Bill Gates says it’s ‘not enough to have a kill switch’ for AI: Full interview

章节 1：盖茨谈AI语言平权倡议与人工智能风险

📝 本节摘要：

比尔·盖茨介绍盖茨基金会本周宣布的AI语言倡议。目前AI对英语等主流语言识别良好，但对非洲语言的错误率约高出10倍。基金会已联合60家机构，计划在5年内让百万人以上使用的语言都接近英语的识别质量，惠及30多亿人。他回忆曾向OpenAI提出AP生物考试挑战，认为语言非常适合现有AI架构。谈及风险，他强调AI是一次“进化事件”，社会各界都需积极参与塑造这项技术。

[原文] [Kristen Welker]: Mr. Gates, welcome back to Meet the Press.

[译文] [Kristen Welker]: 盖茨先生，欢迎再次做客《与媒体见面》。

[原文] [Bill Gates]: Great to be here.

[译文] [Bill Gates]: 很高兴来到这里。

[原文] [Kristen Welker]: It's wonderful to have you. We really appreciate you taking the time. It's a busy week. I want to start off by talking about the initiative that you have announced this week. It aims to address one of the biggest concerns about AI, which is the equity in the AI space, the language barrier, AI mostly built for English speakers. And so the Gates Foundation is partnering, if I'm right, with 60 other organizations, including AI companies, to expand language accessibility. Why do you think this is an important initiative? Why now?

[译文] [Kristen Welker]: 非常荣幸邀请到您，感谢您抽出时间，这周您很忙。我想先聊聊您本周宣布的那项倡议。它旨在解决人们对AI最大的担忧之一，也就是AI领域的公平问题：语言障碍，AI主要是为说英语的人打造的。所以，如果我没说错的话，盖茨基金会正与包括AI公司在内的60家机构合作，扩大AI对各种语言的支持。您为什么认为这项倡议很重要？为什么是现在？

[原文] [Bill Gates]: AI models have gotten very good at recognizing English and about a dozen other mainstream languages. And so as you talk about your health, it's going to accurately record that and be able to help you. In African languages, the error rate will be about 10 times higher.

[译文] [Bill Gates]: AI模型在识别英语和另外十来种主流语言方面已经非常出色。所以当你谈论自己的健康状况时，它能准确记录下来并为你提供帮助。但换成非洲语言，错误率会高出大约10倍。

[原文] [Kristen Welker]: Oh, wow.

[译文] [Kristen Welker]: 哇，这么高。

[原文] [Bill Gates]: And so that's very dangerous. You know, take Yoruba, which is 3 million people in Western Africa, you have 10 times the error rate that you have in English. So it's really not usable. And yet, you know, pure capitalistic incentives would not prioritize these languages. And so it was amazing, you know, we hoped to get 10 companies working with us. We ended up with 60. And so we have a very concrete timeline to improve the quality, to benchmark, and then say, "Okay, this is good enough. You can do a health interview or an education session in this language."

[译文] [Bill Gates]: 这是非常危险的。比如约鲁巴语（Yoruba），西非有300万人使用，它的错误率是英语的10倍，所以根本没法用。然而，单纯的资本主义激励机制并不会优先考虑这些语言。所以结果真是惊喜，我们原本希望有10家公司和我们合作，最后来了60家。我们有一个非常具体的时间表：提升质量、建立基准测试，然后才能说：“好，这已经够好了，你可以用这种语言进行健康问诊或教学了。”

[原文] [Kristen Welker]: What does the timeline look like? What does success look like in your eyes?

[译文] [Kristen Welker]: 时间表是怎样的？在您看来，怎样才算成功？

[原文] [Bill Gates]: Well, the over the 5 years, we want to take every language that a million or more people speak and have it be close to English language quality. And so, you could say that a patient or a farmer or student, it makes sense for them to use that audio interface, you know, talking about their crops and the challenges they face. And so, you know, this is extremely well defined how we measure the quality, what data we need, and all of the model providers will then take the data. And so, these capabilities will show up in every single AI model.

[译文] [Bill Gates]: 在未来5年里，我们希望让每一种有100万以上人口使用的语言，都达到接近英语的质量水平。这样一来，无论是病人、农民还是学生，用语音界面来交流都会变得切实可行，比如谈谈他们的庄稼和面临的困难。如何衡量质量、需要哪些数据，这些都有非常明确的定义，之后所有模型提供商都会采用这些数据。所以，这些能力将出现在每一个AI模型中。

[原文] [Kristen Welker]: Have you been surprised by how quickly AI has been able to grasp language capabilities in the first place? Is that one of the aspects of it that's been surprising as someone who's worked in this space?

[译文] [Kristen Welker]: AI最初掌握语言能力的速度之快，有没有让您感到意外？作为一个长期在这个领域耕耘的人，这是否是让您惊讶的地方之一？

[原文] [Bill Gates]: Well, certainly when you go back to the, when ChatGPT came along, I had challenged the people at OpenAI to take a test like an Advanced Placement biology test. And it was one of the more amazing demos ever in my life when we saw that the, you know, so, 6 months before it was released, we saw how good it was at language. Language is actually a perfect application for the architecture we use here. And so, you know, the idea that all the world's languages can be supported is actually pretty straightforward.

[译文] [Bill Gates]: 当然。回想ChatGPT刚出现的时候，我曾向OpenAI的人发起挑战，让它去参加一场考试，比如大学先修课程（AP）生物考试。那是我这辈子见过最震撼的演示之一。在它发布前6个月，我们就看到了它在语言方面有多出色。语言其实是我们现在所用的这种架构的完美应用场景。所以，让全世界所有语言都得到支持，这个设想其实相当直接可行。

[原文] [Kristen Welker]: Does that give you optimism that you can in fact meet the benchmarks that you've laid out for these 5 years?

[译文] [Kristen Welker]: 这是否让您乐观地相信，你们确实能达到为这5年设定的目标？

[原文] [Bill Gates]: Yeah, of all the problems in AI, this one it's clear what we need to do, it's clear how we do it, it's clear, you know, it's over 3 billion people whose languages are currently very, very poorly represented. So almost half the world is getting far, far worse quality than we experience.

[译文] [Bill Gates]: 是的。在AI的所有问题里，这个问题我们很清楚要做什么、怎么做，也很清楚涉及的是超过30亿人，他们的语言目前在AI中的覆盖非常非常差。也就是说，全世界将近一半的人得到的体验质量，远远不如我们。

[原文] [Kristen Welker]: So, let's talk about this moment in AI development. You are one of the voices who's been warning about the potential risks. You wrote in August, quote, "AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented or the worst source of injustice." How serious are the risks posed by AI, do you believe?

[译文] [Kristen Welker]: 那我们来谈谈AI发展的当下。您是一直在警示潜在风险的人之一。您在8月写道：“AI要么成为有史以来最伟大的平等推动者，要么成为最严重的不公之源。”您认为AI带来的风险有多严重？

[原文] [Bill Gates]: Well, AI is not just a new technology, and that's why people who say, okay, past technologies there was all this worry and, you know, by and large it all worked out, so maybe this time all these warnings that we have to shape it intentionally are unnecessary. This is truly an evolutionary event. You know, we have created an intelligent species that in many respects is already smarter than we are, and over the next several years, at kind of exponentially improving level, will be insanely smarter than we are. You know, the ability to transfer knowledge, there's no sort of individual boundaries like humans having to educate each other. And so I can't say strongly enough how much society, not just the companies, but every academic, think tank, voter, policy maker need to really engage on how we want to shape this technology.

[译文] [Bill Gates]: AI不只是一项新技术。所以有些人说：好吧，过去的技术出现时也有各种担忧，但总体上都顺利解决了，那么这次所有关于“我们必须有意识地塑造它”的警告也许都是多余的。可这真的是一次进化事件。我们创造出了一种智能物种，它在很多方面已经比我们更聪明，而在未来几年里，它将以近乎指数级的速度进步，变得比我们聪明得不可思议。它在传递知识上，不存在人类那种个体之间的界限，不需要像人类那样彼此教导。所以我怎么强调都不为过：整个社会，不只是企业，还有每一位学者、每一家智库、每一位选民、每一位政策制定者，都需要真正参与进来，思考我们想如何塑造这项技术。