数据民主的隐患

Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, had a great line in his Davos speech last week: “The pace of change has never been this fast, and yet it will never be this slow again.”

加拿大总理贾斯廷•特鲁多(Justin Trudeau)不久前在达沃斯(Davos)论坛发言时说了句十分精辟的话：“改变从未如此之快，而且再也不会比今天更慢。”

For me, that was the key message of the World Economic Forum. The headlines may have talked about President Donald Trump’s “America first” speech, but the back story was the fragility of nation states in a time of technological change.

在我看来，这是本届世界经济论坛(WEF)传递出的关键信息。虽然头条新闻谈论的可能都是美国总统唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)的“美国优先”演说，但背景故事却是技术变革的时代各个民族国家的脆弱性。

The topic of “the digital economy and society” was the most popular this year at the WEF in terms of the number of sessions and social media buzz — and no wonder. The dirty secret of Davos is that the much-lauded “Fourth Industrial Revolution” — shorthand for the rise of ubiquitous automation, big data and artificial intelligence — is making most people less, not more, secure, at least in the short term.

“数字经济与社会”是今年世界经济论坛上最热门的话题，不仅有很多分论坛讨论这一话题，同时还在社交媒体上引发了热议——这不足为奇。达沃斯肮脏的秘密是，备受赞颂的“第四次工业革命”——即对无处不在的自动化、大数据和人工智能浪潮的简称——这一趋势至少在短期内会使大多数人更危险，而不是更安全。

The ability of a range of companies — in insurance, healthcare, retail and consumer goods — to personalise almost every kind of product and service based on data streams is not just a business model shift. It is a fundamental challenge to liberal democracy.

保险、医疗、零售和消费品行业的众多企业能够根据数据流个性化几乎每一种产品和服务，这不仅仅是商业模式的转变，也是对自由民主的一个根本性挑战。

Consider the changes being wrought in the insurance business. For 200 years, it has been based on the notion of risk pooling: average the cost of insuring individual homes, cars and lives, and then divide the cost among the collective. In the age of data, insurance groups will be able to take information from tracking boxes in our cars or sensors embedded in our homes and use it to craft hyper-personalised policies.

试想一下保险业正在发生的变化。200年来，保险业的运作一直是基于风险共担的概念：计算个人住房、车辆或人寿保险的平均成本，然后分给个体。数据时代，保险集团将能够从我们车上的追踪盒或安装在我们家里的传感器中获取信息，并利用这些信息制定高度个性化的保单。

For example, you might be rewarded for putting a new plumbing system into your own old house (the sensors will measure how well it works), or stopping more quickly at red lights. But you might also be blamed when your 16-year-old puffs weed in his bedroom (smoke detectors will relay the message to your insurer in real time) or if you fail to shovel the snow off the front stoop before it ices up (now insurers could know exactly when and if you did, and limit their own risk of liability if a passer-by slips).

例如，如果你给自己的旧房子安了一套新的管道系统(传感器将测量它的工作效果)，或在遇到红灯时更快地停下，就可能获得奖励。但如果你16岁的孩子在他的房间吸大麻(烟雾探测器会将信息实时传递给你的保险公司)，或你没能及时把门前的雪铲掉、让它结了冰(现在，你什么时候铲雪和你铲没铲雪保险公司都能准确地知道，并降低经过的行人滑倒时他们承担责任的风险)，就可能算你的责任。

Of course, you’ll be able to opt in and out of all this, though probably not very transparently or cheaply (consider that on commercial platforms such as Facebook or Google, you basically have to forfeit your rights to use the product or service easily). But the more disturbing implication is that there may now be an uninsurable underclass who can no longer be floated by averaging. Who will insure them? Most likely subprime lenders or the state.

当然，你可以对整个这种状况选择接受或拒绝，虽然这种选择也许并不是很透明或者实惠(要知道，在像Facebook或谷歌(Google)这样的商业平台上，基本上你必须放弃你的权利，才能便捷地使用它们的产品或服务)。但更令人不安的是，如今可能存在一个无法获得保险的下层阶级，这些人无法再享有平均带来的好处。谁将给他们投保?很可能是次贷提供机构或政府。

Which brings up another dirty secret of the digital age. Just as the US government has for years subsidised low-cost retailers that do not pay their workers a living wage, so the government will probably be asked to underwrite the safety net for a new digital underclass.

由此引出了数字时代另一个肮脏的秘密。就像美国政府多年来一直补贴那些不向工人支付基本生活工资的低价零售商一样，人们很可能要求政府为数字时代一个新的下层阶级提供社会保障。

The problem is that the public sector does not have the capacity to do this. It is coping with trillions of dollars of debt that has been created since the financial crisis, not to mention more partisan politics that make it tough to create consensus on much of anything. As digital bifurcation grows, it is very likely that disenchantment with the state will increase as well, fuelling the vicious cycle of political disenchantment and dysfunctional economics.

问题是公共部门没有能力这样做。它正在应付金融危机以来产生的数万亿美元的债务，更不用说还有弄得任何事情都难以达成共识的党派政治了。随着数字时代分歧的加剧，人们对国家的失望情绪也很可能增加，从而助长政治幻灭和经济状况失衡的恶性循环。

The other risk is that rather than demanding more, not only of governments, but of the companies that are monetising our data, citizens will remain passive.

另一种风险是，公民将继续保持被动，而不是对政府及那些变现我们数据的企业要求更多。

It’s a topic that financier George Soros addressed in his speech at Davos, where he noted that technology groups were “inducing people to give up their autonomy . . . it takes a real effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called ‘the freedom of mind’. There is a possibility that once lost, people who grow up in the digital age will have difficulty in regaining it.”

这是金融家乔治•索罗斯(George Soros)在达沃斯演讲中谈到的一个话题，他指出科技团体正在“劝诱人们放弃自主权……要费老大劲才能坚持和捍卫约翰•斯图尔特•密尔(John Stuart Mill)所说的‘心灵自由’。一旦失去，成长于数字时代的人们可能将再难重获它。”

Mr Soros noted the risk of “alliances between authoritarian states and these large, data-rich IT monopolies that would bring together nascent systems of corporate surveillance with an already developed system of state-sponsored surveillance”.

索罗斯注意到一种隐患，即“威权国家可能与这些拥有大量数据的垄断型大IT公司结成联盟，将刚刚诞生的企业监控系统与国家支持的已经很发达的监控系统结合起来”。

It sounds Orwellian, but it is the state of play in China, where the country’s big technology groups and the government are closely aligned. Indeed, some of the digital scientists I spoke to in Davos professed envy for the ease of data gathering even as they expressed their concerns about the political implications.

这听起来像奥威尔小说中描述的事情，但这就是中国正在发生的事情，在中国，大型科技集团与政府密切联系在一起。事实上，我在达沃斯与一些数字科学家们聊过，他们在担忧政治影响的同时，也对能够方便地收集数据艳羡不已。

This is why the most optimistic moment I had in Davos was with Illah Nourbakhsh, a professor at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon, who, having become quite worried about the points I have just made, launched a project to educate elementary school children about the power of data, its risks and rewards, and how to use it to advocate for themselves.

正因如此，我在达沃斯感到最乐观的时刻，就是遇到卡内基梅隆大学(Carnegie Mellon University)机器人研究所教授伊拉•努尔巴赫什(Illah Nourbakhsh)的时候。他对我上文所提的问题非常担忧，于是发起了一个项目，教育小学生们了解数据的力量、风险与回报，以及如何利用数据实现自己的主张。

Under the scheme, children might track, say, the number of cars idling

努尔巴赫什说，根据这项计划，孩子们可以追踪比如停在校外但没有熄火的车辆的数量，计算潜在的污染，然后召开家庭会议，讨论如何“挑战现有的能源结构”(实际意思就是：敦促他们的校长制定新的停车规则)。

outside their school, calculate the potential pollution generated, then call a family meeting to discuss how to “challenge the incumbent power structures”, as Mr Nourbakhsh says (translation: push their principal for new parking rules).

这一构想旨在创造了解数据力量的新一代公民科学家。我预测，如果他们真的了解数据的力量，他们将会要求更多的所有权以及自己控制数据的权利。

The idea is to create a new generation of citizen scientists who understand 译者/何黎