全球投資者新寵：中國(guó)人臉識(shí)別初創(chuàng)公司

China’s facial recognition start-ups are attracting big investments at a time when Silicon Valley’s giants are facing a backlash over their use of the technology.

中國(guó)的面部識(shí)別初創(chuàng)企業(yè)正在吸引大量投資，而此時(shí)硅谷巨頭們對(duì)這項(xiàng)技術(shù)的使用正面臨反彈。

In the past week, Chinese facial recognition companies, according to a pair of reports, were close to raising as much as $1.6 billion. Those investments would build on billions of dollars that investors have already put into the companies.

根據(jù)兩份報(bào)道，在過去的一周，中國(guó)面部識(shí)別公司籌集了將近16億美元(約合106億元人民幣)的資金。這些投資將建立在投資者已經(jīng)投入這些公司的數(shù)十億美元基礎(chǔ)上。

The investments reflect facial recognition’s embrace by Beijing, which has created a better environment for companies to test the technology than in the West. And that could help China deploy advanced systems faster and more broadly than America.

這些投資反映了北京對(duì)面部識(shí)別的認(rèn)可，這為企業(yè)測(cè)試這項(xiàng)技術(shù)創(chuàng)造了比西方更好的環(huán)境。這可能有助于中國(guó)比美國(guó)更快、更廣泛地部署先進(jìn)系統(tǒng)。

SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund was seeking a $1 billion stake in SenseTime, an artificial intelligence company in Beijing, Bloomberg reported last week, citing anonymous sources. SenseTime makes facial recognition software used in applications like monitoring CCTV footage and checking a consumer’s likeness to validate digital payments.

據(jù)彭博(Bloomberg)上周援引匿名消息來(lái)源報(bào)道，軟銀(SoftBank)的1000億美元愿景基金(Vision Fund)正在尋求獲得北京人工智能公司商湯科技10億美元(約合66億元人民幣)的股份。商湯科技制作的面部識(shí)別軟件可用于監(jiān)控?cái)z像頭，還有檢查消費(fèi)者的相貌相似性以驗(yàn)證數(shù)字支付。

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that, according to anonymous sources, the Chinese A.I. company Megvii would close a $600 million funding round “within weeks.” Alibaba and Hong Kong-based Boyu Capital are expected to contribute. Megvii is the developer of Face++, the facial recognition system already used in China to grant or deny people access to buildings, or check if the driver of a Didi ride-hailing car is legitimate, among other things.

彭博在周一報(bào)道稱，根據(jù)匿名消息來(lái)源，中國(guó)人工智能公司曠視科技將“在幾周內(nèi)”完成一輪6億美元的融資。預(yù)計(jì)會(huì)有阿里巴巴和總部位于香港的博裕資本的參與。曠視科技是Face++的開發(fā)者，這是一種面部識(shí)別系統(tǒng)，在中國(guó)已經(jīng)被用來(lái)允許或拒絕人們進(jìn)入建筑物，或者核查滴滴打車司機(jī)背景等等。

SenseTime has already raised over $1.6 billion in funding since it was founded in 2014, according to data from S & P Global Market Intelligence, and as recently as May was valued at about $4.5 billion. Investors included Alibaba and Bank of China as well as the American firms Qualcomm, Silver Lake, Tiger Global Management and Fidelity International.

根據(jù)標(biāo)普全球市場(chǎng)財(cái)智(S&P Global Market Intelligence)的數(shù)據(jù)，自2014年成立以來(lái)，商湯科技已經(jīng)籌集了超過16億美元(約合106億元人民幣)的資金，在5月得到了45億美元(約合300億元人民幣)的估值。投資者包括阿里巴巴和中國(guó)銀行，以及美國(guó)公司高通(Qualcomm)、銀湖資本(Silver Lake)、老虎環(huán)球(Tiger Global Management)和富達(dá)國(guó)際(Fidelity International)。

Megvii’s previous funding round raised $460 million from Chinese companies like Foxconn and Ant Financial, as well as several domestic investment funds. It also received money from the Moscow-based Russian Direct Investment Fund and South Korea’s SK Group.

曠視科技的上一輪融資由富士康和螞蟻金服等中國(guó)公司以及幾家國(guó)內(nèi)投資基金籌集了4.6億美元(約合31億元人民幣)。它還得到了總部設(shè)在莫斯科的俄羅斯直接投資基金(Russian Direct Investment Fund)和韓國(guó)SK集團(tuán)的投資。

The facial recognition systems being built by SenseTime and Megvii use artificial intelligence to discern individuals from one another in images or video, by studying libraries of existing content. It is one of the more established machine learning techniques, which means that it has found some practical application in consumer products — such as Apple’s Face ID, which allows a user to unlock his or her iPhone by looking at it, or Facebook’s tools, which can recognize users in uploaded images.

商湯科技和曠視科技正在打造的面部識(shí)別系統(tǒng)通過研究現(xiàn)有內(nèi)容庫(kù)，利用人工智能來(lái)識(shí)別圖像或視頻中的個(gè)體。這是一種更成熟的機(jī)器學(xué)習(xí)技術(shù)，這意味著它已經(jīng)在消費(fèi)產(chǎn)品中找到了一些實(shí)際的應(yīng)用方式——比如蘋果的Face ID，它允許用戶看著iPhone將其解鎖，或者可以在上傳圖像中識(shí)別用戶的Facebook工具。

Such software has proved controversial because of the privacy issues that it raises. Law enforcement’s use of it to identify criminals or track citizens, in particular, has drawn pushback.

事實(shí)證明，這種軟件會(huì)帶來(lái)爭(zhēng)議，因?yàn)樗l(fā)了隱私問題。執(zhí)法部門利用信息技術(shù)識(shí)別罪犯或追蹤公民的做法尤其遭到了抵制。

But even if its citizens have such concerns, China’s government wants to use facial recognition to create a vast national surveillance system. And it has created an environment to foster its development.

但即使中國(guó)公民有這樣的擔(dān)憂，中國(guó)政府也希望利用面部識(shí)別來(lái)建立一個(gè)龐大的國(guó)家監(jiān)控系統(tǒng)。為此它創(chuàng)造了一個(gè)促進(jìn)其發(fā)展的環(huán)境。

The country’s push to become a technological powerhouse has created a wave of promising A.I. start-ups. Its desire to track its citizens has also meant that many of them have focused specifically on image recognition. And there are close ties between many of these start-ups and the government, which allows companies to apply their software to huge state data sets. The chief executive of SenseTime, which has contracts with the Police Department in Chongqing and China Mobile, told The Financial Times in January that the company had “processed 500 million identities for facial recognition. U.S. companies can’t test on so many customers.”

該國(guó)成為技術(shù)強(qiáng)國(guó)的努力，已經(jīng)創(chuàng)造了一批有前景的人工智能初創(chuàng)企業(yè)。中國(guó)對(duì)追蹤其公民的渴望也意味著，這些公司中有許多會(huì)特別關(guān)注圖像識(shí)別。許多這樣的初創(chuàng)企業(yè)與政府有著密切的聯(lián)系，政府允許公司將它們的軟件應(yīng)用于龐大的國(guó)家數(shù)據(jù)集。商湯科技的首席執(zhí)行官在1月份告訴《金融時(shí)報(bào)》(The Financial Times)，該公司已經(jīng)“處理了5億個(gè)面部識(shí)別身份。美國(guó)公司無(wú)法對(duì)這么多客戶進(jìn)行測(cè)試，”這家公司已經(jīng)與重慶市警察局和中國(guó)移動(dòng)簽訂了合同。

Similar arrangements have existed in the United States. But American technology companies have recently run into resistance when working with government agencies.

美國(guó)也有類似的安排。但美國(guó)的科技公司最近在與政府機(jī)構(gòu)合作時(shí)遇到了阻力。

Amazon endured heavy lobbying from shareholders, the American Civil Liberties Union and staff about the use of its Rekognition software by police to identify people. Microsoft, too, has suffered blowback over a project to help develop A.I. for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And Google ultimately decided not to renew a contract with the Pentagon that called for using image recognition to improve the performance of drone operations.

亞馬遜(Amazon)受到了股東、美國(guó)公民自由聯(lián)盟(American Civil Liberties Union)和工作人員的大力勸說(shuō)，阻礙該公司允許警方使用其Rekognition軟件來(lái)識(shí)別身份。微軟(Microsoft)的一個(gè)項(xiàng)目也遭遇了反擊，該項(xiàng)目旨在幫助美國(guó)移民與海關(guān)執(zhí)法局(Immigration and Customs Enforcement)開發(fā)人工智能工具。谷歌(Google)最終決定不與五角大樓續(xù)簽合同，后者希望使用圖像識(shí)別來(lái)改進(jìn)無(wú)人機(jī)的行動(dòng)。

In the wake of those criticisms, Microsoft has actually called on Congress to regulate the use of facial recognition technology.

事實(shí)上，在遭到這些批評(píng)之后，微軟已經(jīng)呼吁國(guó)會(huì)監(jiān)管面部識(shí)別技術(shù)的使用。

The nature of A.I. means that software systems can be improved by crunching through larger and larger data sets that can be provided by the government — from things like CCTV footage, driving license images, and more. China’s start-ups, then, are enjoying the benefits of improving their technology inside projects that America’s tech giants might be lobbying their own way out of.

人工智能的性質(zhì)決定了軟件系統(tǒng)可以通過處理政府——從閉路電視錄像、駕照?qǐng)D片等等來(lái)源——提供的越來(lái)越大的數(shù)據(jù)集得以改進(jìn)。因此，當(dāng)美國(guó)的科技巨頭可能正為了脫離這種項(xiàng)目而四處游說(shuō)的同時(shí)，中國(guó)的初創(chuàng)企業(yè)正享受著在這些項(xiàng)目中改進(jìn)技術(shù)的好處。