Timnit Gebru Believes There Is No ‘Existential Threat’ From AI
Timnit Gebru Believes There Is No ‘Existential Threat’ From AI
Timnit Gebru 认为人工智能不存在“生存威胁”
Going rogue. Breaking containment. Misalignment. P(doom). As the industry booms, an entirely new vernacular has emerged in the debates over how consequential artificial intelligence really is. “失控”、“突破封锁”、“对齐失败”、“末日概率（P(doom)）”。随着行业蓬勃发展，关于人工智能究竟有多大影响力的辩论中，出现了一套全新的术语。
Within that new parlance, two phrases have become focal points: stochastic parrots and existential risk. And at the center of those is one prominent AI researcher who has never stood down from a fight, Timnit Gebru. 在这套新话语体系中，两个短语成为了焦点：“随机鹦鹉”（stochastic parrots）和“生存风险”（existential risk）。而处于这些讨论中心的是一位从未在争论中退缩的杰出人工智能研究员——蒂姆尼特·格布鲁（Timnit Gebru）。
Gebru came into the public eye several years ago after sparring with Google over a research paper she coauthored that called out biases in the company’s AI, saying that LLMs basically parroted their training data and risked perpetuating biased viewpoints. The contested paper resulted in Gebru’s departure from the company, and led her to found an institute that investigates harms perpetuated by technology and supports the creation of unbiased tech tools. She has also authored a new book, Deep Unlearning: The Rise of AI and the Radicalization of a Tech Idealist, expected to ship early next year. 几年前，格布鲁因与谷歌就一篇合著的研究论文发生争执而进入公众视野。该论文指出了谷歌人工智能中的偏见，认为大语言模型（LLM）本质上只是在鹦鹉学舌般地重复训练数据，并有延续偏见观点的风险。这篇引发争议的论文导致格布鲁离开了公司，并促使她创立了一家研究所，专门调查技术带来的危害，并支持开发无偏见的技术工具。她还撰写了一本新书《深度反学习：人工智能的崛起与技术理想主义者的激进化》（Deep Unlearning: The Rise of AI and the Radicalization of a Tech Idealist），预计将于明年初出版。
More recently, Gebru has spoken out against a faction of the industry that believes AI is so powerful it could destroy humanity. In turn, some members of that community, including an Anthropic cofounder, have alleged that Gebru’s earlier research about stochastic parrots is no longer relevant, and that AI does have the ability to “think” or reason. (In an interesting twist, or you might say horseshoe, Gebru’s beliefs about the cult-like aspects of AI’s effective altruism community have now aligned her with right-wing entities who have also lambasted these EA groups.) 最近，格布鲁公开反对行业内的一个派系，该派系认为人工智能强大到足以毁灭人类。作为回应，该群体的一些成员（包括 Anthropic 的一位联合创始人）声称，格布鲁早期关于“随机鹦鹉”的研究已不再适用，并坚称人工智能确实具备“思考”或推理的能力。（有趣的是，或者说是“马蹄铁理论”的体现，格布鲁对人工智能领域“有效利他主义”社区邪教化倾向的看法，使她与同样抨击这些 EA 团体的右翼势力站在了同一阵线。）
The AI debate is no longer just about the technology itself, but about ideological groups and strategic narratives, and Gebru believes these narratives are a “harmful distraction” from the real issues with AI. I recently spoke with Gebru about what she believes these arguments are distracting from, and also got her response to critiques that her earlier research underestimates the AI of today. 关于人工智能的辩论已不再仅仅关乎技术本身，而是涉及意识形态团体和战略叙事。格布鲁认为，这些叙事是对人工智能真正问题的“有害干扰”。我最近与格布鲁进行了交谈，探讨了她认为这些争论掩盖了什么，并就她早期研究低估了当今人工智能的批评，听取了她的回应。
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 本次采访为篇幅和清晰度进行了编辑。
LAUREN GOODE: Timnit, thank you so much for being here. 劳伦·古德（LAUREN GOODE）： Timnit，非常感谢你能来。
TIMNIT GEBRU: Thank you for having me. 蒂姆尼特·格布鲁（TIMNIT GEBRU）： 谢谢邀请。
I’m gonna assume that a lot of people know this already, but for those who don’t, a few weeks ago, a young AI researcher at Anthropic stepped down, and in his resignation post on X he indicated that a lot of people within the company feel that we are facing this major existential risk with AI. A few people responded, and there was this whole pile-on and discourse about the real threats of AI. 我想很多人已经知道了，但对于不知道的人，我想说明一下：几周前，Anthropic 的一位年轻 AI 研究员辞职了。他在 X 上的辞职帖中表示，公司内部许多人认为我们正面临人工智能带来的重大生存风险。随后几个人进行了回应，引发了一场关于人工智能真实威胁的围攻和讨论。
When you and I spoke in the immediate aftermath, you said you felt that that particular narrative was a distraction from the real problems we’re facing with AI. Can you unpack that a little bit? 当我们事后立即交谈时，你说你觉得那种叙事是在转移人们对人工智能所面临的真正问题的注意力。你能详细解释一下吗？
I would even go farther than that and say that it’s dangerous. It’s not just a distraction, but it’s harmful. 我甚至想更进一步说，这很危险。它不仅仅是干扰，而且是有害的。
Before I answer your question, I want to give a little brief history of how this narrative has been going for a long time. Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have been saying this is going on since 2013. Prominent people have been saying that AI is an existential risk to humanity. It is exactly the same rhetoric every three years. 在回答你的问题之前，我想简要回顾一下这种叙事由来已久的历史。埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）和彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）从 2013 年起就一直在说这件事。知名人士一直在宣称人工智能对人类构成生存风险。每隔三年，这套说辞就如出一辙。
For example, the Future of Life Institute … 例如，“生命未来研究所”（Future of Life Institute）……
Wait, what is that? 等等，那是什么？
The Future of Life Institute is an institute that was founded by Max Tegmark, a physicist at MIT now, and Jaan Tallinn, a billionaire who led Anthropic’s Series A funding. “生命未来研究所”是由现任麻省理工学院物理学家马克斯·泰格马克（Max Tegmark）和亿万富翁、Anthropic A 轮融资的领投人让·塔林（Jaan Tallinn）共同创立的。
He was a Skype cofounder, correct? 他是 Skype 的联合创始人，对吧？
Yes. Jaan Tallinn also funds METR, which is an auditor, a so-called third party, whose report about OpenAI’s so-called rogue agents hacking Hugging Face went viral. 是的。让·塔林还资助了 METR，这是一个审计机构，也就是所谓的“第三方”。该机构关于 OpenAI 所谓的“流氓智能体”入侵 Hugging Face 的报告曾在网上疯传。
So to the public it might seem that there are so many different entities coming together saying the same thing. But the same billionaires who founded and funded Anthropic, the ones who stand to benefit from its IPO more than anybody else, also founded and funded the institutions warning about the, quotation marks, “existential risk” of AI. They also founded and funded the third parties that are being heavily cited right now as if they are an independent entity. 所以对公众来说，似乎有很多不同的实体在共同表达同样的观点。但正是那些创立并资助了 Anthropic 的亿万富翁们——那些比任何人都更从其 IPO 中获益的人——同时也创立并资助了那些警告人工智能“生存风险”（加引号）的机构。他们还创立并资助了现在被广泛引用、仿佛是独立实体的第三方机构。
Tell us why you thought the “machine-god narrative,” as you put it, is a distraction. 告诉我们为什么你认为你所说的“机器神叙事”是一种干扰。
It’s even more than a distraction. It’s harmful. The reason I was telling you all these facts is that these people, the funders, the founders, the investors who stand to benefit and profit the most from these companies IPO-ing are saying this, that they have been the ones seeding this narrative going back multiple decades. 这不仅仅是干扰，更是有害的。我告诉你所有这些事实的原因是，这些人——那些从这些公司 IPO 中获益最多的资助者、创始人和投资者——正在散布这种言论，而且几十年来他们一直都在播种这种叙事。
So people should ask why. If I stand to get lots of money from a particular thing, why do I seem to be the person saying this particular company might build something that kills us all? It sounds counterintuitive. 所以人们应该问问为什么。如果我能从某件事中赚大钱，为什么我反而成了那个说这家公司可能会制造出杀死我们所有人的东西的人？这听起来很反直觉。
This is why I really have a lot of respect for [former Federal Trade Commission chair] Lina Khan, because one of the things she said is that there’s no exception to the current laws we have for AI companies, and they talk as if there is an exception. You’re saying that whatever you’re building is so powerful that it’s beyond anything we’ve seen before. 这就是为什么我非常尊重（前联邦贸易委员会主席）莉娜·汗（Lina Khan），因为她说过的一件事是：我们现有的法律对人工智能公司没有任何例外，但他们谈论起来却好像有例外一样。你们声称自己正在构建的东西非常强大，超出了我们以往所见的一切。
Right. It’s self-aggrandizing. It’s saying we’re the future-makers here, but the future’s gonna be really scary if we can’t continue to build this. 没错。这是一种自我吹嘘。他们是在说，我们是未来的创造者，但如果我们不能继续构建这些，未来将会非常可怕。
You have to pay attention to what they say in the news cycles. When they say that AI can cause an existential risk, they also say that AI can stop climate change, bring us world peace, and eradicate poverty. 你必须关注他们在新闻周期中说了什么。当他们说人工智能可能导致生存风险时，他们同时也说人工智能可以阻止气候变化、带来世界和平并消除贫困。
AI can do all of these things because it’s powerful. It can bring us utopia, but also if the wrong people do it and we don’t have guardrails or whatever, it can also just kill us all. So the same people believe these things. There’s only a few people who might be in one of these camps. 人工智能之所以能做到这一切，是因为它很强大。它可以给我们带来乌托邦，但如果由错误的人来操作，且我们没有防护栏之类的东西，它也可能杀死我们所有人。所以，同一批人相信这些事情。只有极少数人可能只属于其中一个阵营。
When you’re telling people that you have super powerful machines, what you’re speaking to, first of all, is to your investors. You’re saying, “You wanna get your hands on these super powerful machines.” You’re talking to governments saying, “You don’t want your adversaries to get their hands on these super powerful machines.” 当你告诉人们你拥有超级强大的机器时，你首先是在对投资者说话。你在说：“你们想掌握这些超级强大的机器。”你是在对政府说：“你们肯定不希望你们的对手掌握这些超级强大的机器。”