What will humans do if technology solves everything?
如果技术解决了一切，人类将会做什么？

In “Permutation City”, a novel by Greg Egan, the character Peer, having achieved immortality within a virtual reality over which he has total control, finds himself terribly bored. So he engineers himself to have new passions. One moment he is pushing the boundaries of higher mathematics; the next he is writing operas. “He’d even been interested in the Elysians [the afterlife], once. No longer. He preferred to think about table legs.” Peer’s fickleness relates to a deeper point. When technology has solved humanity’s deepest problems, what is left to do?
在格雷格·伊根（Greg Egan）的小说《排列城市》中，角色皮尔（Peer）在一种他完全控制的虚拟现实中实现了不朽，却发现自己极度无聊。因此，他给自己设计了新的激情。一会儿他在推动高等数学的边界；下一刻他又在写歌剧。“他甚至曾对极乐世界[来世]感兴趣。不再了。他更喜欢思考桌腿。”皮尔的善变关系到一个更深层的观点。当技术解决了人类最深刻的问题时，还剩下什么可做的呢？

That is one question considered in a new publication by Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at the University of Oxford, whose last book argued that humanity faced a one-in-six chance of being wiped out in the next 100 years, perhaps owing to the development of dangerous forms of artificial intelligence (AI). In Mr Bostrom’s latest book, “Deep Utopia”, he considers a rather different outcome. What happens if AI goes extraordinarily well? Under one scenario Mr Bostrom contemplates, the technology progresses to the point at which it can do all economically valuable work at near-zero cost. Under a yet more radical scenario, even tasks that you might think would be reserved for humans, such as parenting, can be done better by AI. This may sound more dystopian than utopian, but Mr Bostrom argues otherwise.
这是牛津大学哲学家尼克·博斯特罗姆（Nick Bostrom）在一项新出版物中考虑的一个问题，他的上一本书认为，人类在未来 100 年内有六分之一的机会被消灭，可能是由于危险形式的人工智能（ai）的发展。在博斯特罗姆先生的最新书《深度乌托邦》中，他考虑了一个截然不同的结果。如果人工智能发展得非常好会发生什么？在博斯特罗姆先生思考的一个情景下，技术进步到可以以接近零成本完成所有经济价值工作的地步。在一个更为激进的情景下，即使是你可能认为应该为人类保留的任务，如育儿，也能被人工智能做得更好。这可能听起来比乌托邦更像反乌托邦，但博斯特罗姆先生持相反观点。

Start with the first scenario, which Mr Bostrom labels a “post-scarcity” utopia. In such a world, the need for work would be reduced. Almost a century ago John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay entitled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”, which predicted that 100 years into the future his wealthy descendants would need to work for only 15 hours a week. This has not quite come to pass, but working time has fallen greatly. In the rich world average weekly working hours have dropped from more than 60 in the late 19th century to fewer than 40 today. The typical American spends a third of their waking hours on leisure activities and sports. In the future, they may wish to spend their time on things beyond humanity’s current conception. As Mr Bostrom writes, when aided by powerful tech, “the space of possible-for-us experiences extends far beyond those that are accessible to us with our present unoptimised brains.”
从博斯特罗姆先生标记的“后稀缺”乌托邦的第一个情景开始。在这样的世界里，工作的需求将会减少。大约一个世纪前，约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯（John Maynard Keynes）写了一篇题为《我们的孙子辈的经济可能性》的文章，预测 100 年后他的富裕后代每周只需要工作 15 小时。这还没有完全实现，但工作时间已大幅下降。在富裕世界，平均每周工作时间从 19 世纪末的 60 多小时降到了今天的不到 40 小时。典型的美国人将他们三分之一的清醒时间用于休闲活动和体育。将来，他们可能希望将时间用于人类当前概念之外的事物。正如博斯特罗姆先生所写，当得到强大技术的帮助时，“对我们来说可能的经验空间远远超出了我们目前未优化大脑所能接触到的那些。”

Yet Mr Bostrom’s label of a “post-scarcity” utopia might be slightly misleading: the economic explosion caused by superintelligence would still be limited by physical resources, most notably land. Although space exploration may hugely increase the building space available, it will not make it infinite. There are also intermediate worlds where humans develop powerful new forms of intelligence, but do not become space-faring. In such worlds, wealth may be fantastic, but lots of it could be absorbed by housing—much as is the case in rich countries today.
然而，博斯特罗姆先生的“后稀缺”乌托邦标签可能略有误导：由超级智能引发的经济爆炸仍然受到物理资源的限制，尤其是土地。尽管太空探索可能会大大增加可建造空间，但它不会使其变得无限。还有一些中间世界，人类发展出强大的新形式的智能，但并未成为太空探索者。在这样的世界里，财富可能是惊人的，但很多可能会被住房吸收——就像今天的富裕国家一样。

“Positional goods”, which boost the status of their owners, are also still likely to exist and are, by their nature, scarce. Even if AIs surpass humans in art, intellect, music and sport, humans will probably continue to derive value from surpassing their fellow humans, for example by having tickets to the hottest events. In 1977 Fred Hirsch, an economist, argued in “The Social Limits to Growth” that, as wealth increases, a greater fraction of human desire consists of positional goods. Time spent competing goes up, the price of such goods increases and so their share of GDP rises. This pattern may continue in an AI utopia.
“地位商品”，这些商品能提升其拥有者的地位，也仍然可能存在，并且，由于它们的本质，是稀缺的。即使人工智能在艺术、智力、音乐和体育方面超越了人类，人类可能仍将继续从超越他们的同胞中获得价值，例如拥有最热门活动的门票。1977 年，经济学家弗雷德·赫希在《增长的社会限制》中争论说，随着财富的增加，人类欲望中较大一部分由地位商品组成。竞争所花费的时间增加，这类商品的价格上升，因此它们在 GDP 中的份额上升。这种模式可能在人工智能乌托邦中继续存在。

Mr Bostrom notes some types of competition are a failure of co-ordination: if everyone agrees to stop competing, they would have time for other, better things, which could further boost growth. Yet some types of competition, such as sport, have intrinsic value, and are worth preserving. (Humans may also have nothing better to do.) Interest in chess has grown since IBM’s Deep Blue first defeated Garry Kasparov, then world champion, in 1997. An entire industry has emerged around e-sports, where computers can comfortably defeat humans. Their revenues are expected to grow at a 20% annual rate over the next decade, reaching nearly $11bn by 2032. Several groups in society today give us a sense of how future humans might spend their time. Aristocrats and bohemians enjoy the arts. Monastics live within themselves. Athletes spend their lives on sport. The retired dabble in all these pursuits.
博斯特罗姆先生指出，某些类型的竞争是协调失败的表现：如果每个人都同意停止竞争，他们将有时间去做其他更好的事情，这可能进一步促进增长。然而，某些类型的竞争，如体育，具有内在价值，值得保留。（人类可能也没有更好的事情可做。）自从 IBM 的深蓝在 1997 年首次击败当时的世界冠军加里·卡斯帕罗夫以来，人们对国际象棋的兴趣增长了。围绕电子竞技的整个产业已经出现，其中计算机可以轻松击败人类。预计它们的收入在未来十年将以每年 20%的速度增长，到 2032 年将接近 110 亿美元。当今社会中的几个群体给我们一种感觉，未来的人类可能会如何度过他们的时间。贵族和波希米亚人享受艺术。修道士在内心生活。运动员将一生投入到体育中。退休人员涉猎所有这些追求。

Everyone’s early retirement
每个人的提前退休

Won’t tasks such as parenting remain the refuge of humans? Mr Bostrom is not so sure. He argues that beyond the post-scarcity world lies a “post-instrumental” one, in which AIs would become superhuman at child care, too. Keynes himself wrote that “there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy…To judge from the behaviour and the achievements of the wealthy classes today in any quarter of the world, the outlook is very depressing!” The Bible puts it more succinctly: “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”
诸如育儿之类的任务不会仍然是人类的避风港吗？博斯特罗姆先生并不这么确定。他认为，在后稀缺世界之外，还有一个“后工具性”世界，在那里人工智能也会成为超人级的育儿专家。凯恩斯本人写道：“我认为，没有哪个国家和哪些人民可以期待着进入休闲和富足的时代而不感到恐惧。因为我们已经被训练得太久去奋斗而不是去享受……从今天世界任何地区富裕阶层的行为和成就来看，前景非常令人沮丧！”圣经更简洁地说：“懒惰的手是魔鬼的工坊。”

These dynamics suggest a “paradox of progress”. Although most humans want a better world, if tech becomes too advanced, they may lose purpose. Mr Bostrom argues that most people would still enjoy activities that have intrinsic value, such as eating tasty food. Utopians, believing life had become too easy, might decide to challenge themselves, perhaps by colonising a new planet to try to re-engineer civilisation from scratch. At some point, however, even such adventures might cease to feel worthwhile. It is an open question how long humans would be happy hopping between passions, as Peer does in “Permutation City”. Economists have long believed that humans have “unlimited wants and desires”, suggesting there are endless variations on things people would like to consume. With the arrival of an AI utopia, this would be put to the test. Quite a lot would ride on the result. ■
这些动态表明了一个“进步的悖论”。尽管大多数人希望有一个更好的世界，如果技术变得太先进，他们可能会失去目的。博斯特罗姆先生认为，大多数人仍然会享受具有内在价值的活动，如吃美味的食物。乌托邦主义者，认为生活变得太容易，可能决定给自己挑战，也许是通过殖民一个新的星球来尝试从头开始重建文明。然而，在某些时候，即使是这样的冒险也可能不再感到有价值。人类会在激情之间跳跃多久还是一个悬而未决的问题，正如皮尔在《排列城市》中所做的那样。经济学家长期以来一直认为，人类有“无限的欲望和需求”，这表明人们想要消费的事物有无尽的变化。随着人工智能乌托邦的到来，这将受到考验。很多事情都将取决于结果。■

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