今天凌晨，OpenAI CEO Sam Altman 在个人博客上发表了一篇重要文章，预测“智能时代”（Intelligence Age）即将到来，人工智能将在“未来几十年”内带来巨大的经济收益。
核心观点是：
1. 人类能力的提升：随着时间推移，人类的能力显著增强，未来我们将能够实现祖辈们认为不可能的成就。
2. 人工智能的作用：人工智能将为我们提供解决复杂问题的工具，帮助我们构建新的支柱，推动社会进步。
3. 共享繁荣的潜力：未来的科技进步将使得每个人的生活水平超越当前的任何人，尽管繁荣本身并不等于幸福。
4. 深度学习的影响：深度学习的成功使得我们能够以极大的精度学习和解决数据问题，未来将继续推动人工智能的发展。
5. 应对挑战的必要性：尽管人工智能带来了巨大的潜力，但我们需要谨慎应对可能的负面影响，以最大化其益处。
以下是中文全文（由ChatGPT翻译）：
智能时代
https://ia.samaltman.com
在未来的几十年里，我们将能做到一些在祖父母看来简直如魔术一样的事情。
这一现象并不新鲜，只是最近被加速了。随着时间的推移，人类的能力显著提升；我们如今能实现的成就，过去的先辈们可能会认为根本不可能。
我们之所以变得更有能力，并非因为基因的变化，而是得益于社会基础设施的高度智能化与强大，超越了任何个体的能力；在某种重要意义上，社会本身就是一种高级智能。我们的祖父母以及更早的前辈们创造了伟大的成就，他们为人类进步构建了支撑体系，我们都得以从中受益。人工智能将赋予人们解决难题的工具，帮助我们建立新的支撑体系，完成我们自己无法做到的事情。进步的故事将继续发展，我们的后代将能够实现我们现在难以想象的事物。
这一切不会在瞬间发生，但我们很快将能够利用人工智能，帮助我们完成超出个人能力的事情；最终，我们每个人都能拥有一个由不同领域的虚拟专家组成的个人人工智能团队，共同创造几乎任何我们能想象的东西。我们的孩子将拥有虚拟导师，能够以任何语言并按照他们需要的节奏提供个性化指导。
类似的理念也可以应用于改善医疗保健、创造人们想象的软件等领域。
凭借这些新能力，我们能够实现前所未有的共享繁荣；未来，每个人的生活都可以比现在任何人的生活更美好。单靠繁荣并不一定会带来幸福——有许多富有却痛苦的人——但这将实质性改善全球人们的生活。
我们可以从一个狭隘的角度来看待人类历史：经过数千年的科学发现和技术进步的积累，我们已经掌握了如何熔化沙子，添加杂质，以令人惊叹的精确度在微小尺度上构建计算机芯片，通过它运行能量，从而获得能够创造日益强大的人工智能系统。
这可能是迄今为止人类历史上最重要的事实。我们有可能在几千天内实现超级智能！也许需要的时间会更长，但我坚信我们一定能到达那一步。
我们是如何走到这个即将跃升的繁荣时代的？
用三个词来概括：深度学习奏效了（ deep learning worked）。
用十五个词来描述：深度学习有效，随着规模的扩大变得更可预测，且我们投入了越来越多的资源（deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale, and we dedicated increasing resources to it）。
这就是核心，人类发现了一种算法，真正能够学习任何数据分布（或者更准确地说，产生任何数据分布的“规则”）。随着计算力和数据的增加，深度学习在帮助人们解决难题方面表现得越来越好，精确度令人惊叹。我发现无论我花多长时间思考这个问题，始终无法真正理解它的重要性。
我们还有许多细节需要解决，但分心于某个特定挑战是错误的。深度学习有效，我们将解决剩下的问题。关于未来的可能性，我们可以谈论很多，但最关键的是，人工智能将随着规模的扩大而变得更强，这将给全球人们的生活带来实质性的改善。
人工智能模型很快将成为自主的个人助理，代表我们执行特定任务，比如协调医疗护理。未来，AI 系统将变得如此强大，以至于它们能够帮助我们设计出更先进的下一代系统，并推动各领域的科学进步。
科技将我们从石器时代带到了农业时代，然后又进入了工业时代。从现在开始，通往智能时代的道路，将由计算、能源和人类意志共同铺就。
如果我们希望将人工智能惠及更多人，就需要降低计算成本，并使计算资源丰富（这需要大量的能源和芯片）。如果我们不建立足够的基础设施，人工智能将成为一种非常有限的资源，成为战争的争夺对象，主要为富人所用。
我们需要明智且坚定地行动。智能时代的曙光是一个重大的发展，伴随着极其复杂且风险巨大的挑战。这不会是一个完全积极的故事，但它的巨大潜力使我们有责任为自己和未来找到应对这些风险的方法。
我相信未来将会如此光明，以至于没有人能够用文字来充分表达其价值；智能时代的一个重要特征是前所未有的繁荣。
尽管这一切将是渐进的，但令人惊叹的胜利——修复气候、建立太空殖民地，以及揭示物理学的奥秘——最终将变得司空见惯。凭借几乎无限的智能和丰富的能源——产生伟大创意并将其变为现实的能力——我们将能做许多事情。
正如我们在其他技术上所见，虽然也会伴随一些负面影响，但我们需要现在就开始努力，最大化人工智能的益处，同时最小化其危害。例如，我们预计这一技术将在未来几年对劳动市场产生重大影响（既有好处也有坏处），但大多数工作变化会比人们想象的要慢，我不担心我们会无事可做（即便有些事用我们今天的眼光看来不像“真正的工作”）。人类天生就有创造和互助的渴望，而人工智能将使我们能够前所未有地放大自己的能力。作为一个社会，我们将重新进入一个不断扩展的世界，能够再次专注于进行双赢的游戏。
今天我们所做的许多工作，在几百年前看起来或许微不足道，但没有人会回顾过去成为一个点灯人。如果点灯人能看到今天的世界，他会觉得周围的繁荣简直不可想象。而如果我们能够快进一百年，周围的繁荣同样会显得令人难以置信。
英文全文：
The Intelligence Age
September 23, 2024
In the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents.
This phenomenon is not new, but it will be newly accelerated. People have become dramatically more capable over time; we can already accomplish things now that our predecessors would have believed to be impossible.
We are more capable not because of genetic change, but because we benefit from the infrastructure of society being way smarter and more capable than any one of us; in an important sense, society itself is a form of advanced intelligence. Our grandparents – and the generations that came before them – built and achieved great things. They contributed to the scaffolding of human progress that we all benefit from. AI will give people tools to solve hard problems and help us add new struts to that scaffolding that we couldn’t have figured out on our own. The story of progress will continue, and our children will be able to do things we can’t.
It won’t happen all at once, but we’ll soon be able to work with AI that helps us accomplish much more than we ever could without AI; eventually we can each have a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine. Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personalized instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need. We can imagine similar ideas for better healthcare, the ability to create any kind of software someone can imagine, and much more.
With these new abilities, we can have shared prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today; in the future, everyone’s lives can be better than anyone’s life is now. Prosperity alone doesn’t necessarily make people happy – there are plenty of miserable rich people – but it would meaningfully improve the lives of people around the world.
Here is one narrow way to look at human history: after thousands of years of compounding scientific discovery and technological progress, we have figured out how to melt sand, add some impurities, arrange it with astonishing precision at extraordinarily tiny scale into computer chips, run energy through it, and end up with systems capable of creating increasingly capable artificial intelligence.
This may turn out to be the most consequential fact about all of history so far. It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I’m confident we’ll get there.
How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity?
In three words: deep learning worked.
In 15 words: deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale, and we dedicated increasing resources to it.
That’s really it; humanity discovered an algorithm that could really, truly learn any distribution of data (or really, the underlying “rules” that produce any distribution of data). To a shocking degree of precision, the more compute and data available, the better it gets at helping people solve hard problems. I find that no matter how much time I spend thinking about this, I can never really internalize how consequential it is.
There are a lot of details we still have to figure out, but it’s a mistake to get distracted by any particular challenge. Deep learning works, and we will solve the remaining problems. We can say a lot of things about what may happen next, but the main one is that AI is going to get better with scale, and that will lead to meaningful improvements to the lives of people around the world.
AI models will soon serve as autonomous personal assistants who carry out specific tasks on our behalf like coordinating medical care on your behalf. At some point further down the road, AI systems are going to get so good that they help us make better next-generation systems and make scientific progress across the board.
Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the Intelligence Age is paved with compute, energy, and human will.
If we want to put AI into the hands of as many people as possible, we need to drive down the cost of compute and make it abundant (which requires lots of energy and chips). If we don’t build enough infrastructure, AI will be a very limited resource that wars get fought over and that becomes mostly a tool for rich people.
We need to act wisely but with conviction. The dawn of the Intelligence Age is a momentous development with very complex and extremely high-stakes challenges. It will not be an entirely positive story, but the upside is so tremendous that we owe it to ourselves, and the future, to figure out how to navigate the risks in front of us.
I believe the future is going to be so bright that no one can do it justice by trying to write about it now; a defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be massive prosperity.
Although it will happen incrementally, astounding triumphs – fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics – will eventually become commonplace. With nearly-limitless intelligence and abundant energy – the ability to generate great ideas, and the ability to make them happen – we can do quite a lot.
As we have seen with other technologies, there will also be downsides, and we need to start working now to maximize AI’s benefits while minimizing its harms. As one example, we expect that this technology can cause a significant change in labor markets (good and bad) in the coming years, but most jobs will change more slowly than most people think, and I have no fear that we’ll run out of things to do (even if they don’t look like “real jobs” to us today). People have an innate desire to create and to be useful to each other, and AI will allow us to amplify our own abilities like never before. As a society, we will be back in an expanding world, and we can again focus on playing positive-sum games.
Many of the jobs we do today would have looked like trifling wastes of time to people a few hundred years ago, but nobody is looking back at the past, wishing they were a lamplighter. If a lamplighter could see the world today, he would think the prosperity all around him was unimaginable. And if we could fast-forward a hundred years from today, the prosperity all around us would feel just as unimaginable.
