Barely four months after ChatGPT captured the world’s imagination, Microsoft and Google have introduced the new-look Bing, Bard and their AI-assisted productivity programs. Alphabet and Meta offer a tool that generates ad campaigns based on advertisers’ objectives, such as boosting sales or winning more customers. Microsoft is making OpenAI’s technology available to customers of its Azure cloud platform. Thanks to partnerships with model-makers such as Cohere and Anthropic, AWS users can tap more than 30 large language models. Google, too, is wooing model-builders and other AI firms to its cloud with $250,000-worth of free computing power in the first year, a more generous bargain than it offers to non-AI startups. It maynot be long before AI.Music and Credit Kudos appear in Apple’s music-streaming service and financial offering, or an Amazon chatbot recommends purchases uncannily matched to shoppers’ desires.

(選自2023年某期經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人)

1. barely用來表示某個(gè)動作、狀態(tài)或情況出現(xiàn)的程度非常低或幾乎沒有。例如：

I could barely hear what she was saying over the noise in the background. （背景噪音非常吵，我?guī)缀趼牪磺逅谡f什么）

"Barely"還能用來表示某種狀態(tài)剛剛超出某個(gè)臨界點(diǎn)或極限。

The temperature is barely above freezing today. (今天的溫度只是略高于冰點(diǎn))

2. woo 表示追求或謀求得到某人的好感或愛情。通常用于正式場合或描述真誠的行動，而不是輕浮的行為。例如：

"He is really good at wooing women" （他追求女性很有一套）

"The company is wooing top talent from rival firms"（公司正在轉(zhuǎn)移競爭公司的頂級人才）

4. ? Cohere成立于2019年，開發(fā)人員可以使用該公司創(chuàng)建的自然語言處理軟件為企業(yè)構(gòu)建人工智能應(yīng)用程序，包括聊天機(jī)器人工具和其他可以理解人類語音和文本的功能。2023年4月，Cohere入選福布斯AI ?50榜單。Anthropic 是一家旨在利用人工智能技術(shù)解決人類面臨的重大問題的創(chuàng)新公司，推出了一款可以媲美 ChatGPT ?的聊天機(jī)器人Claude。

5. It may not be long before that…通常是用來表達(dá)一個(gè)可能發(fā)生的情況正在迅速逼近，具有一定的預(yù)警意味。

It may not be long before that company goes bankrupt.（那家公司可能快要破產(chǎn)了。）

該固定用法并不是用來描述一件必然會發(fā)生的事情，而是一種可能性，因此不應(yīng)該在表述確鑿事實(shí)時(shí)使用。另外，由于語氣帶有一定的預(yù)警意味，也需要注意在使用時(shí)保持恰當(dāng)?shù)挠谜Z和語氣以避免造成負(fù)面影響。

6. AI.Music一家創(chuàng)業(yè)公司，可利用人工智能制作定制音樂，2022年2月被蘋果公司收購。Credit Kudos是一家英國信用評分初創(chuàng)公司，2022年3月被蘋果公司收購，當(dāng)時(shí)估值約1.5億美元。

7. uncannily意思是“出奇地，非常地，神奇地”。通常用來形容某些特殊的或超自然的經(jīng)歷或現(xiàn)象，具有一定的程度或者方式上的不尋常。

The coincidence was uncannily similar to something I had just read in a book.（這個(gè)巧合非常神奇，和我剛讀的一本書中描述的相似。）

8. 翻譯：

Barely four months after ChatGPT captured the world’s imagination, Microsoft and Google have introduced the new-look Bing, Bard and their AI-assisted productivity programs. Alphabet and Meta offer a tool that generates ad campaigns based on advertisers’ objectives, such as boosting sales or winning more customers. Microsoft is making OpenAI’s technology available to customers of its Azure cloud platform. Thanks to partnerships with model-makers such as Cohere and Anthropic, AWS users can tap more than 30 large language models. Google, too, is wooing model-builders and other AI firms to its cloud with $250,000-worth of free computing power in the first year, a more generous bargain than it offers to non-AI startups. It maynot be long before AI.Music and Credit Kudos appear in Apple’s music-streaming service and financial offering, or an Amazon chatbot recommends purchases uncannily matched to shoppers’ desires.

在ChatGPT吸引全世界目光僅僅四個(gè)月后，微軟和谷歌分別推出了新外觀的Bing、Bard和人工智能生產(chǎn)力輔助程序。Alphabet和Meta提供的工具可以根據(jù)廣告客戶目標(biāo)(如提高銷售額或獲得更多客戶)生成廣告活動。微軟正向其Azure云平臺客戶提供OpenAI技術(shù)。由于與Cohere和Anthropic等人工智能模型公司的合作，AWS用戶可以利用30多個(gè)大型語言模型。谷歌也在用第一年價(jià)值25萬美元的免費(fèi)算力吸引模型和其他人工智能公司上云，這比提供給非人工智能初創(chuàng)公司的條件更加優(yōu)惠。也許用不了多久AI.Music和Credit Kudos就會出現(xiàn)在蘋果音樂流媒體服務(wù)和金融產(chǎn)品中，而亞馬遜聊天機(jī)器人推薦的商品則與購物者愿望驚人地匹配。