介绍： The economics of superintelligence 超级智能体的经济前景
If Silicon Valley’s predictions are even close to being accurate, expect unprecedented upheaval
如果硅谷的预测准确，超级智能体将带来前所未有的剧变
FOR MOST of history the safest prediction has been that things will continue much as they are. But sometim...

介绍： The economics of superintelligence 超级智能体的经济前景
If Silicon Valley’s predictions are even close to being accurate, expect unprecedented upheaval
如果硅谷的预测准确，超级智能体将带来前所未有的剧变
FOR MOST of history the safest prediction has been that things will continue much as they are. But sometimes the future is unrecognisable. The tech bosses of Silicon Valley say humanity is approaching such a moment, because in just a few years artificial intelligence (AI) will be better than the average human being at all cognitive tasks. You do not need to put high odds on them being right to see that their claim needs thinking through. Were it to come true, the consequences would be as great as anything in the history of the world economy.
纵观历史的大部分时期，最稳妥的预测一直是事情会大致保持原样。但有时未来会呈现出全然不同的面貌。硅谷的科技业巨头们声称，人类正接近这样一个时刻，因为用不了几年，人工智能（AI）将在所有认知任务上达到超越常人的水平。我们无需过于笃定他们的预测是正确的，就能看出他们的说法值得深入思考。如果这一预测成真，其后果将堪比世界经济史上任何重大事件。
Since the breakthroughs of almost a decade ago, AI’s powers have repeatedly and spectacularly outrun predictions. This year large language models from OpenAI and Google DeepMind got to gold in the International Mathematical Olympiad, 18 years sooner than experts had predicted in 2021. The models grow ever larger, propelled by an arms race between tech firms, which expect the winner to take everything; and between China and America, which fear systemic defeat if they come second. By 2027 it should be possible to train a model using 1,000 times the computing resources that built GPT-4, which lies behind today’s most popular chatbot. 
自大约十年前取得突破以来，人工智能的能力已多次以惊人的方式超越先前的预测。今年，OpenAI和谷歌DeepMind的大型语言模型在国际数学奥林匹克竞赛中夺金，比专家们在2021年预测的时间提前了18年。在科技公司之间以及中国和美国之间的军备竞赛的推动下，这些模式变得越来越庞大，科技公司期望赢家占据一切；而中国和美国则担心如果他们排在第二，会遭到系统性的失败。到2027年，训练一个模型应该可以使用建造GPT-4的1000倍计算资源，GPT-4是当今最流行的聊天机器人的背后。
What does that say about AI’s powers in 2030 or 2032? As we describe in one of two briefings this week, many fear a hellscape, in which AI-enabled terrorists build bioweapons that kill billions, or a “misaligned” ai slips its leash and outwits humanity. It is easy to see why these tail risks command so much attention. Yet, as our second briefing explains, they have crowded out thinking about the immediate, probable, predictable—and equally astonishing—effects of a non-apocalyptic AI.
这说明了在2030年或2032年，人工智能的力量将达到何种水平。正如我们在本周的两个简报中所描述的，许多人担忧会出现一个地狱般的场景，即由人工智能驱动的恐怖分子制造生物武器，导致数十亿人丧生，或者“失调”的人工智能挣脱束缚，智胜人类。不难看出为何这些尾部风险会引起如此多的关注。然而，正如我们的第二份简报所解释的那样，这些风险已经挤占了人们对眼前、可能、可预测——同样令人震惊——的非末世人工智能影响的思考空间。
Before 1700 the world economy grew, on average, by 8% a century. Anyone who forecast what happened next would have seemed deranged. Over the following 300 years, as the Industrial Revolution took hold, growth averaged 350% a century. That brought lower mortality and higher fertility. Bigger populations produced more ideas, leading to yet faster expansion. Because of the need to add human talent, the loop was slow. Eventually, greater riches led people to have fewer children. That boosted living standards, which grew at a steady pace of about 2% a year.
在1700年之前，世界经济平均每世纪增长8%。任何预测接下来会发生什么的人都会显得精神错乱。在随后的300年里，随着产业革命的兴起，平均每世纪增长350%。这带来了更低的死亡率和更高的生育率。更大的人口产生了更多的思想，从而导致更快的扩张。由于需要增加人力，循环缓慢。最终，更多的财富导致人们生孩子更少。这提高了生活水平，生活水平以每年约2%的稳定速度增长。
Subsistence to silicon硅基生存
AI faces no such demographic constraint. Technologists promise that it will rapidly hasten the pace at which discoveries are made. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, expects AI to be capable of generating “novel insights” next year. AIs already help program better AI models. By 2028, some say, they will be overseeing their own improvement.
AI不存在此类人口统计学限制。技术专家承诺，它将迅速加快发现的速度。OpenAI的首席执行官山姆·奥特曼预计，AI将在明年能够产生“新颖的洞见”。AI已经在帮助设计更优秀的AI模型。有人预测，到2028年，AI将能够自我监督改进过程。
Hence the possibility of a second explosion of economic growth. If computing power brings about technological advances without human input, and enough of the pay-off is reinvested in building still more powerful machines, wealth could accumulate at unprecedented speed. Economists have long been alive to the relentless mathematical logic of automating the discovery of ideas. According to a recent projection by Epoch AI, a bullish think-tank, once AI can carry out 30% of tasks, annual growth will exceed 20%.
因此，经济增长有可能再次爆发。如果计算能力在没有人工投入的情况下带来技术进步，并将足够的回报重新投资于建造更强大的机器，财富可能会以前所未有的速度积累。长期以来，经济学家们一直注意到自动化思想探索的无情数理逻辑。根据最近的一项预测Epoch AI，一家乐观的智库，一旦人工智能能够执行30%的任务，年增长率将超过20%。
True believers, including Elon Musk, conclude that self-improving AI will create a superintelligence. Humanity would gain access to every idea to be had—including for building the best robots, rockets and reactors. Access to energy and human lifespans would no longer impose limits. The only constraint on the economy would be the laws of physics.
真正的信徒，包括埃隆·马斯克在内，认为自我提升的人工智能将创造出一个超级智能。人类将能够获取所有可能的创意——包括打造最优秀的机器人、火箭和反应堆。获取能源以及延长人类寿命将不再受到限制。经济的唯一制约将来自物理法则。
You don’t need to go to that extreme to conjure up AI’s mind-boggling effects. Consider, as a thought experiment, just the incremental step to human-level intelligence. In labour markets the cost of using computing power for a task would limit the wages for carrying it out: why pay a worker more than the digital competition? Yet the shrinking number of superstars whose skills were not automatable and could directly complement AI would enjoy enormous returns. The only people doing better than them, in all likelihood, would be the owners of AI-relevant capital, which would be gobbling up a rising share of economic output.
你无需走到极端地步来展现人工智能令人难以置信的效果。不妨作为一个思维实验，考虑一下达到人类智能水平的渐进式步骤。在劳动力市场中，为一项任务使用计算能力的成本将限制执行该任务的工资水平：为什么要给工人更高的工资，超过数字竞争者的水平呢？然而，那些技能无法自动化且能够直接与人工智能互补的超级明星人数不断减少，他们将获得巨大的回报。而最有可能做得比他们更好的，将是与人工智能相关的资本的所有者，这部分资本将占据越来越大的经济产出份额。
Everyone else would have to adapt to gaps in AI’s abilities and to the spending of the new rich. Wherever there was a bottleneck in automation and labour supply, wages could rise rapidly. Such effects, known as “cost disease”, could be so strong as to limit the explosion of measured gdp, even as the economy changed utterly.
其他人将不得不适应人工智能能力的差距，以及新富的支出。只要在自动化和劳动力供应方面存在瓶颈，工资就会迅速上涨。这种效应被称为“成本疾病”，可能会非常强烈，以至于即使在经济发生彻底变化时，也会限制GDP的爆炸性增长。
The new patterns of abundance and shortage would be reflected in prices. Anything AI could help produce—goods from fully automated factories, say, or digital entertainment—would see its value collapse. If you fear losing your job to AI, you can at least look forward to lots of such things. Wherever humans were still needed, cost disease might bite. Knowledge workers who switched to manual work might find they could afford less child care or fewer restaurant meals than today. And humans might end up competing with AIs for land and energy.
新的丰裕与短缺模式将反映在价格上。任何可由AI协助生产的商品，比如完全自动化的工厂所制造的商品，或数字娱乐产品，其价值都将大幅缩水。如果你担心自己的工作被AI取代，至少可以期待这类情况会大量出现。在那些仍需要人类参与的领域，成本病可能会带来问题。转行从事体力劳动的知识工作者可能发现，与现在相比，他们能够负担的育儿费用或外出就餐次数减少了。最终，人类可能会与AI争夺土地和能源。
This economic disruption would be reflected in financial markets. There could be wild swings between stocks as it became clear which companies were winning and losing winner-takes-all contests. There would be a rapacious desire to invest, both to generate more AI power and in order for the stock of infrastructure and factories to keep pace with economic growth. At the same time, the desire to save for the future could collapse, as people—and especially the rich, who do the most saving—anticipated vastly higher incomes.
这种经济动荡将在金融市场中有所体现。随着哪些公司在“赢家通吃”的竞争中获得胜利变得明朗，股市可能会出现剧烈的波动。人们将产生强烈的投资欲望，既为了生成更多的AI能力，也为了使基础设施和工厂的存量能够跟上经济增长的步伐。同时，为未来储蓄的欲望可能会崩溃，因为人们——尤其是那些储蓄最多的富人——预期收入将显著提高。
Persuading people to give up capital for investment would therefore require much higher interest rates—high enough, perhaps, to make long-duration asset prices fall, despite explosive growth. Scholars disagree, but in some models interest rates rise one-for-one or more with growth. In an explosive scenario that would mean having to refinance debts at 20-30%. Even debtors whose incomes were rising fast could suffer; those whose incomes were not hitched to runaway growth would be pummelled. Countries that were unable or unwilling to exploit the AI boom could face capital flight. There could also be macroeconomic instability anywhere, because inflation could take off as people binged on their anticipated fortunes and central banks did not raise rates fast enough.
因此，说服人们放弃资本用于投资将需要高得多的利率——高至可能足以使长期资产价格下降，尽管经济在以爆炸性速度增长。学者们存在分歧，但在某些模型中，利率会与经济增长成正比或成正比以上。在爆炸性情景下，这意味着不得不以20%至30%的利率对债务进行再融资。即便是收入正在迅速增长的债务人也可能受到影响；而那些收入并未与失控的增长挂钩的债务人则将面临沉重打击。无法或不愿利用人工智能繁荣的国家可能面临资本外逃。此外，任何地方都可能出现宏观经济不稳定，因为随着人们大肆挥霍他们预期中的财富而通胀抬头，再加上央行未能迅速加息，都将引发问题。
It is a dizzying thought experiment. Could humanity cope? Growth has accelerated before, but there was no mass democracy during the Industrial Revolution; the Luddites, history’s most famous machine-haters, did not have the vote. Even if average wages surged, higher inequality could lead to demands for redistribution. The state would also have more powerful tools to monitor and manipulate the population. Politics would therefore be volatile. Governments would have to rethink everything from the tax base to education to the protection of civil rights.
这是一个令人头晕的思维实验。人类能应对吗？经济增长也曾加速过，但在产业革命期间并没有大规模的民主；历史上最著名的机器憎恨者卢德派（Luddites）没有投票权。即使平均工资飙升，更高的不平等性也可能导致对再分配的需求。国家还将拥有更强大的工具来监控和操纵人口。因此，政治将不稳定。政府将不得不重新思考从税基到教育再到公民权利保护的一切。
Despite that, the rise of superintelligence should provoke wonder. Dario Amodei, boss of Anthropic, told The Economist this week that he believes AI will help treat once-incurable diseases. The way to look at another acceleration, if it comes, is as the continuation of a long miracle, made possible only because people embraced disruption. Humanity may find its intelligence surpassed. It will still need wisdom.
尽管如此，超级智能的崛起应该引起人们的惊奇。Anthropic的负责人达里奥·阿莫代伊本周告诉《经济学人》，他认为人工智能将有助于治疗曾经无法治愈的疾病。如果另一次加速来临，我们应该把它看作是一个漫长奇迹的延续，而它之所以成为可能，仅仅是因为人们接受了颠覆。人类可能会发现其智力被超越。它仍然需要智慧。