科技業(yè)的影響力中心轉向中國？

Sometimes a shift in power happens so subtly that you don’t even notice it is occurring. Take the increasingly important field of artificial intelligence.

力量的轉變有時會以非常微妙的方式發(fā)生，使得你根本注意不到。以重要性日益提高的人工智能領域為例。

For all the talk of autonomous vehicles and smart home appliances in Silicon Valley, some of the most innovative work in artificial intelligence is being done far away, in China.

人們總是把硅谷的自動駕駛汽車和智能家電掛在嘴上，但人工智能領域某些最具創(chuàng)造性的工作其實正在萬里之外的中國展開。

Beijing is supporting A.I. research with vast sums of money and is helping to move those innovations into China’s private sector, Paul Mozur and John Markoff write. And China is spending more just as the United States appears to be ready to pull back on such investing. The Trump administration recently released a proposed budget that would drastically cut back on many of the federal programs that have traditionally funded artificial intelligence research.

孟寶勒(Paul Mozur)和約翰·馬克夫(John Markoff)撰文稱，北京正投入巨額資金支持人工智能研究，并幫助將這類創(chuàng)新推向私營部門。而美國在中國投入更多資金之際，似乎正準備收縮此項投資。特朗普政府最近公布的一個擬議中的預算方案顯示，傳統(tǒng)上為人工智能研究提供資金支持的聯(lián)邦項目當中，有很多會被大幅削減預算。

“China’s ambitions mingle the most far-out sci-fi ideas with the needs of an authoritarian state: Philip K. Dick meets George Orwell,” Paul and John write. “There are plans to use it to predict crimes, lend money, track people on the country’s ubiquitous closed-circuit cameras, alleviate traffic jams, create self-guided missiles and censor the internet.”

“中國的野心將最遙不可及的科幻創(chuàng)意與一個威權國家的需求結合起來：菲利普·K·迪克(Philip K. Dick)遇到喬治·奧威爾(George Orwell)，”孟寶勒和馬克夫寫道。“他們計劃利用這項技術預測犯罪行為、協(xié)助發(fā)放貸款、通過無所不在的閉路攝像頭追尋人們的蹤跡、緩解交通堵塞、制造自導導彈，以及審查互聯(lián)網(wǎng)內容。”

What’s more, entrepreneurs from other countries who might have made their way to Silicon Valley in years past now consider China a legitimate option for their work.

此外，其他國家的創(chuàng)業(yè)者過去數(shù)十年間或許一直以打入硅谷為念，但現(xiàn)如今，他們考慮工作地點時會把中國當成一個合理的選項。

It may be that the United States is turning inward at exactly the wrong moment to capture the technology industry’s next big breakthrough.

想要取得科技行業(yè)下一個重大突破的美國，或許正在一個絕對錯誤的時機轉向內斂。