Whatever happened to the human touch? If youbelieve the latest fad from the tech world, it won’t belong before we give up talking to real people andstart talking instead to machines — or “bots”. Or itmight be machines pretending to be people, orpeople pretending to be machines. The permutationsof human and artificial intelligence are about tobecome interesting.

　　人際互動到底發(fā)生了什么?如果你將科技界的最新時尚當(dāng)真，過不了多久，我們將不再與真人對話，而開始與機(jī)器或者“機(jī)器人”交談。或者，我們談話的對象可能是假扮成人的機(jī)器人，或是假扮成機(jī)器人的人類。人類與人工智能之間的組合變化將變得越來越有趣。

　　But if it works as advertised, we will move one step further beyond a world of direct humaninteraction towards a future when screens — and new ways of engaging with computerintelligence — govern much of our lives. For sheer convenience, it will be hard to resist.Less obvious is what might be lost in the process.

　　但如果這樣做的效果像宣傳的那么好，我們將更進(jìn)一步遠(yuǎn)離人際直接互動的世界，邁向一個由屏幕——以及與計算機(jī)智能交流的新方式——操控我們大部分生活的未來。如果純粹為了便利，這種誘惑將難以抗拒。但較不易被察覺的是這個過程中我們可能失去什么。

　　Facebook has just given this trend its biggest lift with the release this week of a way forcompanies to plug their bots into Messenger, its chat system. Want to know the weather? Aska question and an intelligent agent will answer. Interested in buying something? Bots on handwill show you the latest offers and guide you through to the checkout.

　　Facebook剛剛為這一趨勢帶來了史上最大幅度的提振，該公司上周發(fā)布了一種讓企業(yè)將自己的機(jī)器人接入其聊天系統(tǒng)Messenger的方法。如果想了解天氣，只需提問，智能機(jī)器人就會作答。如果你對購物感興趣，身旁的機(jī)器人將向你展示最新報價，并指導(dǎo)你直到完成付款。

　　If people take to the idea, entire call centres could be rendered obsolete. Why hold on waitingfor a human when you can get an immediate response from a bot on your smartphone? Thecall-centre reps are operating from scripts anyway and these are interactions that could beprogrammed into a piece of software.

　　如果人類接受這一理念，所有電話服務(wù)中心將被淘汰。如果你可以立刻在自己的智能手機(jī)上得到機(jī)器人的回應(yīng)，還有什么理由繼續(xù)等待人工應(yīng)答呢?反正電話服務(wù)中心人員是按腳本應(yīng)答，這些互動完全可以被編入一款軟件。

　　Whether the bots catch on will depend on not stretching the technology beyond its limits.Microsoft’s wayward chatbot Tay, the algorithm pretending to be an adolescent girl thatstarted spouting racist comments on Twitter, is Exhibit A for what can go wrong. Most artificialintelligence is not very intelligent and when the main technique for training the new systemsinvolves something called machine learning, it turns out that machines can be taught badbehaviour as well as good.

　　要想讓機(jī)器人受歡迎，必須不讓這一技術(shù)走過界。微軟(Microsoft)任性的聊天機(jī)器人Tay就展現(xiàn)了機(jī)器人可能出現(xiàn)怎樣的錯誤，這個扮成一名青春期少女的算法程序已開始在Twitter上散布種族主義言論。大多數(shù)人工智能并不是很聰明，當(dāng)培訓(xùn)新系統(tǒng)的主要技術(shù)涉及所謂的機(jī)器學(xué)習(xí)時，事實證明，機(jī)器人既可能學(xué)好，也可能學(xué)壞。

　　Not that the chatbots on Facebook are about to have a mind of their own and turn rogue.Most take a very limited approach to AI, using machine learning to “understand” thequestions being put to them and returning largely pre-scripted answers. They try to identify aneed, then draw you down a chain of conversation to a result.

　　并不是說Facebook上的聊天機(jī)器人很快會有自己的思想，而且變得下流。大多數(shù)機(jī)器人的人工智能模式都很有限，它們利用機(jī)器學(xué)習(xí)來“理解”接收到的問題，并主要反饋預(yù)設(shè)的答案。它們嘗試先確定需求，然后在和你交談的過程中給出答案。

　　Deeper levels of intelligence will also be on tap. But it is as likely to involve a human brain asone made from silicon. M, another Facebook chat service, relies on real people sitting in thebackground, returning answers, though to the user, it is not at all clear whether information isbeing generated by a person or a computer. As the machines become smarter they will takeover more of the responses, eventually pushing human workers out of the loop altogether.

　　更深層次的人工智能也將隨時派上用場。但它既可能涉及硅腦，也可能涉及人腦。Facebook推出的另一款聊天服務(wù)M，依靠真人坐在幕后反饋答案，不過對用戶而言，他們根本不知道自己得到的信息是由人還是由計算機(jī)生成。隨著機(jī)器人變得越來越聰明，它們將承擔(dān)更多的應(yīng)答服務(wù)，最終將人工完全擠出反饋流程。

　　The prospect of another layer of human interaction being lost to technology is bound to bringa pang of regret, not to mention a wave of concern about the impact on jobs. But then, whowould want to give up ATMs and go back to queueing up for a bank teller? Most people won’tmind at all when the days of call-centre queueing have receded into history.

　　人際互動在又一個層面上敗于技術(shù)的前景必然會讓人類感到痛惜，更不用說對影響就業(yè)的大量擔(dān)憂。但誰愿意放棄自動取款機(jī)而回去排隊等待銀行柜員服務(wù)呢?當(dāng)排隊等待電話服務(wù)中心應(yīng)答漸漸成為歷史時，大多數(shù)人都不會介意。