Donations to Harvard University fell 14 per cent in the fiscal year ending June 30, as large donors cut ties and prominent alumni in the financial industry criticised its administration over a botched response to protests around the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

在截至6月30日的财政年度中，哈佛大学的捐款下降了14%，原因是大额捐赠者切断了与哈佛大学的联系，金融业的知名校友批评哈佛大学管理当局对围绕巴以冲突的抗议活动反应不力。

Overall gifts to the western world’s wealthiest university dropped to $896mn from $1.05bn a year ago, as outrage over campus protests led to the resignation of president Claudine Gay. 

由于对校园抗议活动的愤怒导致校长克劳丁•盖伊(Claudine Gay)辞职，这所西方世界最富有大学的总捐赠额从一年前的10.5亿美元降至8.96亿美元。

The drop came exclusively in donations to the university’s endowment, where the very largest gifts tend to be concentrated. Those gifts fell by one-third, while donations to the operating fund, which covers day-to-day expenses, rose 9 per cent year on year to $528mn.

捐赠额的下降仅限于大学的捐赠基金，而这里通常集中了最大的捐赠。这些捐赠额下降了三分之一，而用于日常开支的运营基金的捐赠额同比增长了9%，达到了5.28亿美元。

——本文2024年10月18日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 Harvard donations drop sharply in wake of criticism over Israel protests

UK graduates face the stiffest competition for jobs on record as they seek to enter a slowing labour market where the number of applications for each vacancy has been supercharged by the use of artificial intelligence.

英国毕业生面临着有史以来最激烈的就业竞争，因为他们正驶入进入一个增速放缓的劳动力市场，每个职位的申请人数都因人工智能的使用而激增。

Employers running graduate training schemes received an average of 140 applications for each job in 2024, 59 per cent more than in 2023, the Institute of Student Employers said on Thursday. It was the highest number recorded in an annual survey the organisation has run for more than three decades.

英国学生雇主协会(Institute of Student Employers)周四表示，在2024年，实施毕业生培训计划的雇主平均每个职位收到140份申请，比2023年多出59%。这是该组织三十多年来进行的年度调查中录得的最高数字。

Stephen Isherwood, ISE joint chief executive, described a “vicious circle” in which AI had made it easier to apply for jobs at speed, pushing the volume of applications up and their quality down and “creating more rejections”.

英国学生雇主协会联合首席执行官斯蒂芬•伊舍伍德(Stephen Isherwood)描述了一个“恶性循环”，即人工智能使申请工作变得更容易、更快捷，从而推高了申请数量，拉低了质量，“造成了更多的拒绝”。

——本文2024年10月17日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 UK graduates face tough jobs market as AI transforms recruitment

Rumours of humanity’s demise may have been greatly exaggerated, it seems. Some of our AI overlords, who for the moment remain flesh-and-blood beings rather than robotic terminators, now appear to be retreating from the industry’s more extreme fear mongering. 

关于人类灭亡的传言似乎被极大地夸大了。我们的一些人工智能霸主——目前仍然是有血有肉的人，而非机器人终结者——现在似乎正在退出该行业更极端的恐慌贩卖。

Over the past year, the so-called doomers, who predicted that a rogue superintelligence might pose an existential threat to humanity, have received plenty of airplay. Their alarmism even prompted the British government to host an international AI safety summit at Bletchley Park last November. But several of the top AI leaders are now tamping down the fear factor and turning up the volume on hope and hype. Eye-rolling sceptics might note that this renewed burst of techno-optimism coincides with big fund raises by leading AI start-ups as they continue to pour billions of dollars into developing their models.

过去一年，预测一种“流氓超级智能”可能会对人类构成生存威胁的所谓末日论者获得了大量媒体报道。他们危言耸听的言论甚至促使英国政府于去年11月在布莱切利公园举办了一次国际人工智能安全峰会。但现在，多位顶尖人工智能领袖正在压制恐惧因素，提高希望的声调和宣传的力度。翻着白眼的怀疑论者可能会注意到，这新一波技术乐观主义正值领先的人工智能初创公司纷纷筹集大量资金、继续投入巨资开发自己的模型之际。

Last month, Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI which has just raised a further $6bn from investors, posted an article entitled “The Intelligence Age” in which he forecast that AI would lead to astounding triumphs: “fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics.” 

上个月，刚从投资者那里又筹集60亿美元的OpenAI的联合创始人萨姆•奥尔特曼(Sam Altman)在一篇题为《智能时代》(The Intelligence Age)的文章中预测，AI将带来惊人的胜利：“解决气候问题，建立太空殖民地以及发现所有的物理学。”

——本文2024年10月18日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 Will AI ‘compress’ the 21st century?

In a bid to explain the scale of the massive project he is overseeing in Riyadh, Jerry Inzerillo points through his office window at the forest of cranes towering over a construction site. 

杰里•因泽里洛(Jerry Inzerillo)透过办公室的窗户，指着耸立在建筑工地上的起重机林，试图解释他在利雅得监督的大型项目的规模。

Around 80 are there now, but “we’ll have 275 cranes by 2027,” says Inzerillo. “Last year, we poured 500,000 cubic metres of concrete.”

现在大约有80台起重机，但“到2027年，我们将拥有275台起重机”，因泽里洛说道。“去年，我们浇筑了50万立方米的混凝土。”

The New Yorker, a veteran of the hospitality industry, is now chief executive of the $65bn Diriyah Gate project, a high-end, retail, residential and cultural development beginning to take shape on the outskirts of the kingdom’s capital.

这位纽约人是酒店业的资深人士，现在是耗资650亿美元的德拉伊耶门(Diriyah Gate)项目的首席执行官。该项目是一个集高端、零售、住宅和文化于一体的开发项目，在沙特首都的郊区已初具规模。

——本文2024年10月18日发布于FT中文网，英文原题为 Saudi Arabia tightens its belt