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When the Movies Pictured A.I., They Imagined the Wrong Disaster
当电影描绘人工智能时，它们错误构想了随之而来的灾难
Why are we so fascinated by stories about sentient robots, rapacious A.I. and the rise of thinking machines?
为什么我们如此着迷于有感知能力的机器人、贪婪的人工智能，以及会思考的机器的崛起呢？
Faced with that question, I did what any writer on deadline would do and asked ChatGPT.
面对这个问题，我做了任何赶稿的作家都会做的事情：询问ChatGPT。
The answers I got—a helpfully numbered list with five chatty entrie —were not surprising.
我得到的答案并不令人惊讶，内容被贴心地分为五个带编号的条目，语言平白如话。
They were, to be honest, what I might have come up with myself after a few seconds of thought, or what I might expect to encounter in a B- term paper from a distracted undergraduate.
老实说，我自己思考几秒钟后可能会想到这些答案，我也可能会在一个心不在焉的本科生写的、得分为B-的课程论文中看到这些回答。
Long on generalizations and short on sources, the bot’s essay was a sturdy summary of conventional wisdom.
聊天机器人给出的文章长于概括，但缺少来源，是对传统智慧的详实总结。
For example: “Sentient robots raise important moral and ethical questions about the treatment of intelligent beings, the nature of consciousness and the responsibilities of creators.”
例如：“有感知能力的机器人会引发重要的道德和伦理问题，涉及如何对待有智力的生命、何为意识的本质、创造者的责任等。”
Quite so.
确实如此。
From the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea to the medieval Jewish legend of the golem through Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and beyond, we have grappled with those important questions, and also frightened and titillated ourselves with tales of our inventions coming to life.
从皮格马利翁和伽拉忒亚的神话，到中世纪犹太人关于有生命的泥人的传说，再到玛丽·雪莱的《弗兰肯斯坦》等等，我们一直在努力解决这些重要问题，也对创造物获得生命的故事感到既害怕，又兴奋。
Our ingenuity as a species, channeled through individual and collective hubris, compels us to concoct artificial beings that menace and seduce us.
在个人和集体傲慢自大的心态的引导下，人类物种所具有的灵巧才智迫使我们编造出人造生命的故事，这些生命既危险，又诱人。
They escape our control.
他们逃脱了我们的控制。
They take control.
他们掌握了控制权。
They fall in love.
他们坠入爱河。
In “The Imagination of Disaster,” Susan Sontag’s classic 1965 essay on science-fiction movies, she observed that “we live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror.”
在苏珊·桑塔格发表于1965年的经典文章《对灾难的想象》中，她谈论了科幻电影并指出，“我们生活在两种同样令人恐惧，但似乎彼此对立的命运的持续威胁下：无休止的平庸和不可思议的恐怖。”
As Turing-tested A.I. applications have joined the pantheon of sci-fi shibboleths, they have dutifully embodied both specters.
通过图灵测试的人工智能程序进入科幻电影的殿堂之后，它们尽职尽责地体现了上述两种幽灵。
HAL 9000, the malevolent computer in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), is terrifying precisely because he is so banal.
在斯坦利·库布里克的《2001太空漫游》(1968)中，邪恶的电脑HAL 9000之所以令人恐惧，正是因为他是如此平庸。
“Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”
“打开舱门，HAL。”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.”
“我恐怕不能那样做，大卫。”
In 2023, that perfectly chilling exchange between human and computer is echoed every day as modern-day Daves make impossible demands of HAL’s granddaughters, Siri and Alexa.
人类和计算机之间这种令人泄气的对话直到2023年还在每天发出回响：现代的大卫们对HAL的孙女们——Siri和Alexa——提出不可能实现的要求。
That example suggests that in spite of terrors like the Terminator, the smart money was always on banality.
这个例子表明，尽管《终结者》这样的电影带来恐怖，但聪明的投资者总是把钱押在平庸上。
The dreariness of ChatGPT, the soulless works of visual art produced by similar programs seem to confirm that hunch.
枯燥无味的ChatGPT、类似电脑程序生成的毫无灵魂的视觉艺术作品似乎印证了这种预感。
