破解密码时，人工智能在“思考”什么？

A few weeks ago I went to the Imperial War Museum in London to watch an artificial intelligence program attempt to crack the mindbendingly complex Enigma code used by the Germans during the second world war. It did so in 12 minutes and 50 seconds. 数周前，我去了伦敦的帝国战争博物馆(Imperial War Museum)，观摩一个人工智能程序试图破解德国人在二战期间使用的复杂的英格玛(Enigma)密码。它用了12分50秒就破解了那套密码。

Having already machine read some German language training data from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the AI program crunched through billions of permutations generated by the four-rotor Enigma machine sifting combinations of letters for their “Germanness”. 在机器阅读了来自《格林童话》(Grimm’s Fairy Tales)的一些德文培训数据后，人工智能程序分析了由四个转子的英格玛机器生成的数十亿个排列组合，在海量字母组合中寻找德文语句。

A challenge that had occupied some of Britain’s most brilliant mathematical minds at Bletchley Park for many months and at enormous cost was solved by a modern AI program in a few minutes for only £10. The program, developed by the data analytics company Enigma Pattern and boosted by 2,000 virtual servers, was able to check an astonishing 41m combinations a second. 曾经让布莱切利公园(Bletchley Park)一些英国最优秀数学家冥思苦想好几个月的挑战，如今在几分钟内就被现代人工智能程序解决了，而且成本只有10英镑。由数据分析公司Enigma Pattern开发的这个程序，由2000个虚拟服务器提供支持，每秒能够筛查惊人的4100万个排列组合。

Simon Singh, the science writer and author of The Code Book 科学作家、《密码故事》(The Code Book)一书的作者西蒙•辛格(Simon Singh)表示，英格玛密码在当时被认为是近乎不可能破译的。他在上述演示活动中表示：“那是一套极难破译的密码。它曾经长期被认为是一个不可能的挑战。”

, said the Enigma code was considered all but unbreakable in its day. “It is a tough, tough code to break. It was long thought to be an impossible challenge,” he said at the event. 此次演示是一个聪明的宣传噱头，展示了人工智能与强大计算能力相结合之后快速增长的能力。但是，它也进一步证明了布莱切利公园的密码破译天才阿兰•图灵(Alan Turing)的早期直觉，即计算机可以在不理解的情况下展现出强大胜任能力。

The demonstration was a smart publicity stunt to show off the fast-growing capabilities of AI when combined with massive computing power. But it also came as further proof of the early intuition of Alan Turing, the genius codebreaker of Bletchley Park, that computers can exhibit competence without comprehension. 人工智能程序没有意识到它正在试图破解德国的密码机，甚至不知道那些德文单词的含义。相反，它将模式识别技术与蛮力计算相结合，产生一个基于概率的解决方案。机器智能即使在没有完全理解问题的情况下，也能提供正确的答案。

The AI program had no conception that it was trying to crack a German cipher machine, nor even what the German words meant. Rather, it was combining pattern recognition technology and brute force computing to produce a probabilistic solution. Machine intelligence can provide the right answer even when it does not fully understand the question. 这种现象正蔓延至日益广泛的人类活动范围，从玩游戏(比如象棋和围棋)到阅读法律文件、解读放射扫描结果以及驾驶汽车。计算机不理解它们正在执行的任务，即便它们比人类更高效率地执行了任务。

This phenomenon is spreading to an ever-widening range of human activities from playing games, such as chess and Go, to reading legal documents, interpreting radiology scans and driving cars. Computers do not comprehend what tasks they are performing even as they perform them more efficiently than humans. 计算机智能的胜任能力范围不断扩大，引发了许多棘手问题，症结在于当机器几乎能做所有事情时会发生什么?这个难题已经催生了一大堆论述在人工智能时代身为人类将意味着什么的图书。

The expanding competence of computer intelligence raises many ticklish questions about what will happen when machines can do almost everything. That dilemma has already spawned a shelf load of books about what it will mean to be human in the age of AI. 但是，英格玛故事的一个不那么为人所知的方面突显出，人类与机器之间仍然存在着显著差异——即使这段插曲折射出的人性并不特别光彩。

But one lesser-known aspect of the Enigma story highlights a significant difference that remains between man and machine — even if this episode does not reflect particularly well on humans. 据辛格透露，战争结束后，英国当局没有公开他们已经破译了英格玛密码这个事实，反而维持它不可破译的假象。这种欺骗让他们能够把一些缴获的英格玛机器卖给友好国家的政府，让英国人能够截获他们最敏感的通信内容。

According to Mr Singh, even after the war the British authorities kept secret the fact that they had cracked the Enigma code, maintaining the pretence that it was unbreakable. That deceit enabled them to sell some of the captured Enigma machines to friendly governments, allowing the British to spy on their most sensitive communications. 很难想象计算机会设计这样一个狡猾的策略。说谎是一件复杂的事情，涉及到对意图的掩饰、对情境和人类心理的理解，以及让真假两种现实并存。英国人的背信显然是一种高度稀少的智力。

It is hard to imagine a computer could ever devise such a devious strategy. Lying is a complicated business involving the masking of intention, an understanding of context and human psychology, and the coexistence of two versions of reality, one true, one false. British perfidy is clearly a highly rarefied form of intelligence. 正如俄国诗人约瑟夫•布罗德斯基(Joseph Brodsky)所写的那样，真正的意识历史始于我们的第一个谎言。计算机是否有朝一日会有意识地欺骗人类，仍然是一个有意思的问题。万一它这么做了，我们这些愚笨的人类可能陷入极大的麻烦。在2015年的电影《机械姬》(Ex Machina)中，一个类人机器人接受了图灵测试(Turing test，图灵设计的旨在判断机器能否思考的试验——译者注)，后果令人不寒而栗。

As the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky once wrote, the real history of consciousness begins with our first lie. It remains an interesting question whether a computer will ever consciously be able to deceive humans. If, and when, it ever does, we dim humans may be in serious trouble. The consequences have been chillingly explored in the 2015 film Ex Machina, in which a humanoid robot takes the Turing test. 马克斯•泰格马克(Max Tegmark)在其著作《生命3.0：人工智能时代的人类》(Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)一书中，强调了哲学家对拉丁语中的“睿智”(智能思考能力)和“感知”(感受主观体验的能力)这两个概念所做的区分。

In his book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 这位麻省理工学院(MIT)的物理学教授认为，在本世纪的某个时候，电子智能可能会超越人类智慧，挑战我们自称为地球上最聪明的物种“智人”(Homo sapiens)的主张。

, Max Tegmark highlights the distinction philosophers draw between the Latin concepts of sapience (the ability to think intelligently) and sentience (the ability to appreciate subjective experiences). 但获得电子意识(这让它们能够理解意思)将是一个更为重要的事件——如果真能实现的话。他提出，如果人类想要延长自己的例外主义，那么也许是时候把我们重新标榜为“意识人”(Homo sentiens)了。

At some point this century, the MIT physics professor contends, electronic intelligence may well supersede human intelligence, challenging our claim to be Homo sapiens, the smartest entity on the planet. 计算机将会发现破解意识密码要困难得多。

But acquiring electronic consciousness, which enables meaning, will be an even more important event, if it ever happens. If we humans wish to extend our exceptionalism, he suggests, then maybe it is the moment to rebrand ourselves as Homo sentiens.