligence

　　人工智能

　　The algorithm kingdom

　　算法的王国

　　China’s deep pool of data means it has a chance to lead in artificial intelligence

　　中国数据资源丰富，有机会在人工智能领域占据领先地位

　　AT THE start of this year, two straws in the wind caught the attention of those who follow the development of artificial intelligence (AI) globally. First, Qi Lu, one of the bosses of Microsoft, said in January that he would not return to the world’s largest software firm after recovering from a cycling accident, but instead would become chief operating officer at Baidu, China’s leading search engine. Later that month, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence postponed its annual meeting. The planned date for the event in January conflicted with the Chinese new year.

　　今年年初，关注全球人工智能(AI)发展动向的人注意到两件小事。先是微软高管之一陆奇在1月表示，自己从自行车事故中恢复后不会回归这家世界最大的软件公司，而是将加入中国领先的搜索引擎百度，担任该公司的首席运营官。当月晚些时候，国际人工智能协会推迟了年会举办的时间。会议原计划在1月举行，但时间与中国新年发生了冲突。

　　These were the latest signals that China could be a close second to America—and perhaps even ahead of it—in some areas of AI, widely considered vital to everything from digital assistants to self-driving cars. China is simply the place to be, explains Mr Lu, and Baidu the country’s most important player. “We have an opportunity to lead in the future of AI,” he says.

　　这两件事再度显现了一种可能性：在人工智能的某些领域，中国将紧随美国而位居第二，甚至可能赶超美国。人们普遍认为，从数字助手到自动驾驶汽车，人工智能对一切事物都至关重要。陆奇解释说，中国无疑是未来的热点所在，而百度是这个国家最重要的玩家。“我们有机会引领人工智能的未来。”他说。

　　Other evidence supports the claim. In October 2016 the White House noted in a report that China had overtaken America in the number of published journal articles on deep learning, a branch of AI. PwC, a consultancy, predicts that AI-related growth will boost global GDP by $16trn by 2030; nearly half of that bonanza will accrue to China, it reckons. The number of AI-related patent submissions by Chinese researchers has increased by nearly 200% in recent years, although America is still ahead in absolute numbers (see chart).

　　其他证据支持他的这一说法。2016年10月，白宫在一份报告中提到，中国在深度学习(人工智能的一个分支)领域的期刊论文发表数量已超过美国。咨询公司普华永道预测，到2030年，与人工智能有关的增长将令全球GDP增长16万亿美元。它估计这笔“横财”有将近一半都将流向中国。近年来，中国研究人员提交的与人工智能相关的专利申请数量已增加近200%，尽管美国在绝对数量上仍然领先(见图表)。

　　To understand why China is so well placed, consider the inputs needed for AI. Of the two most basic, computing power and capital, it has an abundance. Chinese firms, from giants such as Alibaba and Tencent to startups such as CIB FinTech and UCloud, are building data centres as fast as they can. The market for cloud computing has been growing by more than 30% in recent years and will continue to do so, according to Gartner, a consultancy. In 2012-16 Chinese AI firms received $2.6bn in funding, according to the Wuzhen Institute, a think-tank. That is less than the $17.9bn that poured into their American peers, but the total is growing quickly.

　　要了解中国为何占据优势，不妨试想一下人工智能所需的投入。其中最基本的两种投入——计算能力和资本，在中国十分充裕。从阿里巴巴和腾讯这样的巨头到兴业数金和UCloud等创业公司都在尽可能快地打造数据中心。咨询公司高德纳(Gartner)称，近年中国云计算市场保持了超过30%的增速，而且这一势头还将继续。据乌镇智库的数字，2012年至2016年，中国的人工智能公司获得了26亿美元的资金投入。这一数字少于美国同行获得的179亿美元，但总额正在迅速增长。

　　Yet it is two other resources that truly make China a promised land for AI. One is research talent. As well as strong skills in maths, the country has a tradition in language and translation research, says Harry Shum, who leads Microsoft’s AI efforts. Finding top-notch AI experts is harder in China than in America, says Wanli Min, who oversees 150 data scientists at Alibaba. But this will change over the next couple of years, he predicts, because most big universities have launched AI programmes. According to some estimates, China has more than two-fifths of the world’s trained AI scientists.

　　然而，真正让中国成为人工智能福地的其实是另外两大资源。一是研究人才。微软人工智能事业部门的负责人沈向阳说，中国除了数学很强，还有语言及翻译研究的传统。阿里巴巴的闵万里手下有150名数据科学家。他说，在中国，寻找顶尖的人工智能专家要比在美国难。不过他预测这种局面在两三年里就会发生改变，因为多数大型高校都开设了人工智能项目。据一些估计数字，全世界培养的人工智能科学家中，超过五分之二在中国。

　　The second advantage for China is data, AI’s most important ingredient. In the past, software and digital products mostly obeyed rules laid down in code, giving an edge to those countries with the best coders. With the advent of deep-learning algorithms, such rules are increasingly based on patterns extracted from reams of data. The more data are available, the more algorithms can learn and the smarter AI offerings will be.

　　中国的第二个优势是数据，这也是人工智能最重要的“原料”。过去，软件和数字产品主要是按代码编写的规则行事，因而拥有最优秀的编程人员的国家占据优势。随着深度学习算法的出现，这些规则日益建立于从大量数据中提取的各种规律之上。供试用的数据越多，算法能学到的东西就越多，人工智能所提供的服务也就越智能。

　　China’s sheer size and diversity provide powerful fuel for this cycle. Just by going about their daily lives, the country’s nearly 1.4bn people generate more data than almost all other nations combined. Even in the case of a rare disease, there are enough examples to teach an algorithm how to recognise it. Because typing Chinese characters is more laborious than Western ones, people also tend to use voice-recognition services more often than in the West, so firms have more voice snippets with which to improve speech offerings.

　　中国的体量和多样性为这样的循环提供了强劲的动力。单靠开展日常生活，该国近14亿人口就能产生大量数据，几乎超过其他所有国家的总和。就算是某种罕见病，在中国也能获得足够的病例去训练算法识别该疾病。由于输入中国的汉字要比西方国家的字母费时费力，人们使用语音识别服务的频率通常也高于西方国家，企业也就获得了更多的语音片段来改善语音服务。

　　The Saudi Arabia of data

　　数据的沙特阿拉伯

　　What really sets China apart is that it has more internet users than any other country: about 730m. Almost all go online from smartphones, which generate far more valuable data than desktop computers, chiefly because they contain sensors and are carried around. In the big coastal cities, for instance, cash has all but disappeared for small purchases: people settle with their devices using services such as Alipay and WeChat Pay.

　　真正令中国与众不同的一点是，它的互联网用户比任何国家都多：大约有7.3亿人。几乎所有网民都用智能手机上网，产生的数据比来自台式电脑的数据有价值得多。这主要是因为智能手机包含传感器，而且由机主随身携带。以沿海大城市为例，在进行小额交易时几乎已经没人使用现金了，通过手机上的支付宝和微信支付等服务就可以搞定。

　　Chinese do not seem to be terribly concerned about privacy, which makes collecting data easier. The country’s bike-sharing services, which have taken big cities by storm, for example, not only provide cheap transport but are what is known as a “data play”. When riders hire a bicycle, some firms keep track of renters’ movements using a GPS device attached to the bike.

　　中国人似乎不是特别担心隐私的问题，这就使得收集数据变得更容易了。例如，风靡该国各大城市的共享单车服务不仅提供了廉价的交通方式，而且还是个所谓的“数据游戏”。一些公司会在用户租用自行车时利用装在车上的GPS设备追踪租车者的活动。

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