本文選自經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人2023年1月23日的文章

原文標(biāo)題：How will Satya Nadella handle Microsoft’s ChatGPT moment?

He has spent a career trying to return Microsoft to the pinnacle of tech

Many who?have met Satya Nadella like him. For those who haven’t, a skim through his autobiography endorses the view that the boss of Microsoft is an intelligent, decent sort of person. He is unassuming, with a passion for cricket. He is a listener, who encourages employees to share their personal as well as professional dreams. He writes about Buddhism, but not in a new-agey way. His son was born with cerebral palsy, so Mr Nadella seeks to understand suffering. At times, there is something gleefully Tigger-like about him, when he can barely contain his excitement about Microsoft’s new technologies. He describes one such “eureka moment” the first time he put on one of the firm’s HoloLens mixed-reality headsets and, thanks to a live feed from?nasa’s Mars rover, visualised himself walking on the red planet. It was, he wrote, a glimpse into the future. “The experience was so inspiring, so moving, that one member of my leadership team cried.”

許多見過薩提亞-納德拉的人都喜歡他。對于那些沒有見過面的人來說，只要瀏覽一下他的自傳，就會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)微軟的老板是一個(gè)聰明、正直的人。他不茍言笑，對板球充滿熱情。他是一個(gè)傾聽者，他鼓勵(lì)員工分享他們的個(gè)人和職業(yè)夢想。他寫了關(guān)于佛教的文章，但不是以一種新奇的方式。他的兒子出生時(shí)患有腦癱，所以納德拉先生試圖理解痛苦。有時(shí)，當(dāng)他幾乎無法抑制自己對微軟新技術(shù)的興奮時(shí)，他有一些像跳跳虎一樣的欣喜之情。他描述了這樣一個(gè) "極樂時(shí)刻"：他第一次戴上公司的 HoloLens 混合現(xiàn)實(shí)頭盔，通過美國國家航空航天局火星探測器的現(xiàn)場直播，想象自己在紅色星球上行走。他寫道，這是對未來的一瞥。"這種體驗(yàn)是如此鼓舞人心，如此令人感動(dòng)，以至于我的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)團(tuán)隊(duì)中的一位成員哭了。"

Once again Mr Nadella is giddy with “this-is-the-future” euphoria. On January 23rd Microsoft announced its third investment, estimated at $10bn, in Openai, the company behind Chatgpt. The advanced artificial-intelligence (ai) tool lets users ask questions and get human-like, often funny responses. In the past few months it has grabbed headlines and become part of the zeitgeist. In no time, the wizardry of the technology, however error-prone, has led to its portrayal as a potential Kodak moment for Alphabet-owned Google, a boon to cancer research, the end of coding as you know it, and a nail in the coffin of the exam essay. In other words, it’s the tech hype cycle on steroids.

納德拉先生再一次被 "這就是未來 "的興奮感弄得暈頭轉(zhuǎn)向。1 月 23 日，微軟宣布了其對 Chatgpt 背后的公司 Openai 的第三次投資，估計(jì)為 100 億美元。這種先進(jìn)的人工智能（ai）工具可以讓用戶提出問題，并得到類似人類的、經(jīng)常是有趣的回答。在過去的幾個(gè)月里，它成了頭條新聞，成為時(shí)代潮流的一部分。在短時(shí)間內(nèi)，這項(xiàng)技術(shù)的神奇之處，無論多么容易出錯(cuò)，都導(dǎo)致它被描繪成 Alphabet 旗下谷歌公司的潛在柯達(dá)時(shí)刻、癌癥研究的福音、你所知道的編碼的終結(jié)，以及考試作文的釘子。換句話說，這就是科技炒作周期的類固醇。

At the risk of sounding churlish, it is worth noting that seven years after Mr Nadella’s HoloLens epiphany, the whole mixed-reality buzz at Microsoft has gone deathly quiet. HoloLens was reportedly affected by the firm’s 10, 000 recent lay-offs. That said, Chatgpt?is already so accessible and intuitive to use that it is hard to imagine it will be a flash in the pan. It is not difficult to see how Microsoft, with its strength in cloud computing and business software, could use Openai’s underlying?gpt?models to rejuvenate a whole range of products. And Mr Nadella, for all his mindfulness, burns with an ambition to restore the company to the pinnacle of tech innovation that it vacated with the onset of social media and the smartphone. Could this be his moment?

冒昧地說，值得注意的是，在納德拉先生的 HoloLens 頓悟七年后，微軟的整個(gè)混合現(xiàn)實(shí)的嗡嗡聲已經(jīng)死氣沉沉。據(jù)報(bào)道，HoloLens 受到了該公司最近裁員 10000 人的影響。也就是說，Chatgpt 的使用已經(jīng)非常方便和直觀，很難想象它將是曇花一現(xiàn)。不難看出，微軟憑借其在云計(jì)算和商業(yè)軟件方面的優(yōu)勢，可以利用 Openai 的底層 gpt 模型來恢復(fù)一系列產(chǎn)品的活力。而納德拉先生，盡管他心思縝密，但卻有一種雄心壯志，要將公司恢復(fù)到科技創(chuàng)新的巔峰，而隨著社交媒體和智能手機(jī)的出現(xiàn)，公司已經(jīng)退出了這一領(lǐng)域。這可能是他的時(shí)刻嗎？

Microsoft’s share price suggests not. It has barely advanced since November 29th, the day before Openai?publicly launched Chatgpt?(save for a brief rally after Microsoft reported quarterly earnings results on January 24th that were a bit better than expected). Given the risks of an economic slowdown, which is cooling demand for Microsoft’s software and cloud services, investors have too many short-term concerns to pay much heed to Mr Nadella’s promises of?ai-flavoured jam tomorrow.

微軟的股價(jià)表明不是。自 11 月 29 日以來，即 Openai 公開發(fā)布 Chatgpt 的前一天，它幾乎沒有任何進(jìn)展（除了在 1 月 24 日微軟報(bào)告了比預(yù)期好一點(diǎn)的季度收益結(jié)果后，它有過一次短暫的反彈）。鑒于經(jīng)濟(jì)放緩的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)，對微軟軟件和云服務(wù)的需求正在降溫，投資者有太多的短期顧慮，不會(huì)太在意納德拉先生對未來 AI 味果醬的承諾。

Yet they shouldn’t underestimate his missionary zeal. He led Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, when Google was on a tear. He led its cloud provider, now called Azure, when it was an also-ran to Amazon Web Services, owned by the e-commerce giant. He has long nurtured a passion to leapfrog his west-coast rivals. That makes him impatient with?ai?research for its own sake. He wants it embedded in products that wow customers. Hence Bing, with a mere 7% of search queries in America, will shortly incorporate Chatgpt?to wrestle share away from Google. GitHub, Microsoft’s coding tool, is using Openai?technology in its Co-pilot product, aimed at accelerating the work rate of software developers. Microsoft is likely to overhaul products like Office and Windows with?gpt?technology, so that chatbots can take the drudge out of creating PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets. As for the cloud, Microsoft benefits because Openai?has built and trained its?gpt?models on Azure, and it can offer state-of-the-art chatbot services to Azure’s customers. The more they are used, the better they get.

然而，他們不應(yīng)該低估他的傳教士的熱情。他領(lǐng)導(dǎo)著微軟的搜索引擎 Bing，而當(dāng)時(shí)谷歌 pinnacle。他領(lǐng)導(dǎo)了微軟的云計(jì)算供應(yīng)商，現(xiàn)在叫 Azure，當(dāng)時(shí)它還是電子商務(wù)巨頭所擁有的亞馬遜網(wǎng)絡(luò)服務(wù)的一個(gè)競爭對手。長期以來，他培養(yǎng)了一種跨越西岸對手的激情。這使他對為研究而研究的 ai 沒有耐心。他希望將其嵌入到令客戶驚嘆的產(chǎn)品中。因此，在美國僅有 7%的搜索查詢量的必應(yīng)，不久將納入 Chatgpt，以從谷歌手中奪取份額。微軟的編碼工具 GitHub 正在其 Co-pilot 產(chǎn)品中使用 Openai 技術(shù)，旨在加快軟件開發(fā)人員的工作速度。微軟可能會(huì)用 gpt 技術(shù)對 Office 和 Windows 等產(chǎn)品進(jìn)行大修，這樣聊天機(jī)器人就可以把創(chuàng)建 PowerPoints 和 Excel 電子表格的苦差事做掉。至于云計(jì)算，微軟會(huì)受益，因?yàn)?Openai 已經(jīng)在 Azure 上建立并訓(xùn)練了它的 gpt 模型，它可以向 Azure 的客戶提供最先進(jìn)的聊天機(jī)器人服務(wù)。它們被使用得越多，就越好。

Microsoft will not have the field to itself, nor will it be a winner-takes-all market. Among other cloud providers, Alphabet, for one, has foundational models that are more powerful than?gpt. For now, though, its ability to compete is constrained. Alphabet, loathed by critics of surveillance capitalism, bears a big reputational risk if human-like?ai?amplifies the biases and privacy concerns of current consumer technology. It is under regulatory fire: a lawsuit filed on January 24th by America’s Department of Justice and eight states calls for the break-up of Google’s ad-tech business. Moreover, the cost of the average Google search is exceedingly cheap; adding Chatgpt-like searches, heavy on computing power, would raise it. As for Microsoft’s business-software competitors, such as beleaguered Salesforce, they are trying to cut costs and cannot hope to match Microsoft’s advanced?ai?investments, says Mark Moerdler of Bernstein, an investment firm.

微軟將不會(huì)擁有自己的領(lǐng)域，也不會(huì)是一個(gè)贏家通吃的市場。在其他云供應(yīng)商中，Alphabet 就有比 gpt 更強(qiáng)大的基礎(chǔ)模型。但就目前而言，它的競爭能力受到了限制。Alphabet 被監(jiān)控資本主義的批評者所厭惡，如果類似人類的 ai 放大了當(dāng)前消費(fèi)者技術(shù)的偏見和隱私問題，它將承擔(dān)巨大的聲譽(yù)風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。它正受到監(jiān)管部門的抨擊：美國司法部和八個(gè)州于 1 月 24 日提起訴訟，要求拆散谷歌的廣告技術(shù)業(yè)務(wù)。此外，谷歌的平均搜索成本非常便宜；增加類似于 Chatgpt 的搜索，重在計(jì)算能力，會(huì)提高成本。投資公司 Bernstein 的馬克-莫德勒（Mark Moerdler）說，至于微軟的商業(yè)軟件競爭對手，如陷入困境的 Salesforce，他們正在努力削減成本，不能指望與微軟的先進(jìn) AI 投資相媲美。

2First innings

In short, Microsoft has a valuable head start and Mr Nadella is loth to squander it. The big question, however, is not who will win. In these early days that would be like asking, at the dawn of the 19th century, who will come out top from the Industrial Revolution. It is more a matter of how well-equipped is any company to handle the potential implications of introducing technology that will do work previously done by humans, but with neither the ability nor the moral compass to check the reliability of its work. The risks of propagating errors or, worse, misinformation, are serious. So is the danger of societal backlash if knowledge workers feel their jobs are threatened—though if the technology succeeds, over the long term it is likely to be a boon to job creation.

簡而言之，微軟有一個(gè)寶貴的領(lǐng)先優(yōu)勢，納德拉先生不愿意浪費(fèi)它。然而，最大的問題不是誰會(huì)贏。在這些早期的日子里，這就像在 19 世紀(jì)的黎明問誰會(huì)從工業(yè)革命中勝出。更重要的是，任何公司有多大的能力來處理引進(jìn)技術(shù)的潛在影響，這些技術(shù)將完成以前由人類完成的工作，但沒有能力也沒有道德指南針來檢查其工作的可靠性。傳播錯(cuò)誤或更糟糕的錯(cuò)誤信息的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)是嚴(yán)重的。如果知識工作者感到他們的工作受到威脅，社會(huì)反彈的危險(xiǎn)也很嚴(yán)重--盡管如果該技術(shù)取得成功，從長遠(yuǎn)來看，它可能會(huì)成為創(chuàng)造就業(yè)機(jī)會(huì)的一個(gè)福音。

Microsoft’s initial approach to the potential pitfalls is shrewd. Investing in Openai?puts Chatgpt?at arm’s length if something goes wrong. But eventually, with?gpt?infused in all of its products, it will bear a big responsibility for the outcome. In that case, the attention will focus on Microsoft’s own moral compass—and Mr Nadella’s human decency will be put to the test.

微軟對潛在隱患的初步處理方法是精明的。對 Openai 的投資使 Chatgpt 在出現(xiàn)問題時(shí)處于優(yōu)勢地位。但最終，隨著 GPT 被注入其所有產(chǎn)品，它將對結(jié)果承擔(dān)很大的責(zé)任。在這種情況下，人們的注意力將集中在微軟自己的道德觀上—納德拉先生的人生態(tài)度將受到考驗(yàn)。