河海研究生英语课文翻译U-8.docx

U-8 IS A RACE OF ROBOTS POSSIBLE?可能会出现机器人种族吗？A good many technical people become angry when you call a computer a giant brain. They insist that computer does only what thinking humans have planned to have it do.假如你把计算机称为巨人脑，许多技术人员会感到气愤。他们坚持认为，计算机只不过是做有思维的人类安排它做的事情罢了。Yet one authority states categorically, A machine can handle information; it can calculate, conclude, and choose; it can perform reasonable operations with information. A machine, therefore, can think. Famed mathematician Norbert Wiener, of MIT, foresees a machine that can learn and will in no way be obliged to make such decisions as we should have made, or will be acceptable to us. Evidently, he thinks machines can think.不过，一位权威人士明确地说：“机器能处理信息，能进行计算、做出决定和选择，能利用信息从事各种合理的工作，因此，机器能够思维。”麻省理工学院著名的数学家诺伯特威纳做出展望认为，机器能学习，它“决不会被迫做出我们必须作的决定，或是迎合我们。”显然，他认为机器能够思维。There is popular anecdote about a computer programmer who, just for a good fun, spent days setting up the machine to destroy itself, then watched delightedly as the computer dutifully proceeded to commit suicide. If that machine could have thought, would it not have got the better of him?一个有关一位计算机程序设计员的轶事广为流传。这位程序设计员只是为了取乐，花了几天的时间，装了一台毁灭机器自身的机器，然后兴高采烈地观看这台计算机忠实地自杀，那台计算机假如能够思维的话，难道不会用谋略去战胜他吗？To me the controversy boils down to a definition of the word think. There is no area in physiology that is less understood than the human brain. Practically all that is known is that the brain contains some ten billion tiny cells called neurons.对我来说，这场争论归根结底就是对“思维”一词如何下定义。从生理学的角度看，没有哪个领域比人脑了解得更少的了。实际上我们所知道的只是大脑约含有100亿个称为神经原的微小细胞。Apparently, neurons are elementary memory units, capable of storing the same kind of information bits that a machine can store. The completely materialistic view is that neurons, along with an extraordinary network of nerve-communication lines, comprise all there is to the brain. But such an explanation fails to account for how the brain originates thought.很显然，神经原是基本的记忆单位，能储存的信息“块”种类与机器是相等的。彻底唯物的观点是，大脑是由神经原与一个特殊的神经通讯网共同组成的。但这一解释并没有说明大脑是如何产生思维的。 Probably the clearest difference between man and machine is a quantitative one. The brain has roughly a million times as many parts as the best computer. On the other hand, the difference may lie in a spiritual factor, embraced by religion. At any rate, a machine cannot exercise free will or originate anything not yet. Whether it ever will is still an open argument.人和机器之间最明显的区别大概是量的不同。人脑的组成元件大约是最好的计算机的100万倍。从另一个方面来说，区别也许在于宗教所能接受的某精神因素。不管怎样，机器不能行使自由意志或创造任何东西现在还不能。将来是否可以尚存争议。Computers can already do a lot of surprising things, which include predicting the weather. The machine is able to make forecasts by absorbing vast quantities of data, but his, as well as most of the other tasks now performed by the thinking machines, is routine, requiring thinking of a very low order. Let us see what happens when we go beyond this step.计算机已经能做许多令人吃惊的事，其中包括预报天气。它可以接收大量的数据、并以此做出预报，但与思维机器现在所完成的大多数别的工作一样，这只是它的日常工作，只需要低思维层次。我们跨越这一步后，再看看会出现什么情况吧。A great many outstanding men are preoccupied with computers that do nonumerical work: that is, machines that go on fro there after all the figures are in. These men want to see, for example, whether lifeless devices can exercise judgment, make choices, give birth to ideas, and play games intelligently. At the far limit of possibility, they wish to know whether, at least on paper, machines can reproduce themselves. In other words, are we really certain that a machine can do only what its programmer wills it to do? Already there are in existence a number of machines that approach these powers. The simplest type is the computer that understands logic.许多杰出的人才在潜心研制从事“非数字”工作的计算机。也就是说，所有的数字输入后，机器能够“以此为基点继续干下去”。比方说，这些人想看看无生命的装置是否能进行判断、做出选择、产生思想、伶俐地玩游戏，他们想知道，至少在理论上，机器是否可以再生，再生的可能性究竟有多大。换句话说，我们真的确信机器只能做其程序设计员要它做的事吗? 一些差不多具有这些能力的机器现在已经有了。最简单的一种是懂逻辑的计算机。The mathematics of logic, upon which such machines work, was originated a century ago by an obscure Englishman named George Boole. Boolen algebra, as it is now called, has proved to be of great service to telephone engineers in designing automatic switching apparatus.这种机器赖以工作的逻辑数学是一个世纪以前一位毫无名气的叫乔治布尔的英国人创造的。现在的布尔代数，在电话工程师设计自动交换机的过程中已经证实了其强大的功能。Boolean algebra caught the eye of two Harvard students some years ago, and they built a machine called the Logical Truth Calculator. It created quite a stir in Cambridge, because it worked extremely well at solving rather simple logical problems. Soon more complicated machines were developed machines that could play games. The mechanical game-players fall into a number of classes. The simplest has a dictionary of rules in its memory, including all possible moves to be made in answer to an opponent. A second class plays only according to a strict formula, and can never lose.好多年前，布尔代数引起了哈佛大学两位学生的注意，他们造了一台叫做“逻辑真值计算机”的机器。在剑桥引起了轰动，因为它在解决较简单的逻辑问题的过程中表现得异常出色。不久，更复杂的机器能够下棋的机器研制出来了。这种机械棋手被分成了几类，在最简单的一类的储存器中有一部规则辞典，其中包含了机器所能走的所有对应招法。第二类只按照严格的程式下，决不会出现失误。A third category applies the principles of approximations, choosing the probable best move by thinking over all imaginable moves and testing each against a certain standard. The games these machines can play include checkers, chess, bridge, poker, and many other card games. They cant always win, because an approximately right move isnt necessarily the best one, but few human opponents can do better.第三类采用近似值原理，对所有可以想象得出的招数加以“考虑”，并根据某一标准进行试验，然后选择可能是最佳的一着。这些机器能玩的游戏包括西洋跳棋、象棋、桥牌、扑克和其他许多纸牌游戏。它们不能每回都赢，因为近似正确的一着不一定是最好的一着，但人类与它们对垒很少能比它们做得更好。Dr. Claude Shannon of Bell Telephone Laboratories, and his colleague, E.F.Moore, once built a machine to play the game known as Hex, using an analog computer working on electrical voltages. It beat them about 70 percent of the time. It frequently surprised its designers, Shannon comments, by selecting odd-looking moves which, on analysis, proved sound.贝尔电话实验所的克劳德香农博士和他的同事EF穆尔曾采用在电压位环境中工作的模拟计算机制造过一台名为“巫婆”的游戏机，他们十回有七回要被它打败。香衣评论说，“它常常选择一些貌似奇怪的招法，而分析证明这些招法都是正确的。这常使它的设计者感到惊讶。” Each of these mechanical game-players is said to learn because it is so programmed that it follows the Boolean algebra pattern, discovering by sad experience that one thing or another doesnt work and profiting by the mistake. One of Shannons more whimsical triumphs is the magnetized mouse which, when place in a complicated maze consisting of partitions, is supposed to find the one and only path to the cheese. On the first try the mouse will blunder aimlessly around, running into one wall after another. Eventually, by repeated trial and error, it will locate the cheese.据说，每一个这样的机械棋手都在“学习”，因为为它编制的程序就是要它遵循布尔代数模式，通过自己吃的苦头，发现这样做或那样做行不通，因而从犯错误中汲取教训。香农更古怪的一个成就就是磁化“鼠”。如果将它放在一个有许多隔板的复杂的迷宫里，鼠一定能找到通向“奶酪”的那条、也是唯一的道路。这只老鼠在第一次尝试时会毫无目标、跌跌撞撞地乱跑，到处碰壁。经过反复的尝试和犯错误，它最终会找到奶酪。 If the mouse is given a second try it will go straight to the cheese without hitting a single blind alley. It will do it from any part of the maze. Moreover, if its trainer changes the maze on it by relocating the partitions, the mouse blunders only where the terrain has become unfamiliar. It can recognize at once portions that have not been changed. Eventually the mouse learns enough to forget all former arrangements and remember only the latest, successful ones.如果让这只老鼠再试一次，它会直接奔向奶酪，而不会闯进某个死胡同。它从迷宫中任何一部分出发都可以做到这一点。此外，如果它的训练者重新安排隔板，改变迷宫路线，这只鼠只在地形变得不熟悉的地方碰壁，它会马上辨认出没有改变的部分。最后老鼠所学的东西足以使它忘记以前的一切安排，只记住成功的最新布置。The mouse itself does not think, but it is difficult to argue against the thinking done by the electromagnet and computer that drive the mouse. The device does have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, and to revise its standards on the basis of its own experience.这只老鼠本身没有动脑筋，但很难说不是驱动鼠的电磁体和计算机动了脑筋。这个装置确实有能力辨别正误，有能力根据自己的经历修正它的各种标准。Samuel Butler, the great English author, took a prophetic view of the future world of machines in his novel Erewhon, published in 1872. Ever since, authors with less sense of satire than Butler have spun tales of monster machines that take over and destroy the world. In varying degrees, their imaginary monsters have been endowed with the power of reproduction, which permitted them to multiply until they could capture and crush mankind.英国大作家塞缨尔勃特勒在他1872年出版的长篇小说乌有乡中展望了未来的机器世界。从那以后，一些作家捏造了许多大机器接管并摧毁世界的故事，但作品的讽刺意味比勃特勒少得多。他们虚构的那些庞然大物在不同程度上被赋予了繁殖能力，这使它们的数量不断增加，最终俘获、消灭人类。Science today is not laughing at such extremes. Dr. J. Von Neumann, of the Institute of advanced Study in Princeton, very carefully considered the question: Can machines become highly organized enough to reproduce themselves? His conclusion was that they may, provided they are complicated enough. Mathematically, a certain degree of complication seems to be necessary for reproduction. Below that, the iron mothers can only give birth to more primitive forms than themselves, and any race of robot monsters would soon lose the reproductive function. 现代科学并不嘲笑这种极端的设想。普林斯顿高级研究院的J冯诺伊曼博士对这个问题进行了认真思考：机器能成为本身可以繁殖的高级有机体吗？他的结论是，只要它们达到充分复杂的程度，这是可以做到的。从数学上说，一定的复杂程度对繁殖来说似乎是必不可少的。若没有达到那个程度，铁妈妈们就只能产生比它们自己更原始的形式，任何机器怪物的“种族”将很快丧失繁殖能力。If mathematicians are to be believed, we can rest fairly secure for a while yet. Human physiology is still millions of times mo