Imagine a place where driverless cars roam the streets, intelligent electricity grids regulate the power and everything is built from the ground up to the specifications of the ideal “smart” city.想象一下这个地方，无人驾驶汽车行经在街上，智能电网调节电力，一切都按照理想的“智能”城市的规格从一张白纸开始建设。This idealised place has been getting a lot of attention in Silicon Valley of late. Y Combinator, the region’s best-known tech incubator, is the latest to dream, announcing a research project aimed at stimulating ideas and designs that it hopes to use in a real-world location.这种理想之地最近在硅谷取得很大注目。硅谷最知名的科技孵化器Y Combinator是近期的梦想家，宣告实行一个研究项目，目的鼓舞未来将会在真实世界用得上的创新和设计。

It is far from alone. From Google co-founder Larry Pageto libertarian venture capitalist Peter Thiel, ideas like this have had plenty of currency. Y Combinator says it wants to to speed up the adoption of technologies for ordinary people, not just build “crazy libertarian utopias for techies”.Y Combinator毕竟唯一一家有此类点子的公司。从谷歌(Google)牵头创始人拉里佩奇(Larry Page)到改信权利意志主义的风险投资家彼得塞尔(Peter Thiel)，此类点子甚有市场。Y Combinator回应，它期望减缓普及面向普通人的技术，而非意味着是“为技术爱好者修建可怕的权利意志主义乌托邦”。This hankering is prompted by more than a passing bout of California dreaming. It reflects a deeper issue that the tech industry faces as it moves into a new phase — and one that will have real-world implications for investors.推展这种言论的某种程度是转瞬即逝的加州梦想。

它体现出有科技行业转入新阶段面对的更加深层次的问题，这个问题将对投资者产生贯彻的影响。Companies like Google and Facebook — where Mr Thiel was the first outside investor — made their fortunes at a time when the digital and physical worlds were largely separate. But technologies like robotics and artificial intelligence are breaking down that barrier, pushing algorithms deeper into the functioning of the everyday world.谷歌和Facebook这类公司——塞尔是Facebook第一个外部投资者——是在数字和真实世界基本上分离出来的时候异军突起的。

但机器人和人工智能等技术超越了数字和真实世界之间的壁垒，推展算法了解日常世界的运营。Hence the dream of an idealised place that is both open to — and safe for — experimentation. But it is little help to present-day tech companies, which will have to make their products function in today’s world.因此人们梦想有这样一个理想之地，它对前沿实验既是对外开放的，也是安全性的。但这对当前的技术公司没什么协助，这些公司将被迫让它们的产品在当今世界运营。

Last week’s news of a fatal accident involving Tesla Motors’ autonomous driving technology is a case in point. The first death of a person at the wheel of a car that was operating under its own control raises difficult ethical and regulatory issues.最近牵涉到特斯拉汽车(Tesla Motors)自动驾驶技术的可怕车祸是一个很好的例子。第一例自动驾驶死亡事故引起了棘手的道德和监管问题。From the purely rationalistic position taken by Tesla boss Elon Musk, one death after the 130m miles of autonomous driving his vehicles have clocked up is better than the average fatality rate on US roads. Even before this, “the better-than-human threshold had been crossed”, Tesla declared in a defensive blog post on Wednesday.从特斯拉老板埃隆马斯克(Elon Musk)所采行的纯理性的看作，自动驾驶行经多达1.3亿英里以来才再次发生一例车祸丧生，在安全性记录上高于美国道路交通的平均值可怕事故率。特斯拉公布的一篇采行守势的博文称之为，甚至在该事故再次发生之前，“自动驾驶就已穿过了比人工驾驶员更加安全性的门槛”。

On the other hand, if it is found that the technology resulted in a death that an attentive driver would readily have avoided, it would be a setback. It also would raise the question of whether the messy human world, where streets were not designed for robots and other drivers make mistakes, can ever be made safe for driverless vehicles.另一方面，如果人们找到，自动驾驶技术造成了一起专心驾驶员的司机本可精彩防止的死亡事故，那将是一个挫折。它也将令人批评，杂乱的人类世界——街道并非为机器人设计，其他驾驶者不会受罚——到底能否被改建得对无人驾驶汽车安全性。

This puts US regulators in an unenviable position as they consider how to respond. And what goes for cars may one day go for many other everyday situations, as algorithms are embedded in more objects.美国监管者正在考虑到如何作出对此，他们的处境不令人羡慕。随着算法被植入更加多物体，汽车再次发生的情况，有朝一日也有可能再次发生在其他许多日常场合。

With its threat of punitive damages through the court system, the US can be a risky place for product experimentation. Mr Musk said on Wednesday that the crash had not yet led to any product liability suits. But regulators may still be cautious. Driverless-cars development is already threatened by fragmented state-level regulation, and the Tesla crash certainly won’t help.由于有可能被法庭裁决缴纳惩罚性伤害赔偿金，在美国展开产品试验风险相当大。马斯克最近回应，此次事故还没造成任何产品责任诉讼。

但监管者仍有可能采行慎重态度。无人驾驶汽车的发展早已受到各自为政的各州监管的威胁，特斯拉的爆胎事故当然会有协助。The danger for tech is that it ends up like the pharmaceuticals industry, which has complained for years about a supposedly risk-averse regulatory system that adds huge costs and delays to new drugs that might offer benefits. Yet drug development has not been driven offshore, despite repeated warnings. The US is still the world’s richest drugs market, so it makes sense to persevere.高技术的风险在于，它最后就像制药行业一样，后者多年来责怪：反感风险的监管体系减少了巨额成本，并推迟了有可能教化于人类的新药上市。然而药物研发未被吸管境外，尽管有人一再警告。

美国依然是全球最富足的药物市场，因此坚决是明智的。The same might not be true of technologies like driverless cars and drones. China is racing to capitalise on the technology and Baidu — whose expertise in deep learning stems partly from Silicon Valley — has a goal of getting to mass production in five years.无人驾驶汽车和无人机等技术有可能会这样。中国正在抢走着利用这种技术，百度(Baidu)制订了在5年内大规模生产的目标——该公司在深度自学上的专长部分源自硅谷。

There are at least two things Silicon Valley could do to help itself. One is to pay more attention to designing the new interactions between humans and “intelligent” machines. Tesla warns its drivers to keep their hands on the wheel at all times, but it also brags that its technology is better than a human driver — the kind of mixed message that makes it harder for the humans still in the loop to know exactly when and how they may be called on to override the technology.硅谷最少可以做到两件事来自助。一是更为致力于设计人类与“智能”机器之间新的对话。

特斯拉警告，驾驶者必需时刻将手放到方向盘上，但它也夸口称之为，其技术比人类驾驶者更为良好，这种夹杂信息让依然“在环”的人类更加无以告诉自己何时以及如何被拒绝接掌，代替无人驾驶技术。The second is to do more to educate users about both the benefits and the risks of robotics and AI. That would help to ensure an appropriate response to the shortcomings of the technology — especially when, inevitably, a human dies due to the acts or omissions of a robot.二是采行更加多措施来教育用户，让他们明白机器人和人工智能带给的益处和风险。这将有助保证对技术缺失作出准确对此，特别是在是在人类不可避免因机器人的不道德或遗漏而丧生的时候。

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