A.I. Is Not Sentient. Why Do People Say It Is?

人工智能是無(wú)感知力的，但為什么人們說(shuō)它有呢？

It is not true that in labs across Silicon Valley engineers have built robots who can emote and converse and jam on lead vocals like a human. The technology can't do that. But it does have the power to mislead people.

如果說(shuō)硅谷實(shí)驗(yàn)室的工程師們所設(shè)計(jì)出的機(jī)器人，已經(jīng)能夠像人類一樣表達(dá)情感、相互交談并為歌曲即興伴奏，那這絕對(duì)不是真的。現(xiàn)在的技術(shù)還無(wú)法實(shí)現(xiàn)這些，但是確實(shí)足以誤導(dǎo)大眾。

The technology can generate tweets and blog posts and even entire articles， and as researchers make gains， it is getting better at conversation. Although it often spits out complete nonsense， many people — not just A.I. researchers — find themselves talking to this kind of technology as if it were human.

當(dāng)前的AI技術(shù)能夠?qū)崿F(xiàn)寫推文、博文、甚至是整篇文章；并且，隨著研究的進(jìn)一步推進(jìn)，AI進(jìn)行對(duì)話交流的能力也提高了。盡管AI經(jīng)常會(huì)脫口說(shuō)出完全不合邏輯的話，但是除了AI研究員，還有許多人會(huì)把AI當(dāng)作真人一樣去進(jìn)行對(duì)話溝通。

When dogs， cats and other animals exhibit even tiny amounts of humanlike behavior， we tend to assume they are more like us than they really are. Much the same happens when we see hints of human behavior in a machine. Scientists now call it the Eliza effect.

在狗、貓及其他動(dòng)物表現(xiàn)出類似人類的行為時(shí)，哪怕只是一丁點(diǎn)兒，我們也會(huì)認(rèn)為它們跟人類一樣，往往會(huì)夸大實(shí)際情況。而在看到機(jī)器表現(xiàn)出一些人類的行為時(shí)，我們的反應(yīng)如出一轍。如今，科學(xué)家把這種現(xiàn)象稱為“伊莉莎效應(yīng)”。

As this technology continues to improve， it could help spread disinformation across the internet — fake text and fake images — feeding the kind of online campaigns that may have helped sway the 2016 presidential election. It could produce chatbots that mimic conversation in far more convincing ways. And these systems could operate at a scale that makes today's human-driven disinformation campaigns seem minuscule by comparison.

隨著這項(xiàng)技術(shù)不斷發(fā)展，它可能就會(huì)助長(zhǎng)網(wǎng)絡(luò)虛假信息的傳播（比如偽造的文本或圖像），持續(xù)為線上宣傳活動(dòng)提供原料，正是這些宣傳活動(dòng)很可能動(dòng)搖了2016年的總統(tǒng)大選。利用這項(xiàng)技術(shù)可能會(huì)制造出聊天機(jī)器人，以極有說(shuō)服力的方式模擬真人對(duì)話。而且，與這些系統(tǒng)的運(yùn)作規(guī)模相比，目前以人力為主的虛假信息宣傳就會(huì)顯得不值一提。

If and when that happens， we will have to treat everything we see online with extreme skepticism.

如果真到那一天，我們將不得不以極端懷疑的態(tài)度看待互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上的任何信息。