终生学习，是我们在人工智能时代的宿命
人工智能(AI)和自动化技术已经开始影响我们的工作和日常生活。人工智能出现在日常物品和过程中，比如虚拟助理、超市结账、无人驾驶汽车和探测信用卡交易欺诈。
Disruption is inevitable but it is often deeply feared. The current wave of change, fuelled by technological advancement, is no different. However, like generations before us, we must learn to transcend the disruption and thrive in new times. Changing how we view education is essential to humanity’s ability to achieve the best from new technologies.
人工智能带来扰乱是不可避免的，这种扰乱往往引发深切恐惧。当前这股由技术进步推动的变革潮流没有什么不同之处。不过，就像之前的世代那样，我们必须学会超越这种扰乱，在新的时代蓬勃发展。就人类从新技术挖掘最佳效益的能力而言，改变我们的教育观念至关重要。
I recently spoke to graduating students at the University of Queensland in Australia and their excitement was tinged with trepidation about the future. I made three points to them: first, AI — and the resulting automation of industrial and business processes — will affect us all and is here to stay; second, it is in its infancy and there is an immense opportunity to transcend the disruption; third, as AI develops, this disruption will be repeated again and again. The only certain strategy in our world is for us all to become life-long learners.
我最近在澳大利亚与昆士兰大学(University of Queensland)的研究生进行交谈，他们的兴奋里夹杂着一些对未来的恐慌。我对他们提出了三点：首先，人工智能以及由此产生的工业自动化和业务流程将影响我们所有人，而且是永久性的;第二，人工智能尚处于起步阶段，有巨大的机会去超越它带来的扰乱;第三，随着人工智能的发展，这种扰乱将一次又一次重演。在我们所处的世界，唯一靠谱的策略是我们所有人都变成终身学习者。
We are still far from the “society of mind” that Marvin Minsky wrote about in the 1980s, in which many sophisticated instruments of intelligence possessed with faculties of deduction and learning — as well as different ways of representing knowledge and reasoning about it — combine to deliver systems capable of complex, autonomous behaviours. Yet many business leaders already consider AI integral to the future. A recent survey of 1,600 global enterprises by Infosys found that 71 per cent of their leaders feel the adoption of AI in business and society is inevitable; more than three quarters feel AI adoption will deliver positive, wider economic change; a quarter have already fully deployed at least one AI technology.
我们距离马文•闵斯基(Marvin Minsky)上世纪80年代写的“心智社会”(society of mind)还很遥远——那个社会有许多复杂的智能工具，它们不但具备推理和学习功能，还能以不同方式来表达和论述知识，这些工具可以结合起来，构成能够进行复杂、自主行为的系统。不过许多商业领袖已视人工智能为未来不可或缺的一部分。印孚瑟斯公司(Infosys)最近对1600家全球企业进行的一项调查发现，71%的受访企业领导认为，人工智能在商业和社会中的应用是不可避免的;逾四分之三受访对象认为人工智能的采用将带来积极的、全局性的经济变化;四分之一的企业已经全面部署了至少一项人工智能技术。
But I believe humans will not do well if they merely endure such disruptions. Rather, we can play an active part in shaping our collective future and changing our world in a meaningful and purposeful way. Technology can be a great enabling force that amplifies and empowers people, improves the quality of life for all and opens up opportunities for the underprivileged.
但我相信，人类只是忍受人工智能带来的扰乱还不够好。相反，我们可以积极地塑造我们共同的未来，以有意义、有目的的方式改变我们的世界。科技可以成为一种伟大的推动力，让人们变得强大，赋予他们力量，提高所有人的生活质量，并为弱势群体创造机会。
For example, at the start of the 20th century 38 per cent of Americans worked on farms. Since then, mechanisation has increased production while reducing the number of employees. Today hired farm workers constitute less than 1 per cent of the US workforce and yet overall employment has soared. Farming jobs have been replaced with new industries — telecoms, health, manufacturing, financial services and more. We work in areas unimaginable to a farmer in the 1900s.
举例来说，20世纪初时有38%的美国人在农场工作，随后机械化提高了产量，同时减少了雇员人数。现在农场雇佣工人占美国劳动力不足1%，但整体就业岗位已大幅增加。农场工作被电信、医疗、制造业、金融服务等新行业工作取代。现在有些行业是1900年代的农民无法想象的。
In the same way, AI will affect how we work, the jobs we do and the activities we take part in, both for work and in our free time. It will provide humans with opportunities to create new kinds of experiences and jobs that are unimaginable today, but that have the potential to create trillions of dollars of new value. While intelligent systems may eventually surpass humans in performing well-defined cognitive tasks (such as problem solving), it takes human creativity and ingenuity to “see” the opportunity (such as recognising a problem technology can solve in the first place).
同样，人工智能也会影响我们的工作方式，我们从事的职业，以及我们参与的活动——无论是工作还是业余生活都是如此。人工智能将为人类提供机会，创造新的体验和职业，这些体验和职业在今天还难以想象，但有望创造数万亿美元的新价值。虽然智能系统最终可能在执行明确定义的认知任务(如解决问题)方面超越人类，但是“发现”机会(比如认识到一个可以用技术解决的问题)需要人类的创造力和聪明才智。
AI can enable us to overcome the limitations of our minds and senses. As my co-chair at the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on AI and Robotics, Professor Missy Cummings of Duke University, says, we are still in the early stages of understanding how intelligent systems can work with people more seamlessly. This would enable both the sharing of work and achieving shared meaning and perspectives. It is not a question of man or machine, but of man and machine. Such collaboration is critical to establishing shared meaning as we have seen in human collaboration for generations.
人工智能可以帮助我们克服思维和感官局限。正如我在世界经济论坛(World Economic Forum)人工智能和机器人全球未来理事会(Global Future Council on AI and Robotics)的联名主席、杜克大学(Duke University)的米西•卡明斯(Missy Cummings)教授所说，我们仍处于摸索如何能让智能系统与人类无缝合作的早期阶段。这将促进人类与智能系统实现工作共享，以及意义和视角上的共享。这不是人类或机器的问题，而是人类与机器的问题。这种合作对于建立意义共享至关重要，就像世世代代的人类之间开展的合作。
Breakthroughs can only be achieved if man and machine work together on a set of shared goals. When we achieve such a symbiosis, the potential for our species will be immense.
只有人类和机器基于共同的目标进行合作，才能实现突破。当我们达到这样的共生境界，人类将释放巨大潜能。
This story of disruption and transcendence has played out over millennia. But the pace of change is accelerating, necessitating an ever-faster rate of adaptation.
扰乱与超越的故事已上演了数千年。但变革的步伐在加快，因此需要更快的适应速度。
The time has come to rethink education and to recast it as a life-long process. That means we need to move away from rewarding memorisation and instead prize curiosity and experimentation — the building blocks of discovering and understanding the things we do not yet know. Curriculums should be modernised to encourage creative problem finding and solving, and learning through doing, with mandatory computer science learning as the bedrock for enabling digital literacy. Organisations also need to make life-long learning resources available for employees to enhance skills development. Indeed, they should be required to dedicate a percentage of their annual revenue to reskilling staff.
是时候重新思考教育，将其视为一个终身过程。这意味着我们不能再奖励死记硬背，而应该奖励好奇心和实验，它们是发现和理解未知事物的基石。教学大纲应当现代化，鼓励以创造性思维发现和解决问题，在实践中学习，通过强制性的计算机科学课程实现数字扫盲。组织还需要为雇员提供终生学习的资源，以促进技能发展。的确，企业应该被要求将年度收入的一定百分比用于员工的再培训。
Humans have adapted in part because we have evolved our education systems alongside our technologies: we advanced our capacities to understand our tools. As with reading and writing, being digitally literate is a fundamental need and every child should study computer science.
从古至今，人类能够适应，部分原因就是我们紧跟技术演变的步伐，调整发展了我们的教育系统：我们升级了理解我们的工具的能力。与阅读和写作一样，数字素养也成了一项根本需要，每个孩子都应该学习计算机科学。
Today’s rapid changes call for a new perspective on education by states and companies. Infosys is rethinking its training infrastructure and augmenting it with, for example, short courses (or “nanodegrees”) to help drive the rapid acquisition of new skills, including AI techniques, at scale. We are also introducing company-wide training to help employees reassess the way they approach challenges and identify problems, and to be more creative and bring innovation to everything we do.
当今的快速变化要求国家和企业从一个新视角来看待教育。印孚瑟斯公司正重新考虑自己的培训基础设施，例如用短期课程(即所谓“纳米学位”)来加强培训，规模化帮助员工迅速掌握新技能，包括人工智能方法。我们还推出全公司范围的培训，帮助员工重新评估自己应对挑战、识别问题的方式，并且变得更有创意，为我们从事的一切工作带来创新。
These are small starts and governments and businesses need to help develop an approach to life-long learning that will create a more level playing field for people everywhere.
这些只是小小的开端，政府和企业需要帮助发展终身学习的途径，为全世界的人们创建一个更加平等的环境。
If we can do this, I believe the only limit to our human potential will be the capacity of our imaginations. The AIs of our creation will help us to become more human.
如果我们能做到这一点，我相信人类潜力面临的唯一局限将是我们的想象力。我们创造的各种人工智能将帮助我们变得更具人性。
The writer is chief executive of Infosys
史维学(Vishal Sikka)是印孚瑟斯公司(Infosys)首席执行官
