Shunning AI is the human choice

拒绝人工智能是人类的选择

LinkedIn may be awash with boosters, but shunning AI is the human choice. 尽管 LinkedIn 上充斥着人工智能的吹捧者，但拒绝人工智能才是人类的选择。

Jonah Peretti is very lucky. Buzzfeed—the viral media company he founded 20 years ago and was once valued at $1.6 billion—was running out of cash when billionaire Byron Allen agreed to buy 52% of its shares. At the same time this new partnership was revealed, Peretti announced he’d be stepping down as CEO of Buzzfeed to serve in a new role as President of Buzzfeed AI. So Allen will continue to bankroll the former media titan’s obsession, as he promises (without evidence) that AI will right the ship. Lucky, to be sure, but also part of the mass delusion that AI is not just worth our money, but owed our respect. 乔纳·佩雷蒂（Jonah Peretti）非常幸运。他 20 年前创立的病毒式媒体公司 Buzzfeed 曾估值 16 亿美元，但在资金即将耗尽时，亿万富翁拜伦·艾伦（Byron Allen）同意收购其 52% 的股份。在宣布这一新合作关系的同时，佩雷蒂宣布将卸任 Buzzfeed 首席执行官，转而担任 Buzzfeed AI 总裁。因此，艾伦将继续为这位前媒体巨头的执念买单，而佩雷蒂则承诺（尽管毫无证据）人工智能将使公司扭亏为盈。这无疑是幸运的，但也反映了一种集体错觉：即人工智能不仅值得我们花钱，还理应得到我们的尊重。

Lately I’ve felt myself rapidly radicalizing into what I can only call an anti-AI evangelist. I’ve never been quiet about my feelings on the subject—I even wrote a screed about it last month—but as more and more examples show how easily it can be used unethically, I’m not just skeptical. I’m against it. I wouldn’t call this a particularly bold stance, given the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal declares an “AI Rebellion,” noting that public opinion on the subject is souring “at breakneck speed.” What is novel, I think, is recognizing that people who loathe AI and the way it’s being foisted upon society are an actual constituency to be taken seriously. 最近，我感到自己正在迅速激进化，成为我所称的“反人工智能传道者”。我从未掩饰过自己对此事的看法——上个月我甚至还写了一篇抨击文章——但随着越来越多的例子表明人工智能可以多么轻易地被不道德地使用，我不再仅仅是持怀疑态度，而是坚决反对。考虑到今天《华尔街日报》头版宣布了一场“人工智能叛乱”，并指出公众对该议题的看法正在“以惊人的速度”恶化，我认为这算不上什么特别大胆的立场。我认为新颖之处在于，我们应当意识到，那些厌恶人工智能及其被强加于社会的方式的人，是一个真正值得被认真对待的群体。

I figure that if billionaires and brands are going to try to beat us into AI submission, it’s only fair we get to take a few swings. We’re told that if we don’t use AI then we’ll get left behind, but what if we’d like to leave the AI boosters behind instead? It’s time to give a voice to those who don’t view AI as an inevitability but a liability. Now is our time. 我想，如果亿万富翁和品牌方试图强迫我们屈服于人工智能，那么我们进行反击也是公平的。我们被告知，如果我们不使用人工智能，就会被时代抛弃，但如果我们想把人工智能的吹捧者抛在身后呢？现在是时候为那些不把人工智能视为必然趋势，而将其视为负担的人发声了。现在是我们的时代。

The soundtrack of the past week or so has been the boos of graduating college students as out-of-touch adults try to tell them that they need to embrace AI or else. Perhaps most prominent were the boos of University of Arizona graduates as ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt told them, “The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.” These grads, according to Schmidt, have no agency, which was confirmed by this comment a few minutes later: “When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat. You just get on, Graduates, the rocket ship is here.” 过去一周左右的背景音，是大学毕业生们的嘘声，因为那些脱离现实的成年人试图告诉他们，必须拥抱人工智能，否则就会被淘汰。最引人注目的或许是亚利桑那大学毕业生对前谷歌首席执行官埃里克·施密特（Eric Schmidt）发出的嘘声，当时施密特告诉他们：“问题不在于人工智能是否会塑造世界。它会的。问题在于你们是否会参与塑造人工智能。”在施密特看来，这些毕业生毫无自主权，几分钟后的这番评论证实了这一点：“当有人为你提供火箭飞船上的座位时，你不要问是哪个座位。你直接上去就行了，毕业生们，火箭飞船就在这里。”

What Schmidt doesn’t get is that these young people have already been forced onto the ship and there aren’t enough seats. A few days before Schmidt, record company CEO Scott Borchetta took the stage at Middle Tennessee State University’s commencement to extoll the virtues of AI. When the students, whose job prospects have shrunken significantly because of the AI bubble, booed Borchetta, he shot back: “Deal with it. Like I said, it’s a tool.” Sage words from a man reportedly worth $450 million. 施密特不明白的是，这些年轻人已经被强行推上了这艘飞船，而且座位根本不够。在施密特演讲的前几天，唱片公司首席执行官斯科特·博切塔（Scott Borchetta）在田纳西州立大学的毕业典礼上大谈人工智能的优点。当那些因人工智能泡沫而就业前景大幅缩水的学生对博切塔发出嘘声时，他反击道：“接受现实吧。就像我说的，它只是个工具。”这番“至理名言”出自一位据称身价 4.5 亿美元的人之口。

It may seem callous for a commencement speaker to respond to graduates’ existential dread with “deal with it,” but billionaires and tech companies have been feeding us this message for a while now. You may not like AI, they preach, but because of choices we are making for you, life will be increasingly unlivable without it. Yet while they try to force-feed us this bleakly inevitable future, actually existing AI keeps making the humans who use it look like idiots. 毕业典礼演讲者用“接受现实吧”来回应毕业生的生存焦虑，这似乎显得冷酷无情，但亿万富翁和科技公司向我们灌输这种信息已经有一段时间了。他们宣扬说，你可能不喜欢人工智能，但由于我们为你做出的选择，没有它，生活将变得越来越难以维持。然而，当他们试图强行向我们灌输这种暗淡的必然未来时，现实中存在的人工智能却不断让使用它的人类看起来像个傻瓜。

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported on a new book called “The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality,” by media executive Steven Rosenbaum. He readily copped to having “used AI tools ChatGPT and Claude during the research, writing and editing process.” But he didn’t disclose—likely because he didn’t realize it!— that his book contained misattributed or completely fabricated quotes created by those very tools. Only when reporters began to question the quotes did Rosenbaum promise to “investigate” how they’d been included. But Rosenbaum was unrepentant. He told the Times that if this debacle “serves as a warning about the risks of AI-assisted research and verification, that is why I wrote the book.” 周二，《纽约时报》报道了一本名为《真理的未来：人工智能如何重塑现实》（The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality）的新书，作者是媒体高管史蒂文·罗森鲍姆（Steven Rosenbaum）。他坦然承认在“研究、写作和编辑过程中使用了 ChatGPT 和 Claude 等人工智能工具”。但他没有披露——很可能是因为他自己也没意识到！——他的书中包含了由这些工具生成的错误归属或完全捏造的引语。直到记者开始质疑这些引语时，罗森鲍姆才承诺“调查”它们是如何被收录进去的。但罗森鲍姆毫无悔意。他告诉《纽约时报》，如果这场惨败“能作为对人工智能辅助研究和验证风险的警告，那这就是我写这本书的原因。”

Ronsebaum’s big whoopsie is certainly a warning, but not in the way he thinks. He himself is the warning; a cautionary tale about relying so heavily on a flawed technology that it completely undermines your legitimacy. The errors may not diminish some of the book’s larger questions, but they diminish the value of the book itself. If you can’t make the effort to verify the contents of your book, then why should anyone make an effort to read it? 罗森鲍姆的这次重大失误确实是一个警告，但并非他所想的那样。他本人就是一个警告；一个关于过度依赖有缺陷的技术以至于完全损害自身合法性的警示故事。这些错误或许不会削弱书中提出的一些宏大问题，但它们削弱了书本身的价值。如果你连核实书本内容都懒得去做，那么别人为什么要费心去读它呢？

Two other literary AI-crises unfolded Tuesday. Coincidence? Perhaps. But also potentially a sign that AI use has reached the critical mass billionaires hoped for. Only, instead of making things better, it’s just made them stupider. 周二还发生了另外两起文学界的人工智能危机。是巧合吗？也许吧。但这也有可能是一个信号，表明人工智能的使用已经达到了亿万富翁们所希望的临界点。只不过，它并没有让事情变得更好，反而让一切变得更愚蠢了。