考研英语真题|2024年英语二阅读理解1:不平等加剧之下,人工智能的发展

Anger over AI’s role in exacerbating inequality could endanger the technology’s future. In her new book Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be, Diane Coyle, an economist at Cambridge University, argues that the digital economy requires new ways of thinking about progress. “Whatever we mean by the economy growing, by things getting better, the gains will have to be more evenly shared than in the recent past,” she writes. “An economy of tech millionaires or billionaires and gig workers, with middle-income jobs undercut by automation, will not be politically sustainable.”

Improving living standards and increasing prosperity for more people will require greater use of digital technologies to boost productivity in various sectors, including health care and construction, says Coyle. But people can’t be expected to embrace the changes if they’re not seeing the benefits—if they’re just seeing good jobs being destroyed.

In a recent interview with MIT Technology Review, Coyle said she fears that tech’s inequality problem could be a roadblock to deploying AI. “We’re talking about disruption,” she says. “These are transformative technologies that change the ways we spend our time every day, that change business models that succeed.” To make such “tremendous changes,” she adds, you need social buy-in.

Instead, says Coyle, resentment is simmering among many as the benefits are perceived to go to elites in a handful of prosperous cities.

According to the Brookings Institution, a short list of eight American cities that included San Francisco, San Jose, Boston, and Seattle had roughly 38% of all tech jobs by 2019. New AI technologies are particularly concentrated: Brookings’s Mark Muro and Sifan Liu estimate that just 15 cities account for two-thirds of the AI assets and capabilities in the United States (San Francisco and San Jose alone account for about one-quarter).

The dominance of a few cities in the invention and commercialization of AI means that geographical disparities in wealth will continue to soar. Not only will this foster political and social unrest, but it could, as Coyle suggests, hold back the sorts of AI technologies needed for regional economies to grow.

Part of the solution could lie in somehow loosening the stranglehold that Big Tech has on defining the AI agenda. That will likely take increased federal funding for research independent of the tech giants. Muro and others have suggested hefty federal funding to help create US regional innovation centers, for example.

A more immediate response is to broaden our digital imaginations to conceive of AI technologies that don’t simply replace jobs but expand opportunities in the sectors that different parts of the country care most about, like health care, education, and manufacturing.

翻译

科伊尔认为，想要改善更多人的生活水平、实现普遍繁荣，就需要更大规模地运用数字技术，提振医疗、建筑等各行各业的生产效率。但如果人们只看到优质岗位不断消失，感受不到任何红利，自然不会接纳这些变革。

科伊尔在近期接受《麻省理工科技评论》采访时表示，她担心科技带来的不平等问题，会成为人工智能落地推广的阻碍。“我们正在谈论的是颠覆性变革，” 她说，“这类变革性技术会改变人们的日常生活方式，重塑能够盈利的商业模式。” 她补充道，想要推动如此 “巨大的变革”，离不开全社会的认同与支持。

可现实恰恰相反：在很多人看来，发展红利都流向了少数发达城市的精英群体，不满情绪正在不断累积。

布鲁金斯学会的数据显示，截至 2019 年，仅旧金山、圣何塞、波士顿、西雅图等 8 座城市，就集中了全美约 38% 的科技岗位。新兴人工智能技术的集聚效应尤为突出：布鲁金斯学会的马克・穆罗与刘思帆估算，仅仅 15 座城市，就掌握了美国三分之二的人工智能资源与技术能力（仅旧金山和圣何塞两地就占约四分之一）。

少数城市垄断人工智能的研发与商业化，意味着财富的地域差距还会持续拉大。这不仅会催生政治与社会动荡，一如科伊尔所警示的，还会拖累那些能够助力地方经济发展的人工智能技术落地。

破局思路之一，是打破大型科技企业对人工智能发展方向的垄断。这大概率需要联邦政府加大资金投入，扶持独立于科技巨头之外的科研项目。例如，穆罗等人提议，由联邦政府投入巨额资金，在美国打造区域性创新中心。

而更具现实紧迫性的对策是，拓宽我们对数字技术的想象空间：研发人工智能时，不应只想着用它取代人力，更要依托医疗、教育、制造业等各地重点产业，创造更多就业机会。

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