【命题素材】当AI可以做一切工作的时候，人类该干嘛？| 经济学人

In “permutation city”, a novel by Greg Egan, the character Peer, having achieved immortality within a virtual reality over which he has total control, finds himself terribly bored. So he engineers himself to have new passions. One moment he is pushing the boundaries of higher mathematics; the next he is writing operas. “He’d even been interested in the Elysians [the afterlife], once. No longer. He preferred to think about table legs.” Peer’s fickleness relates to a deeper point. When technology has solved humanity’s deepest problems, what is left to do?

That is one question considered in a new publication by Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at the University of Oxford, whose last book argued that humanity faced a one-in-six chance of being wiped out in the next 100 years, perhaps owing to the development of dangerous forms of artificial intelligence (ai). In Mr Bostrom’s latest book, “Deep Utopia”, he considers a rather different outcome. What happens if ai goes extraordinarily well? Under one scenario Mr Bostrom contemplates, the technology progresses to the point at which it can do all economically valuable work at near-zero cost. Under a yet more radical scenario, even tasks that you might think would be reserved for humans, such as parenting, can be done better by ai. This may sound more dystopian than utopian, but Mr Bostrom argues otherwise.

牛津大学哲学家尼克•博斯特罗姆(Nick Bostrom)在他最新出版的一本书中探讨了这个问题。他在上一本书中指出，人类在未来100年内有六分之一的几率被消灭，可能是由于危险形式的人工智能的发展。在博斯特罗姆的新书《深度乌托邦》中，他思考了一个完全不同的结果。如果人工智能发展得非常顺利会发生什么?在博斯特罗姆设想的一种情况下，技术进步到了能够以接近零的成本完成所有具有经济价值的工作。在一种更激进的情况下，甚至是你认为只有人类才能做的事情，比如育儿，也可以由人工智能完成。这听起来更像是反乌托邦而不是乌托邦，但博斯特罗姆提出了不同的观点。

Start with the first scenario, which Mr Bostrom labels a “post-scarcity” utopia. In such a world, the need for work would be reduced. Almost a century ago John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay entitled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”, which predicted that 100 years into the future his wealthy descendants would need to work for only 15 hours a week. This has not quite come to pass, but working time has fallen greatly. In the rich world average weekly working hours have dropped from more than 60 in the late 19th century to fewer than 40 today. The typical American spends a third of their waking hours on leisure activities and sports. In the future, they may wish to spend their time on things beyond humanity’s current conception. As Mr Bostrom writes, when aided by powerful tech, “the space of possible-for-us experiences extends far beyond those that are accessible to us with our present unoptimised brains.”

第一种情况，博斯特罗姆称之为“后稀缺”乌托邦。在这样的世界里，对工作的需求将会减少。近一个世纪前，约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)写了一篇名为《我们子孙的经济可能性》的文章，预测在100年后，他富裕的后代每周只需工作15个小时。虽然这并没有完全实现，但工作时间已大大缩短。在发达国家，平均每周工作时间已从19世纪末的60多小时下降到今天的不到40小时。典型的美国人把醒着的三分之一的时间花在休闲活动和运动上。未来，他们可能希望把时间花在人类目前无法想象的事情上。正如博斯特罗姆所写的那样，当得到强大的技术支持时，“对我们来说，可能性的空间远远超出了我们目前未优化的大脑所掌握的经验。”

Yet Mr Bostrom’s label of a “post-scarcity” utopia might be slightly misleading: the economic explosion caused by superintelligence would still be limited by physical resources, most notably land. Although space exploration may hugely increase the building space available, it will not make it infinite. There are also intermediate worlds where humans develop powerful new forms of intelligence, but do not become space-faring. In such worlds, wealth may be fantastic, but lots of it could be absorbed by housing—much as is the case in rich countries today.

然而，博斯特罗姆对“后稀缺”乌托邦的标签可能有点误导人:由超级智能引起的经济爆炸仍然受到物质资源的限制，尤其是土地资源。虽然太空探索可能会大幅增加可用的建筑空间，但它不会使空间变得无限。还有一些中间世界，在这些世界中，人类发展出了强大的新型智能形式，但没有发展到太空领域。在这样的世界里，财富可能是巨大的，但其中的大部分可能被房地产吸收了——就像今天富裕国家的情况一样。

“Positional goods”, which boost the status of their owners, are also still likely to exist and are, by their nature, scarce. Even if ais surpass humans in art, intellect, music and sport, humans will probably continue to derive value from surpassing their fellow humans, for example by having tickets to the hottest events. In 1977 Fred Hirsch, an economist, argued in “The Social Limits to Growth” that, as wealth increases, a greater fraction of human desire consists of positional goods. Time spent competing goes up, the price of such goods increases and so their share of gdp rises. This pattern may continue in an ai utopia.

“地位商品”是能提升拥有者地位的商品，它们很可能仍然存在，并且就其本质而言是稀缺的。即使人工智能在艺术、智力、音乐和体育方面超过了人类，人类可能仍然会从超越其他人来获得价值，例如拥有最热门活动的门票。在1977年，经济学家弗雷德·赫希(Fred Hirsch)在《增长的社会极限》一书中提出，随着财富的增加，人类对“地位商品”的欲望越来越大。花费在竞争上的时间增加了，这些商品的价格上涨，因此它们在国内生产总值中所占的份额也会增加。这种模式在人工智能乌托邦中可能会继续存在。

Mr Bostrom notes some types of competition are a failure of co-ordination: if everyone agrees to stop competing, they would have time for other, better things, which could further boost growth. Yet some types of competition, such as sport, have intrinsic value, and are worth preserving. (Humans may also have nothing better to do.) Interest in chess has grown since ibm’s Deep Blue first defeated Garry Kasparov, then world champion, in 1997. An entire industry has emerged around e-sports, where computers can comfortably defeat humans. Their revenues are expected to grow at a 20% annual rate over the next decade, reaching nearly $11bn by 2032. Several groups in society today give us a sense of how future humans might spend their time. Aristocrats and bohemians enjoy the arts. Monastics live within themselves. Athletes spend their lives on sport. The retired dabble in all these pursuits.

博斯特罗姆指出，某些类型的竞争是协调的失败：如果每个人都同意停止竞争，他们将有时间去做其他更好的事情，这可能进一步促进增长。然而，某些类型的竞争，如体育运动，具有内在价值，值得保留（人类也可能没有更好的事情可做。）自从IBM的“深蓝”在1997年首次击败了当时的世界冠军加里·卡斯帕罗夫(Garry Kasparov)以来，人们对国际象棋的兴趣与日俱增长。围绕电子竞技形成的产业已经崛起，在这里计算机可以轻松地击败人类。未来10年，它们的收入预计将以每年20%的速度增长，到2032年将达到近110亿美元。当今社会中的几个群体让我们了解了未来人类可能会如何度过他们的时间。贵族和波西米亚人享受艺术。修道院的僧侣生活在自己的世界里。运动员把一生都花在运动上。退休者涉足所有这些活动。

Everyone’s early retirement 每个人都提前退休

Won’t tasks such as parenting remain the refuge of humans? Mr Bostrom is not so sure. He argues that beyond the post-scarcity world lies a “post-instrumental” one, in which ais would become superhuman at child care, too. Keynes himself wrote that “there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy…To judge from the behaviour and the achievements of the wealthy classes today in any quarter of the world, the outlook is very depressing!” The Bible puts it more succinctly: “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

像育儿这样的任务难道不会继续作为人类的避风港吗？博斯特罗姆先生并不确定。他认为，在“后稀缺“世界之外，存在一个“后工具性”的世界，在那里，人工智能也将超越人类，甚至在育儿方面也如此。凯恩斯本人曾写道：“我认为，没有一个国家和民族可以对闲暇和富裕的时代抱有期待，而不感到任何恐惧。因为我们已经被训练了太长时间，去奋斗而不是去享受……从当今世界上任何一个角落的富裕阶层的行为和成就来看，前景是非常沮丧的！”《圣经》更加简洁地表达了这一点：“懒惰的手，必受贫穷。”

These dynamics suggest a “paradox of progress”. Although most humans want a better world, if tech becomes too advanced, they may lose purpose. Mr Bostrom argues that most people would still enjoy activities that have intrinsic value, such as eating tasty food. Utopians, believing life had become too easy, might decide to challenge themselves, perhaps by colonising a new planet to try to re-engineer civilisation from scratch. At some point, however, even such adventures might cease to feel worthwhile. It is an open question how long humans would be happy hopping between passions, as Peer does in “Permutation City”. Economists have long believed that humans have “unlimited wants and desires”, suggesting there are endless variations on things people would like to consume. With the arrival of an ai utopia, this would be put to the test. Quite a lot would ride on the result.

这些动态表明了一种“进步的悖论”。虽然大多数人希望有一个更美好的世界，但如果技术变得太先进，他们可能会失去目标。博斯特罗姆认为，大多数人仍然会喜欢那些具有内在价值的活动，比如享用美味的食物。乌托邦主义者们认为生活变得太容易，他们可能会决定挑战自己，也许通过殖民一个新的星球，试图从零开始重新创造文明。然而，在某个时候，甚至这样的冒险可能也会不再值得。人类在各种激情之间反复横跳能快乐多久？，就像《置换城市》中的皮尔一样，这是一个悬而未决的问题。经济学家长期以来一直相信人类拥有“无限的欲望和愿望”，这表明人们想要消费的东西有无穷无尽的变化。随着人工智能乌托邦的到来，这一观点将得到检验。很多事情将取决于结果。