Is AI Actually Going to Kill Us All?
Is AI Actually Going to Kill Us All?
人工智能真的会毁灭我们所有人吗？
This week on Uncanny Valley, an AI researcher’s resignation from Anthropic went viral on social media after he claimed there’s a real chance AI could wipe out humanity within a decade. WIRED’s Will Knight joins Brian Barrett and Leah Feiger to assess whether the doom narrative is overblown or overdue. 本周的《Uncanny Valley》播客中，一位人工智能研究员从 Anthropic 公司辞职的消息在社交媒体上疯传，因为他声称人工智能在十年内毁灭人类的可能性是真实存在的。《连线》（WIRED）的 Will Knight 加入了 Brian Barrett 和 Leah Feiger 的讨论，共同评估这种“末日叙事”究竟是言过其实，还是迟早会发生。
We also discuss Apple’s debut of its $2,000 foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo, and the new “always listening” Apple Watch features that have Brian feeling more than a little uneasy. Plus, a WIRED investigation found that the US Census Bureau used faulty data to create a misleading report touted by the Trump administration. 我们还讨论了苹果公司推出的售价 2000 美元的折叠屏手机 iPhone Duo，以及让 Brian 感到有些不安的 Apple Watch 新增的“始终监听”功能。此外，一项《连线》的调查发现，美国人口普查局使用了错误的数据，炮制了一份被特朗普政府大肆宣扬的误导性报告。
Brian Barrett: Welcome to WIRED’s Uncanny Valley. I’m Brian Barrett, executive editor. Brian Barrett： 欢迎收听《连线》的《Uncanny Valley》。我是执行编辑 Brian Barrett。
Leah Feiger: And I’m Leah Feiger, director of politics and science. Leah Feiger： 我是政治与科学总监 Leah Feiger。
Brian Barrett: Today on the show, we’re discussing an AI researcher who resigned from Anthropic and made waves on social media by claiming that most AI researchers earnestly believe that there’s a non-zero chance AI will, well, kill us all. Brian Barrett： 今天节目中，我们要讨论一位从 Anthropic 辞职的人工智能研究员。他在社交媒体上引发了轰动，声称大多数人工智能研究人员都真诚地认为，人工智能有很大可能——嗯，毁灭我们所有人。
Leah Feiger: And in case you missed it, last month, President Donald Trump was touting a report published by the Census Bureau claiming that noncitizens voted in the 2020 election. WIRED now has uncovered evidence that the report was made with very faulty data. We’re going to get into how the repercussions of the bureau using and publishing this data go way beyond this one report. Leah Feiger： 如果你错过了相关新闻，上个月唐纳德·特朗普总统曾大肆宣扬一份由人口普查局发布的报告，声称非公民在 2020 年大选中投了票。《连线》现已发现证据，证明该报告是基于极其错误的数据制作的。我们将深入探讨人口普查局使用并发布这些数据所带来的影响，这些影响远不止这份报告本身那么简单。
Brian Barrett: Also on the agenda today, Apple’s big iPhone event. All eyes have been on the new foldable iPhone and the roughly $2,000 price tag that brings with it. We’ll talk about what’s behind this gamble and other releases that caught our attention from Apple’s big event. Brian Barrett： 今天议程上的另一项内容是苹果的大型 iPhone 发布会。所有人的目光都集中在新款折叠屏 iPhone 以及随之而来的约 2000 美元的定价上。我们将讨论这场赌博背后的原因，以及苹果发布会上其他引起我们关注的新品。
The resignation of an AI researcher from Anthropic has been gathering a lot of attention. This guy Jacob Coxon quit the company this week, decided to share his reasons why on a thread on X, which basically boiled down to he thinks that the leading AI companies, which I guess we’re going to say OpenAI and Anthropic primarily, are both behaving irresponsibly in their quest to continue advancing their models. 一位人工智能研究员从 Anthropic 辞职的消息引起了广泛关注。Jacob Coxon 本周从该公司离职，并决定在 X（原推特）上发帖分享原因。其核心观点是，他认为领先的人工智能公司——主要是 OpenAI 和 Anthropic——在追求模型持续进步的过程中表现得极其不负责任。
These are kind of runaway trains. The part that people have really latched onto is this claim that, quote, “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” end quote. So just kill us all by the end of the decade. So we have totality and a pretty narrow timeframe. 这些公司就像脱轨的列车。人们真正关注的是他那句引述：“构建人工智能的人真诚地相信，它可能会在本世纪末之前毁灭我们所有人。”也就是说，在十年内毁灭所有人。这不仅涉及全人类的存亡，而且时间窗口还相当紧迫。
It didn’t help that one of Anthropic’s own senior safety executives then jumped in and said, “Yeah, that’s basically how we feel.” WIRED senior correspondent Will Knight is here to help us parse this. Will, thank you so much for being here. 更糟糕的是，Anthropic 的一位高级安全主管随后也站出来表示：“是的，我们的感觉基本一致。”《连线》资深记者 Will Knight 今天来到这里帮助我们分析此事。Will，非常感谢你的到来。
Will Knight: No, thanks for having me. Will Knight： 不客气，谢谢邀请。
Brian Barrett: Can I start with one question just to establish a baseline here? I was a little surprised that this took off so much because is it fair to say Anthropic has always said this. In fact, it’s been part of their pitch from the very beginning that AI is so powerful and so capable of destroying humanity that we need to be the ones who are in charge of it. You can only trust us. Brian Barrett： 我能先问一个问题来建立基准吗？我有点惊讶这件事会引起这么大的反响，因为 Anthropic 一直以来不都是这么说的吗？事实上，从一开始，他们的宣传重点就是：人工智能如此强大，足以毁灭人类，所以必须由我们来掌控它。你们只能信任我们。
Will Knight: Right, exactly. That’s exactly their pitch to everybody and themselves. And this resignation, when I saw this kind of snowballing, I felt that this is something that I’ve heard a lot of people say and it’s not particularly novel that people from Anthropic or OpenAI are worried about that. Will Knight： 没错，正是如此。这正是他们对所有人以及对自己所做的宣传。当看到这次辞职事件像滚雪球一样发酵时，我觉得这其实是我听过很多人说过的观点，Anthropic 或 OpenAI 的人对此感到担忧并不是什么新鲜事。
I guess the fact that somebody within Anthropic, because Anthropic has always positioned itself as really caring about safety, jumping ship and making that statement made me think, OK, if something shifted there, are they becoming much more like OpenAI? 我想，关键在于 Anthropic 内部有人离职并发表了这样的声明——毕竟 Anthropic 一直将自己定位为真正关心安全的公司——这让我思考：如果公司内部发生了变化，他们是否正变得越来越像 OpenAI？
And I think also we’re seeing a moment, this moment where AI agents have started doing rogue things and that’s gotten a lot of people’s attention and that’s probably why this kind of statement suddenly is getting more attention from the public. 我认为我们正处于这样一个时刻：人工智能代理已经开始出现“流氓行为”，这引起了许多人的注意，这可能就是为什么这种言论突然受到公众更多关注的原因。
Combined with that, I think we’re really seeing some stunning advances in AI. This week OpenAI announced that its model had within a couple of days solved one of the grand, the Clay mathematics puzzles, which is to me absolutely mind-blowing, astonishing. So you’re seeing these amazing leaps really, which I think is significant. 再加上我认为我们确实看到了人工智能一些令人震惊的进步。本周 OpenAI 宣布其模型在几天内解决了一个重大的克雷数学难题，这对我来说简直是令人难以置信、令人震惊的。所以你确实看到了这些惊人的飞跃，我认为这意义重大。
And then thirdly, we have a moment where all of the labs are racing to do something that this researcher mentioned, which is recursive self-improvement. What that means is using the AI to improve AI, which sounds like a neat trick, and it is already very, very widely used. 第三，我们正处于所有实验室都在竞相实现这位研究员所提到的“递归自我改进”的时刻。这意味着利用人工智能来改进人工智能，这听起来是个巧妙的技巧，而且它已经被非常广泛地应用了。
AI models are so good at coding that they can definitely improve the algorithms and everything that goes into building a model. The idea though is that you can create this kind of loop where they just keep doing that and get better and better and better. And a lot of people are worried that that could lead to some sort of escalation in capabilities that you can’t really control. And so I think that that’s also playing a role here. 人工智能模型在编程方面非常出色，它们绝对可以改进算法以及构建模型所需的一切。但核心在于，你可以创造出一种循环，让它们不断地这样做，变得越来越好。许多人担心这可能会导致某种无法真正控制的能力升级。所以我认为这也是导致目前局面的一个因素。
Brian Barrett: I do want to dig into that a little bit, Will, the idea of on the one hand you’ve got AI doomers, and I’m not saying… Brian Barrett： Will，我想深入探讨一下这一点。一方面是所谓的“人工智能末日论者”，我并不是说……