2019年06月六级第3套仔细阅读 Passage 2 原文翻译及答案解析

In a few decades, artificial intelligence (AI) will surpass many of the abilities that we believe make us special. This is a grand challenge for our age and it may require an "irrational" response.

在几十年内，人工智能（AI）将超越许多我们认为使我们独特的方面。这是我们这个时代的一个重大挑战，可能需要一种“非理性”的回应。

One of the most significant pieces of news from the US in early 2017 was the efforts of Google to make autonomous driving a reality. According to a report, Google's self-driving cars clocked 1,023,330 km, and required human intervention 124 times. That is one intervention about every 8,047 km of autonomous driving. But even more impressive is the progress in just a single year: human interventions fell from 0.8 times per thousand miles to 0.2, a 400% improvement. With such progress, Google's cars will easily surpass my own driving ability later this year.

2017年初美国最重要的新闻之一是谷歌为使自动驾驶成为现实所作的努力。据报道，谷歌的自动驾驶汽车行驶了1,023,330公里，需要人工干预124次。这大约是每8,047公里自动驾驶就有一次干预。但更令人印象深刻的是仅仅一年内的进步：人工干预从每千英里0.8次降至0.2次，提升了400%。凭借这样的进步，谷歌的汽车将在今年晚些时候轻松超越我自己的驾驶能力。

Driving once seemed to be a very human skill. But we said that about chess, too. Then a computer beat the human world champion, repeatedly. The board game Go (围棋) took over from chess as a new test for human thinking in 2016, when a computer beat one of the world's leading professional Go players. With computers conquering what used to be deeply human tasks, what will it mean in the future to be human? I worry about my six-year-old son. What will his place be in a world where machines beat us in one area after another? He'll never calculate faster, never drive better, or even fly more safely. Actually, it all comes down to a fairly simple question: What's so special about us? It can't be skills like arithmetic, which machines already excel in. So far, machines have a pretty hard time emulating creativity, arbitrary enough not to be predicted by a computer, and yet more than simple randomness.

驾驶曾经似乎是一项非常人性化的技能。但我们对国际象棋也曾这样说。然后计算机多次击败人类世界冠军。在2016年，围棋取代国际象棋成为对人类思维的新测试，当时计算机击败了世界顶尖的专业围棋选手之一。随着计算机征服了曾经深具人性化的任务，未来做人意味着什么？我担心我六岁的儿子。在一个机器在一个又一个领域击败我们的世界里，他的位置在哪里？他永远不会计算得更快，永远不会驾驶得更好，甚至永远不会飞得更安全。实际上，这一切归结为一个相当简单的问题：我们有什么特别之处？不可能是算术这类技能，机器已经擅长这些。到目前为止，机器在模拟创造力方面相当困难，创造力足够任意，无法被计算机预测，但又不仅仅是简单的随机性。

Perhaps, if we continue to improve information-processing machines, we'll soon have helpful rational assistants. So we must aim to complement the rationality of the machine, rather than to compete with it. If I'm right, we should foster a creative spirit because a dose of illogical creativity will complement the rationality of the machine. Unfortunately, however, our education system has not caught up to the approaching reality. Indeed, our schools and universities are structured to mould pupils to be mostly obedient servants of rationality, and to develop outdated skills in interacting with outdated machines. We need to help our children learn how to best work with smart computers to improve human decision-making. But most of all we need to keep the long-term perspective in mind: that even if computers will outsmart us, we can still be the most creative. Because if we aren't, we won't be providing much value in future ecosystems, and that may put in question the foundation for our existence.

也许，如果我们继续改进信息处理机器，我们很快就会拥有有用的理性助手。因此，我们的目标应该是补充机器的理性，而不是与之竞争。如果我是对的，我们应该培养创造精神，因为一剂非理性的创造力将补充机器的理性。然而，不幸的是，我们的教育体系还没有跟上即将到来的现实。确实，我们的学校和大学被构造成培养学生成为理性顺从的仆人，并培养与过时机器互动的过时技能。我们需要帮助我们的孩子学习如何最好地与智能计算机合作，以改善人类的决策。但最重要的是，我们需要保持长远的视角：即使计算机将超越我们，我们仍然可以是最具创造力的。因为如果我们不是，我们在未来的生态系统中将不会提供太多价值，这可能会质疑我们存在的基础。