Feng Xiang, a professor of law at Tsinghua University, is one of China’s most prominent legal scholars. He spoke at the Berggruen Institute’s China Center workshop on artificial intelligence in March in Beijing.
冯象为清华大学法学教授，是中国最杰出的法学学者之一。他在4月于北京的伯格鲁伦研究所中国中心关于人工智能的发言中如是说。
（译注：伯格鲁伦研究所为华盛顿邮报的合作伙伴之一；冯象，上海人，现任清华大学法学院梅汝璈法学讲席教授，欺父冯契是华东师范大学哲学系著名教授）
BEIJING — The most momentous challenge facing socio-economic systems today is the arrival of artificial intelligence. If AI remains under the control of market forces, it will inexorably result in a super-rich oligopoly of data billionaires who reap the wealth created by robots that displace human labor, leaving massive unemployment in their wake.
北京报道 — 如今，社会经济体制面临的最重大挑战便是人工智能的到来。如果人工智能依然由市场力量所控制，它将不可阻挡地造成由数据亿万富翁变身而来的超级富有的寡头，他们收割着取代了人力的机器人所创造的财富，紧接着的将是大量失业。
But China’s socialist market economy could provide a solution to this. If AI rationally allocates resources through big data analysis, and if robust feedback loops can supplant the imperfections of “the invisible hand” while fairly sharing the vast wealth it creates, a planned economy that actually works could at last be achievable.
但中国的社会主义市场经济能对此提供解放方案。如果人工智能经由大数据分析理性地分配资源，且在公平分配它所创造的财富时，健康的回馈循环能替代“看不见的手”本身的缺陷，那么一种真正能够运转的计划经济最终将能够达成。
The more AI advances into a general-purpose technology that permeates every corner of life, the less sense it makes to allow it to remain in private hands that serve the interests of the few instead of the many. More than anything else, the inevitability of mass unemployment and the demand for universal welfare will drive the idea of socializing or nationalizing AI.
人工智能越朝着能渗透进生活每个角落的通用技术方向进展，允许它被掌控在私人手中服务于少数人的利益而不是大多数就越显得不合理。压倒一切的是，不可避免的大量失业以及对于社会总福利的要求，将推动人工智能社会化或国有化的想法。
Marx’s dictum, “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs,” needs an update for the 21st century: “From the inability of an AI economy to provide jobs and a living wage for all, to each according to their needs.”
马克思的名言“各尽所能，按需分配”需要针对21世纪的情况做一次更新：“人工智能经济无力向所有人提供工作机会和最低生活工资，按需分配”。
Even at this early stage, the idea that digital capitalism will somehow make social welfare a priority has already proven to be a fairytale. The billionaires of Google and Apple, who have been depositing company profits in offshore havens to avoid taxation, are hardly paragons of social responsibility. The ongoing scandal around Facebook’s business model, which puts profitability above responsible citizenship, is yet another example of how in digital capitalism, private companies only look after their own interests at the expense of the rest of society.
就算还处在早期阶段，这种资本主义会以某种方式优先考虑社会福利的想法已被证明是童话故事。Google和苹果公司的亿万富翁们为了避税把公司获利存在离岸避风港，很难说是履行社会责任的模范。围绕着Facebook商业模型不断发酵中的、将盈利能力置于公民责任之上的丑闻，是在数字资本主义中，又一个私人公司以社会中其他人为代价去追求自身利益的例子。
One can readily see where this is all headed once technological unemployment accelerates. “Our responsibility is to our shareholders,” the robot owners will say. “We are not an employment agency or a charity.”
一旦技术性失业开始提速，人们很容易就能看清楚来龙去脉。机器人拥有者会说，“我们是对我们的股东负责”。“我们可不是一个职业介绍所或是慈善团体。 ”
These companies have been able to get away with their social irresponsibility because the legal system and its loopholes in the West are geared to protect private property above all else. Of course, in China, we have big privately owned Internet companies like Alibaba and Tencent. But unlike in the West, they are monitored by the state and do not regard themselves as above or beyond social control.
这些公司一直能侥幸逃脱它们的社会失责，因为西方的法律制度及其漏洞适应了保护私人财产的需要远胜其他一切。当然了在中国，我们有诸如阿里巴巴和腾讯的大型私营互联网公司。但不同于西方的是，它们受国家监视，且并不认为自己能超越社会管制。
It is the very pervasiveness of AI that will spell the end of market dominance. The market may reasonably if unequally function if industry creates employment opportunities for most people. But when industry only produces joblessness, as robots take over more and more, there is no good alternative but for the state to step in. As AI invades economic and social life, all private law-related issues will soon become public ones. More and more, regulation of private companies will become a necessity to maintain some semblance of stability in societies roiled by constant innovation.
正是人工智能的无处不在会招致市场优势的终结。如果运行不均，如果产业为大多数人创造出就业机会，市场也许会很合理。但要是产业制造出的只有无活可干，因为机器人接手了越来越多的岗位，就没有很好的替代选择了只有让国家介入。因为人工智能入侵了经济和社会生活，所有私营企业和法律有关的争议，会很快变成公共议题。为了维持不断被创新搅浑的社会外在稳定，对私人公司越来越多的监管会变成一种必然。
I consider this historical process a step closer to a planned market economy. Laissez-faire capitalism as we have known it can lead nowhere but to a dictatorship of AI oligarchs who gather rents because the intellectual property they own rules over the means of production. On a global scale, it is easy to envision this unleashed digital capitalism leading to a battle between robots for market share that will surely end as disastrously as the imperialist wars did in an earlier era.
我把这种历史进程看成是对计划经济迈近了一步。我们所知道的自由放任的资本主义只会走向人工智能寡头的独裁，因为他们拥有的知识产权支配了生产资料而能够去敛聚租金。在全球范围内，很容易想象这种如出笼猛兽般的数字资本主义会导致机器人之间为争夺市场份额而爆发战争，并肯定会灾难性地使自身终结，如同早先历史时期中的帝国主义战争那样。
For the sake of social well-being and security, individuals and private companies should not be allowed to possess any exclusive cutting-edge technology or core AI platforms. Like nuclear and biochemical weapons, as long as they exist, nothing other than a strong and stable state can ensure society’s safety. If we don’t nationalize AI, we could sink into a dystopia reminiscent of the early misery of industrialization, with its satanic mills and street urchins scrounging for a crust of bread.
为社会福祉和安全计，个人和私人公司不应被允许独占任何前沿技术或核心人工智能平台。如同核武器和生化武器，只要它们存在，除了强大且稳定的国家以外，没有别的东西能够确保社会安全。如果不国有化人工智能，我们可能会陷入早期工业化时代的悲惨往事，那些个邪恶的工厂以及在街上乞讨面包皮的小淘气鬼。
The dream of communism is the elimination of wage labor. If AI is bound to serve society instead of private capitalists, it promises to do so by freeing an overwhelming majority from such drudgery while creating wealth to sustain all.
共产主义的梦想是消灭雇佣劳动。如果人工智能注定要去服务社会而不是个体资本家，那么它会承诺去这么做，通过把压倒性多数的人从这些苦差事中解放出来，同时创造财富来支撑所有人。
If the state controls the market, instead of digital capitalism controlling the state, true communist aspirations will be achievable. And because AI increasingly enables the management of complex systems by processing massive amounts of information through intensive feedback loops, it presents, for the first time, a real alternative to the market signals that have long justified laissez-faire ideology — and all the ills that go with it.
如果由国家控制市场，而不是让数字资本主义控制国家，真正的共产主义抱负将可以达到。而且因为人工智能通过密集的反馈循环处理海量信息，使得管理复杂系统逐渐变得可能。它第一次提供了一种真正的替代市场信号的选择，而后者长期以来为自由放任的意识形态乃至其自带的所有弊病辩护。
Going forward, China’s socialist market economy, which aims to harness the fruits of production for the whole population and not just a sliver of elites operating in their own self-centered interests, can lead the way toward this new stage of human development.
从现在开始，中国的社会主义市场经济，其目标在于为所有人而不是一小撮为自身利益而动的精英驾驭生产果实，能够为人类发展的新阶段引路。
If properly regulated in this way, we should celebrate, not fear, the advent of AI. If it is brought under social control, it will finally free workers from peddling their time and sweat only to enrich those at the top. The communism of the future ought to adopt a new slogan: “Robots of the world, unite!”
如果用这种方式恰当地管制，我们就应该庆祝而非恐慌人工智能的到来。如果它在社会的管制之下，它就最终会把劳动者耗费时间和汗水却只肥了位居顶层的人中解放出来。未来的共产主义应该采纳一条新的口号：“全世界的机器人联合起来！”
本文来源： https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/05/03/end-of-capitalism/?utm_term=.1367166cf2c2
