Australia has introduced a bill banning social media for children under 16 and threatened penalties of up to A$50mn ($32.5mn) for “systemic” breaches by platforms such as Elon Musk’s X, Meta’s Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat. 

澳大利亚提出一项法案，禁止16岁以下儿童使用社交媒体，并威胁对埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)的X、Meta的Instagram、TikTok和Snapchat等平台的“系统性”违规行为处以最高5000万澳元（合3250万美元）的罚款。

Australia is the first country to suggest legislation that puts the onus on social media platforms, not parents, to stop children accessing their services. The bill, first announced in September, is expected to be passed into law by the end of the year. 

澳大利亚是第一个提出立法将阻止儿童访问社交媒体的责任归咎于社交媒体平台、而不是父母的国家。该法案于9月首次公布，预计将于年底通过成为法律。

“We know social media is doing social harm,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “We want Australian children to have a childhood and we want parents to know the government is in their corner. This is a landmark reform.”  

“我们知道社交媒体正在造成社会危害。”澳大利亚总理安东尼•阿尔巴尼斯(Anthony Albanese)说，“我们希望澳大利亚儿童能拥有童年，我们希望父母知道政府站在他们这边。这是一项具有里程碑意义的改革。”

——本文2024年11月21日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 Australia plans social media ban for under 16s

A global quest to map billions of cells has made significant discoveries about their role in conditions ranging from chronic gut diseases to arthritis, boosting scientific understanding of human health.

全球探索绘制数十亿细胞的任务已经取得了重大发现，涉及从慢性肠道疾病到关节炎等疾病的作用，提升了对人类健康的科学理解。

Results from the first phase of the Human Cell Atlas project probed problems from Covid-19’s impact on lungs to how genetic variation affects susceptibility to disease.

人类细胞图谱项目(Human Cell Atlas)第一阶段的成果探讨了从新冠肺炎对肺部的影响到遗传变异如何影响疾病易感性的问题。

The Atlas promises to be “a kind of ‘Google Maps’ for cell biology” and is already “transforming our understanding of human health”, said Sarah Teichmann, founding co-chair of the project.

该项目创始联合主席莎拉•泰克曼(Sarah Teichmann)表示，人类细胞图谱有望成为“细胞生物学的一种‘谷歌地图’”，并且已经在“改变我们对人类健康的理解”。

——本文2024年11月21日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 ‘Google Maps’ project for cells reveals their role in spread of disease

Olaf Scholz is facing a “Biden moment” amid growing pressure from his own party to abandon his bid for a second term as German chancellor and make way for the more popular defence minister.

奥拉夫•朔尔茨(Olaf Scholz)正面临“拜登时刻”，因为他所在政党对他施加的压力越来越大，要求他放弃连任德国总理的竞选，为更受欢迎的国防部长让路。

Scholz has the backing of the Social Democratic leadership, which so far supports his bid to lead the party in its campaign for next February’s snap election.

朔尔茨得到了社民党领导层的支持，到目前为止，他们支持他领导该党参加明年2月的提前选举。

But a growing number of SPD members are expressing concern about his low approval ratings, fearing he could drag down a party already languishing at 15 per cent in the polls, behind the right-of-centre Christian Democratic Union and the far-right Alternative for Germany. 

但越来越多的社民党成员对他的低支持率表示担忧，担心他会拖累这个在民调中支持率已经徘徊在15%的政党，该党落后于中间偏右的基督教民主联盟和极右翼的德国选择党。

——本文2024年11月21日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 Olaf Scholz faces his ‘Biden moment’

The conversation about whether AI will attain or supersede human intelligence is usually framed as one of existential risk to Homo sapiens. A robot army rising up, Frankenstein-style, and turning on its creators. The autonomous AI systems that quietly handle government and corporate business one day calculating that the world would operate more smoothly if humans were cut out of the loop.  

关于人工智能是否会达到或取代人类智能的讨论通常被框定为智人面临的生存风险之一。一支弗兰肯斯坦式的机器人军队起义，并攻击它的创造者。默默处理政府和企业事务的自主人工智能系统，有一天会计算出，如果人类被排除在外，世界将运行得更加顺畅。

Now philosophers and AI researchers are asking: will these machines develop the capacity to be bored or harmed? In September, the AI company Anthropic appointed an “AI welfare” researcher to assess, among other things, whether its systems are inching towards consciousness or agency, and, if so, whether their welfare must be considered. Last week, an international group of researchers published a report on the same issue. The pace of technological development, they write, brings “a realistic possibility that some AI systems will be conscious and/or robustly agentic, and thus morally significant, in the near future”. 

如今哲学家和人工智能研究人员在问的是：这些机器会发展出感到无聊或伤心的能力吗？今年9月，人工智能公司Anthropic任命了一名“人工智能福利”研究员，以评估其系统是否正在慢慢走向拥有意识或自主性，如果是的话，是否必须考虑它们的福利。上周，一个国际研究小组就同一问题发布了一份报告。他们写道，技术发展的速度带来了“一种现实的可能性，即在不久的将来，一些人工智能系统将具有意识和/或强大的自主性，从而在道义上意义重大”。

The idea of fretting over AI’s feelings seems outlandish but reveals a paradox at the heart of the big AI push: that companies are racing to build artificial systems that are more intelligent and more like us, while also worrying that artificial systems will become too intelligent and too like us. Since we do not fully understand how consciousness, or a sense of self, arises in human brains, we cannot be truly confident it will never materialise in artificial ones. What seems remarkable, given the profound implications for our own species of creating digital “minds”, is that there is not more external oversight of where these systems are heading.

担心人工智能拥有感知能力的想法似乎有些古怪，但它揭示了处于人工智能大推进核心的一个悖论：企业正在竞相构建更智能、更像我们的人工系统，同时又担心人工系统会变得太智能、太像我们。由于我们并不完全明白意识或自我感是如何在人脑中产生的，所以我们不能真正确信它将永远不会出现在人造大脑中。考虑到创造数字“大脑”对我们人类的深远影响，似乎值得注意的是，对于这些系统的发展方向没有更多的外部监督。

——本文2024年11月21日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 Should we be fretting over AI’s feelings?