人工智能的未来（中）《经济学人》双语精读

▇2017年12月21日，这是我们的第15篇原创外刊精读推送。

▇本期分享人：积木。

▇我们已经运营两个周了！老规矩，留言你想对《外刊看世界》说的话，我们就把第二周的精读分析pdf合集打包送你：）

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Coding competition

The battle in AI

Artificial intelligence looks tailor-made for incumbent tech giants. Is that a worry?

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AlphaGone

The tech giants（巨头，学会这个单词的用法）certainly have big advantages in the battle to develop AI. They have tonnes（吨，注意data的量词）of data,oodles ofcomputing power and boffins（研究员）aplenty—especially in China, which expects tochargeahead. Imagine a future, some warn,in which you are transported everywherein a Waymo autonomous car (owner: Alphabet, parent of Google), pay for everything with an Android phone (developer: Google), watch YouTube (owner: Google) to relax, and search the web using—you can guess. Markets with just a handful of firms can befiercelycompetitive. A world in which the same few namesduke it outin several industries could still be a good one for consumers. But if people rely on one firm’s services like this, and if AI enables（使能够）that firm to predict their needs andcustomiseits（代词，指firm’s）offeringever moreprecisely（精准的）, it will beburdensometoswitch toa rival.

单词识记：

aplenty：in large amounts, especially more than you need大量的，充裕的。【仅用在名词后】【例】There was food aplenty.

fierce：done with a lot of energy and strong feelings, and sometimes violence激烈的，残酷的。【例】The government’s policies came under fierce attack.

customise：to change something to make it more suitable for you, or to make it look special or different from things of a similar type 根据客户需要量身定做。【例】a customized car

熟词僻义：

charge：charge作动词时，有两个僻义较类似，一是to deliberately run or walk somewhere quickly猛冲【例】The boys charged noisily into the water.；二是 to deliberately rush quickly towards someone or something in order to attack them进攻、冲向。【例】The bear charged towards her at full speed.

词汇辨析：

-some：some作后缀词，表示tending to behave in a particular way, or having a particular quality 有……倾向的。【例】a troublesome boy (=who causes trouble)

写作句型：

oodlesof：大量的某物，许多的某物，语境偏不正式。

duke it out：固定搭配，猛打一架，一决雌雄。

ever more以及前文的far more，都是为了加深more的语气，凸显出更加。

switch to：转向，转而做某事。

长难句分析：

in which you are transported everywhere：in which引导定语从句，修饰future。注意这句话值得赏析，其中一点在于介词的使用，所有的介词均未重复，在不断叠加例子的时候，使语言存在韵律感。几个介词的使用搭配需要牢记。

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That future isstill a long way off. AI programs remain（系动词，相当于be）narrowlyfocused. Moreover, the ability of theincumbentstoperpetuatetheir advantagesis made uncertain by three questions.

The most important is whether AI will always depend on（这是本文第二次出现这个词组啦）vast amounts of data. Machines todayare usually trained onhuge datasets（数据库）, from which they can recognise useful patterns such asfraudulentfinancial transactions（交易）. If real-world data remain essential to AI, the tech superstars（注意同义词的替换，本文中把科技企业用了很多个同义词）are in clover. They havevast amounts of the stuff, and are gaining more as theypush into fresh areassuch as health care.

单词识记：

narrow：limited in range or number of things受限的，相当于limited。【例】The company offered only a narrow range of financial services.

incumbent：someone who has been elected to an official position, especially in politics, and who is doing that job at the present time 在职者、现任者，此处指前面提到的各类公司。

Perpetuate：to make a situation, attitude etc, especially a bad one, continue to exist for a long time使持续、延长。【例】an education system that perpetuates the divisions in our society.

fraudulent：intended to deceive people in an illegal way, in order to gain money, power etc欺骗性的，不正的，同义替换为dishonest。【例】fraudulent activity/behaviour/conduct。

词汇辨析：

vast amounts ofdata：另外一个可以用于data的量词，大家还记得上一个是什么吗？

get.be trained on：用某事物来训练，注意介词的搭配为on

写作句型：

still a long way off：还有很长的路要走。Off相当于to go。

be in clover：clover本来指三叶草，这个词组指living comfortably because you have plenty of money养尊处优，生活优渥，非正式。【例】The money kept him in clover for years.

push into fresh areas：挤入蓝海，指进入到蓝海领域竞争。注意push的用法，英文表达的第二个关键就在于，用好小词。

长难句分析：

is made uncertain by three questions.：为什么此处有made，因为后面有by想要强调的是三个问题，所以要有施动的行为。也就是make it uncertain。

vast amounts of the stuff：英文写作表达的功底就在于同义替换的功力，是否能用不同的表达结构诠释同一种含义。这篇文章是一个绝好的例证，看看他用了几种方式表达大量的。

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Acompetingvision of AI stresses simulations（模仿、模拟）, in which machines teach themselves using synthetic（合成的、人造的，这篇文章还用了artificial这个词）data or in virtual environments（虚拟环境）.Earlyversions of a program developed to play Go, an Asian board game, by DeepMind, a unit of Alphabet, were trained using data from actual games;the latestwas simply given the rules and started playing Go against itself. Within three days it had surpassed its predecessor（前任、前辈）, whichhad itself beatenthe best player humanity couldmuster. If this approach is widely applicable, or if future AI systems can be trained usingsparseramounts of data, the tech giants’edge is blunted.

单词识记：

competing：competing stories, ideas etc cannot all be right or accepted互相矛盾的，相互抵触的。【例】Several people gave competing accounts of the accident. A competing vision在此处是与上文的第一种看法形成对照，指另一种看法则强调模仿。

Muster：if soldiers muster, or if someone musters them, they come together in a group召集、汇集，同义词为gather。【例】In April 1185, he began to muster an army.

Sparse：existing only in small amounts 稀少的，少量的。【例】rural areas with sparse populations.

写作句型：

Early……the latest：这是两个对照词，我们在写文章时也可以尝试使用，突出的是发展。

edge is blunted：优势殆尽。Edge既有刀刃的意思，又有优势的意思。Blunt指刀、剑等锋利边缘钝掉了。综合起来，这句话就是指优势消失、优势殆尽。

长难句分析：

Early versions of a program developed to play Go, an Asian board game, by DeepMind, a unit of Alphabet, were trained using data from actual games：此句有三个插入语，一个是an Asian board game作Go（围棋）的同位语；第二个是by DeepMind，作developed的补语，使句子意思更加饱满；第三个是a unit of Alphabet作DeepMind的同位语，用于解释Deepmind。

had itself beaten：为何要用过去完成时？因为主句是过去式，而此分句发生在过去的过去，标准的过去完成时语境。Itself反身代词作状语，表示自己打败了。而上文的过去完成时的标志则是within three days给定了过去的时间范围。

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明天见！

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