College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos
College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos
大学生用嘘声淹没赞美人工智能的毕业典礼演讲
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt received a cold reception during a commencement address at the University of Arizona when he touched upon the thorny subject of Artificial Intelligence. The ex-Google exec was one of several commencement speakers across the United States this weekend who were booed for their positive comments about AI, a technology that is having a vast and immediate impact on the job market that these graduates are soon to enter.
前谷歌首席执行官埃里克·施密特（Eric Schmidt）在亚利桑那大学的毕业典礼上发表演讲时，因触及人工智能这一棘手话题而受到了冷遇。这位前谷歌高管是本周末美国各地多位因发表赞美人工智能言论而遭到嘘声的演讲嘉宾之一。人工智能技术正在对这些毕业生即将进入的就业市场产生巨大且直接的影响。
Schmidt, who served in various capacities as CEO, Chairman, and technical advisor to Google and its parent company Alphabet across several decades, found a mostly hostile reception to the themes within his keynote speech in Arizona. He talked about the impact of technology over the years on young people to the thousands of assembled students, with his fairly positive spin on AI proving to be a point of contention for the audience. Schmidt told the students that “we thought that we were adding stones to a cathedral of knowledge that humanity had been constructing for centuries, but the world we built turned out to be more complicated than we anticipated.”
施密特曾在过去几十年里担任谷歌及其母公司 Alphabet 的首席执行官、董事长和技术顾问等多个职位，他在亚利桑那大学的主题演讲内容遭到了现场大部分人的抵触。他向在场的数千名学生谈论了多年来技术对年轻人的影响，但他对人工智能相当积极的解读成为了听众争议的焦点。施密特告诉学生们：“我们曾以为自己是在为人类几个世纪以来建造的知识大教堂添砖加瓦，但我们所构建的世界却比我们预想的要复杂得多。”
Schmidt’s speech, which also mentioned how “the same tools that connect us also isolate us,” suggesting that they had “degraded the public square,” generally failed to enthuse the audience. Some of the loudest hostile voices were reserved for Schmidt’s comments on AI, however. “You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts you could never accomplish on your own,” comparing it to a “seat on a rocket ship.” He also suggested that the students will be the ones to “shape artificial intelligence,” even if they “don’t care about science… because AI is gonna touch everything else as well.”
施密特的演讲还提到“连接我们的工具同时也孤立了我们”，并暗示这些工具“贬低了公共广场”，这番言论总体上未能引起听众的共鸣。然而，最强烈的敌意还是针对施密特关于人工智能的评论。他称：“你现在可以组建一个人工智能代理团队，来帮你完成那些你独自无法完成的工作，”并将其比作“火箭上的座位”。他还表示，学生们将是“塑造人工智能”的人，即使他们“不关心科学……因为人工智能也将触及其他一切领域。”
At one point, the former Google executive was forced to stop as the shouting intensified. “I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you. There is a fear,” going on to speak about the concerns within the next generation that their “future has already been written,” calling those fears “rational.” Schmidt’s message, however, doesn’t deviate: AI “will shape the world,” and it’ll be up to them to guide it along the way.
演讲中途，随着嘘声愈演愈烈，这位前谷歌高管被迫停了下来。“我知道你们许多人对此有何感受。我听到了。这是一种恐惧。”他随后谈到了下一代对于“未来已被注定”的担忧，并称这些担忧是“理性的”。然而，施密特的核心观点并未改变：人工智能“将塑造世界”，而引导它发展的重任将落在学生们肩上。
Schmidt’s get-on-board messaging clearly didn’t resonate with the audience at the University of Arizona. Other speakers, including Gloria Caulfield, a VP for a major property development company, suggested that AI was “the next industrial revolution” during her speech at the University of Central Florida, and was promptly jeered. Meanwhile, music executive Scott Borchetta at Middle Tennessee State University suggested AI was “rewriting production as we sit here” and told his audience to “deal with it” as they jeered him in response.
施密特这种“顺应潮流”的论调显然没有引起亚利桑那大学听众的共鸣。其他演讲者也遭遇了类似情况，包括一家大型房地产开发公司的副总裁格洛丽亚·考尔菲德（Gloria Caulfield）在佛罗里达中央大学演讲时称人工智能是“下一次工业革命”，随即遭到嘲笑。与此同时，音乐高管斯科特·博切塔（Scott Borchetta）在中田纳西州立大学表示，人工智能正在“在我们坐在这里的同时重写生产方式”，并告诉台下嘘声一片的听众要“接受现实”。
Meanwhile, Google is just one of several influential technology firms involved in the development of AI, spending billions on its development. Nobody quite knows what the future has in store for an AI-dominated world, but an exec at tech rival Microsoft believes AI will replace every white-collar job within the next 12 to 18 months, despite a wider survey of U.S. business executives from earlier in the year reporting little productivity gains from its use so far.
与此同时，谷歌只是参与人工智能开发的几家有影响力的科技公司之一，并在其研发上投入了数十亿美元。没有人确切知道人工智能主导的世界未来会怎样，但科技巨头微软的一位高管认为，人工智能将在未来 12 到 18 个月内取代所有白领工作，尽管今年早些时候对美国企业高管的一项更广泛调查显示，目前人工智能的使用带来的生产力提升微乎其微。