Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending
Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending
Meta 新推出的 AI 宣传片竟选用了一首关于“世界末日”的歌曲
On Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message that artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world.
周四上午，Meta 在其官方 Instagram 账号上发布了一则广告，传达了人工智能不会“让我们联系减少”或“将我们抛在身后”的信息。该广告的背景音乐选用了大卫·鲍伊（David Bowie）1972 年的歌曲《五年》（Five Years），而这首歌的主题之一正是世界末日。
“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want—but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.)
“叫我们乐观主义者也好，梦想家也罢，随你怎么说——但我们选择相信人类，而且我们看好这个胜算，”旁白说道。画面中，一个蹒跚学步的孩子在追逐蝴蝶，一对父母对着婴儿开怀大笑，杰伦·布伦森（Jalen Brunson）在尼克斯队的夺冠游行中挥手致意。（该广告还特意展示了其备受争议的智能眼镜的正面用途，而非诸如在暗中录像时骚扰女性之类的负面行为。）
The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics: I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare I had to cram so many things to store everything in there And all the fat, skinny people And all the tall, short people And all the nobody people And all the somebody people I never thought I’d need so many people
广告中选取的《五年》片段包含以下歌词： 我听到了电话、歌剧院、最爱的旋律 我看到了男孩、玩具、电熨斗和电视机 我的大脑像个仓库，没有多余的空间 我不得不塞进那么多东西，把一切都存进去 还有所有的胖子、瘦子 还有所有的高个子、矮个子 还有所有的无名之辈 还有所有的重要人物 我从未想过我需要这么多人
Perhaps understandably, it skips other parts of the song, including the opening: News had just come over We had five years left to cry in News guy wept and told us Earth was really dying
可以理解的是，广告跳过了歌曲的其他部分，包括开头： 新闻刚刚传来 我们只剩下五年的时间去哭泣 新闻播报员流着泪告诉我们 地球真的快要毁灭了
When reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he “would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com.
在被问及此事时，Meta 发言人弗朗西斯·布伦南（Francis Brennan）表示，他“想强调大卫·鲍伊本人对《五年》及其含义的解读：对未来保持乐观。”布伦南随信附上了一段 1972 年关于这首歌的引语，来源为 BowieBible.com。
“People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism,” reads the quote, which is itself sourced from NME Magazine. “If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like … It’s going to be unbelievably technological.”
“人们对未来感到无比严肃和恐惧，我希望能扭转这种感觉，将其转化为一股乐观的浪潮，”这段引自《新音乐快递》（NME）杂志的引语写道，“如果一个人能调侃未来，以及未来会是什么样子……那将会是难以置信的科技化。”
Nevertheless, BowieBible.com also notes that the song “speaks of a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, and the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption.”
然而，BowieBible.com 也指出，这首歌“讲述了一个反乌托邦式的噩梦：地球因不明原因进入了最后的五年，随之而来的是恐慌、暴力和救赎的尝试。”
BowieBible.com also quotes from a 2018 interview with drummer Mick Woodmansey: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing,” Woodmansey said of the song. “I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was actually crying.”
BowieBible.com 还引用了 2018 年对鼓手米克·伍德曼西（Mick Woodmansey）的一次采访：“我们聊过这首歌，我们知道它讲的是世界末日，非常压抑，”伍德曼西谈到这首歌时说，“我记得录音的时候，他（鲍伊）真的流泪了。他在录制人声时，确实是在哭泣。”
According to Jeremy D. Larson, the deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, taking songs out of context for commercials is a time-honored tradition. He points to a Carnival Cruise ad that uses an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction. (He also says that since Warner Chappell Music owns Bowie’s catalog, they are the ones with discretion over where his songs end up.)
康泰纳仕旗下刊物《Pitchfork》的副主编杰里米·D·拉尔森（Jeremy D. Larson）认为，将歌曲脱离语境用于商业广告是一种由来已久的传统。他提到了嘉年华邮轮（Carnival Cruise）曾使用伊基·波普（Iggy Pop）一首关于海洛因成瘾的歌曲作为广告背景音乐。（他还表示，由于华纳查佩尔音乐公司拥有鲍伊的版权库，他们拥有决定其歌曲最终出现在何处的裁量权。）
“Meta choosing this specific song where the context for human connection is the apocalypse seems either really ignorant or really insidious,” Larson tells WIRED over Slack. “I don’t know, maybe in that context it’s genius.”
“Meta 选择这首关于人类联系的背景是世界末日的歌曲，看起来要么是非常无知，要么是非常阴险，”拉尔森通过 Slack 对《连线》（WIRED）杂志表示，“我不知道，也许在那种语境下，这是一种天才之举。”
“Hearing [Bowie’s] work used for AI just feels especially and specifically nonconsensual,” he adds. (CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a post about the ad, wrote that the company was “focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone.”)
“听到（鲍伊的）作品被用于人工智能，感觉特别且明确地未经本人同意，”他补充道。（首席执行官马克·扎克伯格在关于该广告的一篇帖子中写道，公司“致力于为每个人提供发挥其全部潜力的工具，并确保技术带来的利益惠及每一个人。”）
Over the past few years, tech companies have made several heavy-handed attempts to assuage people’s fears about their technology making the world worse. Just a few weeks ago, Anthropic released its own lofty ad, “There’s hope in hard questions.” It opens with a clip of a burning building and asks, “Who’s gonna hit the brakes if we need to?” before flashing over dozens of graves. The tone of the ad gradually shifts toward optimism, and ends with vague questions like, “What if we started to be more human again?” over images of families and a humpback whale.
过去几年里，科技公司曾多次采取强硬手段，试图缓解人们对技术让世界变得更糟的担忧。就在几周前，Anthropic 发布了一则高调的广告《难题中蕴含希望》（There’s hope in hard questions）。广告开头是一段燃烧建筑的片段，并问道：“如果需要的话，谁来踩刹车？”随后闪过数十个坟墓的画面。广告基调逐渐转向乐观，最后以“如果我们重新开始变得更有人情味会怎样？”等模糊的问题结束，背景是家庭和座头鲸的画面。
In 2024, Google released a baffling ad about a father teaching his daughter, an aspiring athlete, how to hurdle. The father decides that he should use Gemini to draft a letter, from the perspective of his daughter, so that she can send it to decorated hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. And during the 2022 Super Bowl, FTX aired a now-notorious ad starring Larry David, playing various Larry-esque characters, dismissing useful inventions throughout history—the toilet! the fork! the lightbulb!—before ultimately dismissing FTX.
2024 年，谷歌发布了一则令人困惑的广告，讲述了一位父亲教他立志成为运动员的女儿如何跨栏的故事。这位父亲决定使用 Gemini 以女儿的口吻起草一封信，以便她能寄给著名的跨栏运动员悉尼·麦克劳林-莱弗隆（Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone）。而在 2022 年的超级碗期间，FTX 播出了一则如今已臭名昭著的广告，由拉里·大卫（Larry David）主演，他扮演了各种“拉里式”角色，对历史上有用的发明——马桶！叉子！灯泡！——一一嗤之以鼻，最终也否定了 FTX。
“Don’t be like Larry,” reads the text overlay at the end of the ad. “Don’t miss out on crypto, on NFTs, on the next big thing.”
“别像拉里那样，”广告结尾的文字叠加显示，“不要错过加密货币、NFT 以及下一个大事件。”
FTX filed for bankruptcy about nine months later.
大约九个月后，FTX 申请了破产。
Of course, it’s understandable that tech companies would use every tool at their disposal to increase goodwill. But the ads also demonstrate that many tech companies are failing to sell products that independently convince people that they are not actively making the world worse.
当然，科技公司利用一切可用工具来提升好感度是可以理解的。但这些广告也表明，许多科技公司未能销售出能够独立说服人们“它们并没有让世界变得更糟”的产品。