原文链接
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/25/sam-altman-ai-democracy-authoritarianism-future/
GPT翻译中文版。
这篇文章的主要观点是强调谁将控制未来的人工智能（AI）这一紧迫问题，并指出在美国及其盟友领导的民主愿景与由ZG和RS等国家推动的威权模式之间进行战略选择的重要性。文章强调了美国在AI发展中的领导地位，并提出了确保这一领导地位的四个关键策略：实施强有力的安全措施、建设必要的基础设施、制定连贯的商业外交政策以及建立AI安全和发展国际规范和模式。目标是促进一个共享AI利益且与民主价值观一致的世界。
为了确保未来的AI是为了最大限度地造福大多数人，我们需要一个由美国领导的志同道合国家的全球联盟和一个创新的新战略来实现这一目标。美国的公共和技术部门需要做好以下四件大事，以确保创建一个由民主愿景塑造的AI世界。
首先，美国的AI公司和行业需要制定强有力的安全措施，以确保我们的联盟在当前和未来的模型中保持领先地位，并使我们的私营部门能够创新。这些措施将包括网络防御和数据中心安全创新，以防止黑客窃取关键知识产权，如模型权重和AI训练数据。许多这些防御措施将受益于人工智能的力量，使人类分析师更容易和更快速地识别风险并应对攻击。美国政府和私营部门可以合作，尽快开发这些安全措施。
其次，基础设施决定了AI的命运。早期安装的光纤电缆、同轴电缆和其他宽带基础设施使美国能够在数字革命的中心地位上度过几十年，并建立了其在人工智能领域的当前领先地位。美国政策制定者必须与私营部门合作，建设大量运行AI系统所需的物理基础设施——从数据中心到发电厂。公共和私营部门的合作建设这些必要的基础设施，将为美国公司提供扩展AI访问和更好地分配其社会利益的计算能力。
建设这些基础设施还将创造全国范围内的新工作岗位。我们正在见证一项我认为与电力或互联网一样重大的技术的诞生和发展。AI可以成为我们国家应当接受的新工业基础的基础。
第三，我们必须为AI制定一致的商业外交政策，包括明确美国打算如何实施出口控制和外国投资规则，以实现AI系统的全球建设。这还意味着要为需要留在美国的数据中心中保存的芯片、AI训练数据和其他代码——有些是如此敏感以至于需要留在美国——设定规则。
我们现有的AI领先地位，使更多国家加入这一新联盟将变得更容易。确保开源模型可以让这些国家的开发者轻松获得，将进一步增强我们的优势。领导AI的挑战不仅仅是出口技术，还在于出口该技术所支持的价值观。
第四，我们需要创造性地思考世界如何建立开发和部署AI的规范，特别关注安全性并确保历史上被落下的全球南方和其他国家的参与。与其他全球重要问题一样，这需要我们与ZG接触并保持持续对话。
我过去曾谈到创建类似国际原子能机构的AI机构，但这只是一个潜在的模式。一个选项是将日本和英国等国家建立的AI安全研究所网络连接起来，并创建一个投资基金，致力于遵守民主AI协议的国家可以从中提取资金，以扩展其国内的计算能力。
另一个潜在的模式是互联网名称与数字地址分配机构（ICANN），它由美国政府在1998年成立，在万维网创建不到十年的时间里，标准化了我们如何导航数字世界。ICANN现在是一个独立的非营利组织，拥有来自世界各地的代表，致力于其核心任务，即最大限度地访问互联网，以支持一个开放、连接、民主的全球社区。
虽然识别正确的决策机构很重要，但底线是，民主AI比威权AI具有领先优势，因为我们的政治系统赋予了美国公司、企业家和学者研究、创新和建设的权力。
我们无法在最大限度地发挥技术优势和最小化其风险的同时，建立AI，除非我们努力确保民主愿景的AI占上风。如果我们想要一个更加民主的世界，历史告诉我们，我们唯一的选择是制定一个能够帮助创造这一目标的AI战略，而拥有领先地位的国家和技术人员有责任现在就做出这一选择。
英文原版
Who will control the future of AI?
That is the urgent question of our time. The rapid progress being made on artificial intelligence means that we face a strategic choice about what kind of world we are going to live in: Will it be one in which the United States and allied nations advance a global AI that spreads the technology’s benefits and opens access to it, or an authoritarian one, in which nations or movements that don’t share our values use AI to cement and expand their power?
There is no third option — and it’s time to decide which path to take. The United States currently has a lead in AI development, but continued leadership is far from guaranteed. Authoritarian governments the world over are willing to spend enormous amounts of money to catch up and ultimately overtake us. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has darkly warned that the country that wins the AI race will “become the ruler of the world,” and the People’s Republic of CN has said that it aims to become the global leader in AI by 2030.
These authoritarian regimes and movements will keep a close hold on the technology’s scientific, health, educational and other societal benefits to cement their own power. If they manage to take the lead on AI, they will force U.S. companies and those of other nations to share user data, leveraging the technology to develop new ways of spying on their own citizens or creating next-generation cyberweapons to use against other countries.
The first chapter of AI is already written. Systems such as ChatGPT, Copilot and others are functioning as limited assistants — for instance, by writing up patient visits so nurses and doctors can spend more time with the sick, or serving as more advanced assistants in certain domains, such as code generation for software engineering. More advances will soon follow and will usher in a decisive period in the story of human society.
If we want to ensure that the future of AI is a future built to benefit the most people possible, we need a U.S.-led global coalition of like-minded countries and an innovative new strategy to make it happen. The United States’ public and technology sectors need to get four big things right to ensure the creation of a world shaped by a democratic vision for AI.
First, American AI firms and industry need to craft robust security measures to ensure that our coalition maintains the lead in current and future models and enables our private sector to innovate. These measures would include cyberdefense and data center security innovations to prevent hackers from stealing key intellectual property such as model weights and AI training data. Many of these defenses will benefit from the power of artificial intelligence, which makes it easier and faster for human analysts to identify risks and respond to attacks. The U.S. government and the private sector can partner together to develop these security measures as quickly as possible.
Second, infrastructure is destiny when it comes to AI. The early installation of fiber-optic cables, coaxial lines and other pieces of broadband infrastructure is what allowed the United States to spend decades at the center of the digital revolution and to build its current lead in artificial intelligence. U.S. policymakers must work with the private sector to build significantly larger quantities of the physical infrastructure — from data centers to power plants — that run the AI systems themselves. Public-private partnerships to build this needed infrastructure will equip U.S. firms with the computing power to expand access to AI and better distribute its societal benefits.
Building this infrastructure will also create new jobs nationwide. We are witnessing the birth and evolution of a technology I believe to be as momentous as electricity or the internet. AI can be the foundation of a new industrial base it would be wise for our country to embrace.
We need to complement the proverbial “bricks and mortar” with substantial investment in human capital. As a nation, we need to nurture and develop the next generation of AI innovators, researchers and engineers. They are our true superpower.
Third, we must develop a coherent commercial diplomacy policy for AI, including clarity around how the United States intends to implement export controls and foreign investment rules for the global build out of AI systems. That will also mean setting out rules of the road for what sorts of chips, AI training data and other code — some of which is so sensitive that it may need to remain in the United States — can be housed in the data centers that countries around the world are racing to build to localize AI information.
Our existing AI lead, at a time when nations worldwide are vying for greater access to the technology, will make it easier to bring more countries into this new coalition. Making sure open-sourced models are readily available to developers in those nations will further bolster our advantage. The challenge of who will lead on AI is not just about exporting technology, it’s about exporting the values that the technology upholds.
And fourth, we need to think creatively about new models for the world to establish norms in developing and deploying AI, with a particular focus on safety and ensuring a role for the global south and other nations who have been historically left behind. As with other issues of global importance, that will require us to engage with CN and maintain an ongoing dialogue.
I’ve spoken in the past about creating something akin to the International Atomic Energy Agency for AI, but that is just one potential model. One option could knit together the network of AI safety institutes being built in countries such as Japan and Britain and create an investment fund that countries committed to abiding by democratic AI protocols could draw from to expand their domestic computer capacities.
Another potential model is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which was established by the U.S. government in 1998, less than a decade after the creation of the World Wide Web, to standardize how we navigate the digital world. ICANN is now an independent nonprofit with representatives from around the world dedicated to its core mission of maximizing access to the internet in support of an open, connected, democratic global community.
While identifying the right decision-making body is important, the bottom line is that democratic AI has a lead over authoritarian AI because our political system has empowered U.S. companies, entrepreneurs and academics to research, innovate and build.
We won’t be able to have AI that is built to maximize the technology’s benefits while minimizing its risks unless we work to make sure the democratic vision for AI prevails. If we want a more democratic world, history tells us our only choice is to develop an AI strategy that will help create it, and that the nations and technologists who have a lead have a responsibility to make that choice — now.
