?Road block： Driverless cars illustrate the limits of today’s AI

經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人七月刊

Mary “Missy” Cummings, the director of Duke University’s Humans and Autonomy Laboratory, says that humans are better able to cope with such oddities because they can use “top-down” reasoning about the way the world works to guide them in situations where “bottom-up” signals from their senses are ambiguous or incomplete. AI systems mostly lack that capacity and are, in a sense, working with only half a brain. Though they are competent in their comfort zone, even trivial changes can be problematic. In the absence of the capacity to reason and generalise, computers are imprisoned by the same data that make them work in the first place. “These systems are fundamentally brittle,” says Dr Cummings.

brittle adj. /?br?tl/ ?

1.hard but easily broken 硬但易碎的；脆性的??brittle bones/nails 易折的骨骼╱指甲

2.a brittle mood or state of mind is one that appears to be happy or strong but is actually nervous and easily damaged 脆弱的??a brittle temperament 脆弱的性情

3.( of a sound 聲音 ) hard and sharp in an unpleasant way 尖利的；刺耳的???a brittle laugh 尖利的笑聲

This narrow intelligence is visible in areas beyond just self-driving cars. Google’s “Translate” system usually does a decent job at translating between languages. But in 2018 researchers noticed that, when asked to translate 18 repetitions of the word “dog” into Yoruba (a language spoken in parts of Nigeria and Benin) and then back into English, it came up with the following: “Doomsday Clock?is at three minutes to twelve. We are experiencing characters and dramatic developments in the world, which indicate that we are increasingly approaching the end times and Jesus’ return.”

Doomsday Clock 末日時(shí)鐘? ? 一座虛擬時(shí)鐘，用于警示人類

Gary Marcus, a professor of psychology at New York University, says that, besides its comedy value, the mistranslation highlights how Google’s system does not understand the basic structure of language. Concepts like verbs or nouns are alien, let alone the notion that nouns refer to physical objects in a real world. Instead, it has constructed statistical rules linking strings of letters in one language with strings of letters in another, without any understanding of the concepts to which those letters refer. Language processing, he says, is therefore still baffled by the sorts of questions a toddler would find trivial.

toddler n. /?t?dl?(r)/ ?a child who has only recently learnt to walk 學(xué)步的兒童；剛學(xué)會(huì)走路的孩子

How much those limitations matter varies from field to field. An automated system does not have to be better than a professional human translator to be useful, after all (Google’s system has since been?tweaked). But it does set an upper bound on how useful chatbots?or personal assistants are likely to become. And for safety-critical applications like self-driving cars, says Dr Cummings, AI’s limitations are potentially show-stopping.

Tweak?/twi?k/??V/N 扭；擰；扯； 稍稍調(diào)整（機(jī)器、系統(tǒng)等）

Chatbots：chat-robot 聊天機(jī)器人

ponder v. /?p?nd?(r)/ ?[ V speech ] ~ (about/on/over sth) ( formal ) to think about sth carefully for a period of time 沉思；考慮；琢磨eg.?She pondered over his words. 她反復(fù)琢磨他的話。

?Statesmen：政治家

?Keynote?n. 基調(diào)；主旨；主音 vt. 給…定基調(diào)；說明基本政策 vi. 作主旨發(fā)言

Researchers are beginning to ponder what to do about the problem. In a conference talk in December Yoshua Bengio, one of AI’s elder statesmen, devoted his?keynote?address to it. Current machine-learning systems, said Dr Bengio, “l(fā)earn in a very narrow way, they need much more data to learn a new task than [humans], they need humans to provide high-level concepts through labels, and they still make really stupid mistakes”.

Beyond deep learning

Different researchers have different ideas about how to try to improve things. One idea is to widen the scope, rather than the volume, of what machines are taught. Christopher Manning, of Stanford University’s AI Lab, points out that biological brains learn from far richer data-sets than machines. Artificial language models are trained solely on large quantities of text or speech. But a baby, he says, can rely on sounds, tone of voice or tracking what its parents are looking at, as well as a rich physical environment to help it anchor?abstract concepts in the real world. This shades into an old idea in AI research called “embodied cognition”, which holds that if minds are to understand the world properly, they need to be fully embodied in it, not confined to an abstracted existence as pulses of electricity in a data-centre.

anchor /???k?(r)/ ?

1.to let an anchor down from a boat or ship in order to prevent it from moving away 拋錨；下錨??We anchored off the coast of Spain. 我們?cè)谖靼嘌姥睾佸^停泊。

2.[ VN ] to fix sth firmly in position so that it cannot move 使固定；扣牢；系牢??Make sure the table is securely anchored. 務(wù)必要把桌子固定好。

3.[ VN ] [ usually passive ] ~ sb/sth (in/to sth) to firmly base sth on sth else 使扎根；使基于??Her novels are anchored in everyday experience. 她的小說取材自日常生活經(jīng)驗(yàn)。

embodied cognition ：體驗(yàn)認(rèn)知

Biology offers other ideas, too. Dr Brooks argues that the current generation of AI researchers “fetishise” models that begin as blank slates, with no hand-crafted hints built in by their creators. But “all animals are born with structure in their brains,” he says. “That’s where you get instincts from.”

fetishize v. /?fet??a?z/ ?( Bre also -ise)

1.to spend too much time thinking about or doing sth 迷戀于…；沉迷于…

2.to get sexual pleasure from thinking about or looking at a particular thing 對(duì)…有戀物癖

Slate?n. [地質(zhì)] 石板（slate的復(fù)數(shù)形式）；石板瓦?vt. 用石板瓦蓋…；給…鋪石板

Dr Marcus, for his part, thinks machine-learning techniques should be combined with older, “symbolic AI” approaches. These emphasise formal logic,?hierarchical categories and top-down?reasoning, and were most popular in the 1980s. Now, with machine-learning approaches in the ascendancy, they are a backwater.

Hierarchical?adj. /?ha???rɑ?k?kl/ arranged in a hierarchy 按等級(jí)劃分的；等級(jí)制度的? a hierarchical society/structure/organization 分等級(jí)的社會(huì)╱結(jié)構(gòu)╱組織

top-down:自上而下，組織嚴(yán)密的； backwater：死水，停滯的狀態(tài)

ascendancy n. /??send?nsi/ ( formal ) ~ (over sb/sth) the position of having power or influence over sb/sth 支配地位；優(yōu)勢；影響?? moral/political/intellectual ascendancy 道德影響；政治支配地位；智力優(yōu)勢

But others argue for persisting with existing approaches. Last year Richard Sutton, an AI researcher at the University of Alberta and DeepMind, published an essay called “The Bitter Lesson”, arguing that the history of AI shows that attempts to build human understanding into computers rarely work. Instead most of the field’s progress has come?courtesy of?Moore’s law, and the ability to bring ever more brute computational?force to bear on a problem. The “bitter lesson” is that “the actual contents of [human] minds are tremendously,?irredeemably?complex…They are not what should be built in [to machines].”

courtesy /?k??t?si/ ?

1.[ U ] polite behaviour that shows respect for other people 禮貌；謙恭；彬彬有禮??I was treated with the utmost courtesy by the staff. 我受到了工作人員極有禮貌的接待。

2.[ Cusually pl. ] ( formal ) a polite thing that you say or do when you meet people in formal situations （正式場合見面時(shí)的）客氣話，禮貌??an exchange of courtesies before the meeting 會(huì)議開始前互致問候

IDIOMS 習(xí)語

1. courtesy of sb/sth

(1) ( also by courtesy of sb/sth ) with the official permission of sb/sth and as a favour 承蒙…的允許（或好意）???The pictures have been reproduced by courtesy of the British Museum. 承蒙大英博物館惠允，復(fù)制了這些畫。

(2) given as a prize or provided free by a person or an organization 蒙…提供；贊助；贈(zèng)送

?Win a weekend in Rome, courtesy of Fiat. 贏了就可以獲得菲亞特公司提供的到羅馬度周末的機(jī)會(huì)。

(3) as the result of a particular thing or situation 作為…的結(jié)果???Viewers can see the stadium from the air, courtesy of a camera fastened to the plane. 由于飛機(jī)上安裝有攝像機(jī)，電視觀眾可從空中鳥瞰體育場。

2. do sb the courtesy of doing sth：to be polite by doing the thing that is mentioned （做提及的事）對(duì)某人表示禮貌???Please do me the courtesy of listening to what I'm saying. 請(qǐng)耐心聽一聽我的話。

3. have the courtesy to do sth：to know when you should do sth in order to be polite 知道何時(shí)該做…（以示禮貌）???You think he'd at least have the courtesy to call to say he'd be late. 誰都會(huì)覺得他至少應(yīng)該懂得打個(gè)電話說一聲他要晚來。

Moore’s law：摩爾定律--是由英特爾(Intel)創(chuàng)始人之一戈登·摩爾(Gordon Moore)提出來的。其內(nèi)容為:當(dāng)價(jià)格不變時(shí)，集成電路上可容納的元器件的數(shù)目，約每隔18-24個(gè)月便會(huì)增加一倍，性能也將提升一倍。換言之，每一美元所能買到的電腦性能，將每隔18-24個(gè)月翻一倍以上。這一定律揭示了信息技術(shù)進(jìn)步的速度。

Computationaladj. ?/?k?mpju?te???nl/ 使用計(jì)算機(jī)的；與計(jì)算機(jī)有關(guān)的

irredeemably/??r??di?m?bli/無可救藥地，不可挽回地

Away from the research labs, expectations around driverless cars are cooling. Some Chinese firms are experimenting with building digital guide rails into urban infrastructure, in an attempt to lighten the?cognitive?burden on the cars themselves. Incumbent?carmakers, meanwhile, now prefer to talk about “driver-assistance” tools such as automatic lane-keeping or parking systems, rather than full-blown?autonomous cars. A new wave of startups has deliberately smaller ambitions, hoping to build cars that drive around small, limited areas such as airports or retirement villages, or vehicles which trundle?slowly along pavements, delivering packages under remote human supervision. “There’s a scientific reason we’re not going to get to full self-driving with our current technology,” says Dr Cummings. “This less ambitious stuff—I think that’s much more realistic.”

cognitive adj. /?k?ɡn?t?v/認(rèn)知的，感知的

Incumbent?/?n?k?mb?nt/ n在職者；現(xiàn)任者；在任的，在職的

~ upon/on sb ( formal ) necessary as part of sb's duties 有責(zé)任；必須履行??It was incumbent on them to attend. 他們必須出席。

full-blown：having all the characteristics of sb/sth; fully developed 具所有特征的；成熟的?? full-blown AIDS 完全型艾滋病

Trundle??v. /?tr?ndl/ ?[ adv./prep. ]

1.?to move or roll somewhere slowly and noisily; to move sth slowly and noisily, especially sth heavy, with wheels （使緩慢、轟鳴地）移動(dòng)，滾動(dòng)??A train trundled across the bridge. 一列火車隆隆駛過大橋。

2.?[ V ] ( of a person 人 ) to walk slowly with heavy steps 沉重緩慢地走

TRUNDLE STH←→?OUT?( disapproving ) ( especially BrE ) to mention or do sth that you have often mentioned or done before 重提某事；重演故技