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What will humans do if technology solves everything?
如果科技解决了所有问题，人类还有什么事可做？
Welcome to a high-tech utopia
欢迎来到高科技乌托邦
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《数字永生计划》（Permutation City）中，主人公皮尔（Peer）在一个完全由他掌控的虚拟现实中获得了永生，却发现自己的日子无聊透顶。于是，他给自己精心安排了新的爱好。这一刻他在拓展高等数学的极限，下一刻他又在创作歌剧。“他甚至一度对人死后的极乐世界产生了兴趣。这兴趣并没持续多久。他还是更喜欢思考和桌腿有关的问题。”皮尔的变化无常触及了一个更深层次的问题：当科技解决了人类最深重的那些问题后，我们还有什么事情可做？
- permutation 排列（方式）；组合（方式）；置换
- 拓展学习：小词详解 | peer
- 拓展学习：熟词僻义 | 高铁项目的 leg 是指什么？
- 拓展学习：小词详解 | fickle
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）在一本新书中探讨的一个问题。他在自己的上一本书中曾提出，人类有六分之一的几率会在未来100年内灭绝，原因可能是人工智能（AI）朝着危险的形态发展。在他的新书《深度乌托邦》（Deep Utopia）中，他却思索一个截然不同的结果——如果AI的发展格外理想呢？作者设想的一种情形是，AI发展到几乎能以零成本完成任何有经济价值的工作。而在一种更极端的情形下，就连那些你可能认为只有人类才能做的事情，比如养育子女，AI也能做得更好。这听起来或许更像是敌托邦而不是乌托邦，不过博斯特罗姆不这么认为。
- scenario 指“设想、方案”或者说“可能发生的事态、局面、情况”（参见：小词详解 | scenario）
- contemplate 考虑；思量；思忖
- radical 激进的；极端的
