Why We're Banning AI

本文为原文前 6,000 字符的节选翻译，完整内容请查看原文。

We urgently need to protect human thought and creativity. Our magazine is committing itself to remaining handmade. Ensure every publication you support does the same.

我们迫切需要保护人类的思想与创造力。我们的杂志致力于保持纯手工制作。请确保你所支持的每一份出版物也都这样做。

I am proud to say that as part of our new union contract, Current Affairs recently adopted one of the strictest anti-AI policies in the publishing industry. No text that is AI-generated may be published in our magazine. No AI-generated art may be used as a Current Affairs illustration. When you read Current Affairs, you are going to be reading the thoughts of a human, and seeing the results of human artistry.

我很自豪地说，作为我们新工会合同的一部分，《时事》（Current Affairs）最近在出版业采取了最严格的反人工智能政策之一。任何人工智能生成的文本都不得在我们的杂志上发表。任何人工智能生成的艺术作品都不得用作《时事》的插图。当你阅读《时事》时，你读到的是人类的思想，看到的是人类艺术创作的成果。

We’re adopting this policy because we want to directly challenge the slopification of media. Newsrooms across the country are rushing to embrace AI and replace actual writers, public opinion be damned. The CEO of Business Insider, for instance, has said his publication is “all in on AI” (which is becoming an annoyingly common slogan) and shamelessly publishes AI-written content. At least they’re honest about it. Some publications have deliberately tricked people; Sports Illustrated was caught publishing AI-written pieces by nonexistent journalists. Guest op-eds in all of the major newspapers have been found to be either partly or wholly written by AI. Sometimes publishing this work can happen inadvertently; here at Current Affairs, we have had plenty of freelance submissions that use suspicious numbers of em-dashes and “this is not an X, it’s a Y” sentences. (We can’t promise that nothing will ever slip through the cracks, but we’re vigilant!) Astonishingly, though, some editors have actually defended publishing the pieces even when writers have been caught. The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed from a hedge fund billionaire, Stan Druckenmiller, that turned out to have been AI-generated (probably because billionaires are inarticulate due to a lifetime of never having to craft arguments to persuade the yes-men around them), but the paper defended publishing the piece, since it reflected the billionaire’s genuine opinion.

我们采取这一政策是因为我们想直接挑战媒体的“劣质化”。全国各地的新闻编辑室都在争先恐后地拥抱人工智能并取代真正的作者，根本不顾及公众舆论。例如，《商业内幕》（Business Insider）的首席执行官曾表示，他的出版物“全力投入人工智能”（这正成为一个令人厌烦的口号），并厚颜无耻地发布人工智能撰写的内容。至少他们对此很诚实。一些出版物则故意欺骗读者；《体育画报》（Sports Illustrated）曾被发现发表由不存在的记者撰写的人工智能文章。各大报纸的客座评论文章也被发现部分或全部由人工智能撰写。有时，发布这些作品可能是无意的；在《时事》，我们收到过许多自由投稿，其中使用了可疑数量的破折号和“这不是X，而是Y”之类的句式。（我们不能保证没有任何东西会漏网，但我们保持警惕！）然而令人震惊的是，一些编辑在作者被抓包后，竟然还为发表这些文章进行辩护。《华尔街日报》发表了一篇来自对冲基金亿万富翁斯坦·德鲁肯米勒（Stan Druckenmiller）的评论文章，结果发现是由人工智能生成的（可能是因为亿万富翁们一生都不需要构思论点来说服周围的唯唯诺诺者，所以表达能力欠佳），但该报纸为发表这篇文章进行了辩护，称其反映了这位亿万富翁的真实观点。

The trends are dire. But it’s obvious why these publications are rushing to replace writers. They are for-profit corporations, whose ultimate loyalty is to shareholders, not workers. AI is great for them, because it can produce “content” at a fraction of the expense that a writer costs. In fact, on the Milton Friedman theory that the only responsibility a business has is to increase its profits, CEOs are obligated to replace writers with AI if doing so is better for the bottom line. It’s a simple calculation: if producing 100 posts with AI costs almost nothing and takes four minutes, but paying a writer to produce 20 posts costs $5,000, well, why would you pay the writer? The calculation might hold even if the quality drops substantially, errors are introduced, and audience loyalty plummets. Even if you lost 60 percent of your readership, you might still make a lot more per story, because you can pump them out in seconds.

趋势是可怕的。但这些出版物为何急于取代作者显而易见。它们是营利性公司，其最终忠诚对象是股东，而非员工。人工智能对它们来说非常棒，因为它能以作者成本的一小部分生产“内容”。事实上，根据米尔顿·弗里德曼（Milton Friedman）关于企业唯一责任就是增加利润的理论，如果用人工智能取代作者对利润更有利，首席执行官们就有义务这样做。这是一个简单的计算：如果用人工智能生产100篇文章几乎不需要成本且只需四分钟，而支付给作者生产20篇文章却要花费5000美元，那么，你为什么要付钱给作者呢？即使质量大幅下降、出现错误且读者忠诚度暴跌，这种计算可能依然成立。即使你失去了60%的读者，你每篇报道赚的钱可能还是会多得多，因为你可以在几秒钟内大量炮制出这些内容。

Futurism reports that despite the common narrative that AI has not led to major job loss, creative industries are being “eviscerated” by AI, which is fueling “one of the worst stretches for media employment in modern US history,” with more than 200,000 jobs in creative industries being lost in four years. The situation is horrible for artists. Game studios are now designing their worlds and levels using “art assets generated with full AI workflows.” As Brian Merchant reported earlier this year:

《未来主义》（Futurism）报道称，尽管普遍的说法是人工智能尚未导致大规模失业，但创意产业正被人工智能“掏空”，这加剧了“美国现代史上媒体就业最糟糕的时期之一”，创意产业在四年内流失了超过20万个工作岗位。对于艺术家来说，情况非常糟糕。游戏工作室现在正使用“通过全人工智能工作流生成的艺术资产”来设计他们的世界和关卡。正如布莱恩·默钱特（Brian Merchant）今年早些时候报道的那样：

Opportunities and pay rates declining as clients and employers embrace generative AI. Artists getting more touch-up jobs and fewer well-paying, sustainable gigs. Pessimism, anger, and even despair, growing common, if not universal, in the field.

随着客户和雇主拥抱生成式人工智能，机会和薪酬水平正在下降。艺术家们接到的修补工作越来越多，而报酬丰厚、可持续的工作却越来越少。悲观、愤怒甚至绝望的情绪在这一领域变得普遍，甚至无处不在。

This is especially galling given that all of the AI models that are being used to replace artists were trained through the mass theft of those very same artists’ work!

考虑到所有被用来取代艺术家的AI模型，都是通过大规模窃取这些艺术家的作品训练出来的，这尤其令人愤慨！

Now here at Current Affairs, we’ve decided to say: fuck that! Over 62 beautiful print issues, we have commissioned hundreds of original, handmade artworks from brilliant artists around the world. We’ve published meticulously researched and edited articles, which often take weeks or months to go from the draft stage to publication. We spend ages working on our page layouts, poring over photographs for the magazine, tweaking sketches, moving sentences around in articles. The labor that goes into this magazine has been extensive from the start, and most of it is hidden from view. We do it because we care about quality. If you pick up a copy of our magazine, you’ll see the result. I think it’s clear when you read it that we actually care about what we’re putting out. It’s not just Content designed to farm clicks.

现在，在《时事》，我们决定说：去他的！在62期精美的印刷版杂志中，我们委托了世界各地才华横溢的艺术家创作了数百件原创的手工艺术品。我们发表了经过精心研究和编辑的文章，这些文章从草稿到出版往往需要数周或数月的时间。我们花费大量时间进行页面排版，为杂志仔细斟酌照片，调整草图，在文章中反复推敲句子。从一开始，投入到这本杂志中的劳动就是巨大的，而且大部分都隐藏在视线之外。我们这样做是因为我们关心质量。如果你拿起我们的一本杂志，你就会看到结果。我想当你阅读它时，很明显我们确实关心我们发布的内容。它不仅仅是为了赚取点击量而设计的“内容”。

Current Affairs has always been a bit of an anachronism. We started a print magazine in 2016. Nobody thought this was a good idea. (The editor in chief of Vanity Fair told me to my face that this was a wholly misguided project and certain to fail. I remain grateful to him for giving me the resolve to prove the prediction wrong.) Everyone else was pivoting to video. We pivoted to ink and paper, sent via the U.S. Postal Service. Ten years later, we are still here, while a lot of other places that began with a lot more money have folded (see, e.g., the Messenger, which burned through $50 million in a year and then died). The reason we’ve survived is that there are still many people who don’t like that all media is now just transient images on a social media feed. They experience a thrill when they get a cool thing in the mail that they can unwrap and hold. They know that seeing a beautiful illustration on the printed page is different, and better, from seeing it as a JPEG on your phone.

《时事》一直有点不合时宜。我们在2016年创办了一本印刷杂志。没人认为这是个好主意。（《名利场》的主编当面告诉我，这是一个完全错误的计划，注定会失败。我仍然感谢他，因为他让我下定决心去证明这个预测是错误的。）其他人都在转向视频。我们转向了墨水和纸张，通过美国邮政服务寄送。十年后，我们依然存在，而许多起步时资金雄厚得多的地方已经倒闭了（例如《信使报》，它在一年内烧掉了5000万美元，然后就消亡了）。我们之所以能生存下来，是因为仍有许多人不喜欢现在所有的媒体都只是社交媒体信息流中转瞬即逝的图像。当他们收到一件可以通过拆开包装并拿在手中的酷东西时，他们会感到一种快感。他们知道，在印刷页面上看到精美的插图，与在手机上看到JPEG格式的图片是不同的，而且更好。

So we don’t really give a damn what the trends in the industry are. We located ourselves in New Orleans when everyone else is in New York. We defiantly publish on obscure topics that aren’t anywhere in the news cycle. (Have you read Alice Millar-Thompson’s article on eel smuggling?) And we’re

所以我们根本不在乎行业趋势是什么。当其他所有人都身处纽约时，我们将自己定位在新奥尔良。我们傲然地发表那些在新闻周期中根本找不到的冷门话题。（你读过爱丽丝·米勒-汤普森关于鳗鱼走私的文章吗？）而且我们……