Imagine a place where driverless cars roam the streets, intelligent electricity grids¹ regulate the power and everything is built from the ground up to the specifications² of the ideal “smart” city.

想象一下这个地方，无人驾驶汽车行驶在街上，智能电网调节电力，一切都按照理想的“智能”城市的规格从一张白纸开始建设。

This idealised place has been getting a lot of attention in Silicon³ Valley of late. Y Combinator, the region’s best-known tech incubator, is the latest to dream, announcing a research project aimed at stimulating⁴ ideas and designs that it hopes to use in a real-world location.

这种理想之地最近在硅谷获得极大关注。硅谷最著名的科技孵化器Y Combinator是最新的梦想家，宣布实施一个研究项目，旨在激励有望在真实世界用得上的创意和设计。

It is far from alone. From Google co-founder Larry Pageto libertarian venture capitalist Peter Thiel, ideas like this have had plenty of currency. Y Combinator says it wants to to speed up the adoption⁵ of technologies for ordinary people, not just build “crazy libertarian utopias for techies”.

Y Combinator绝非唯一一家有此类想法的公司。从谷歌(Google)联合创始人拉里•佩奇(Larry Page)到信奉自由意志主义的风险投资家彼得•塞尔(Peter Thiel)，此类想法颇有市场。Y Combinator表示，它希望加快普及面向普通人的技术，而非仅仅是“为技术迷建造疯狂的自由意志主义乌托邦”。

This hankering is prompted by more than a passing bout⁶ of California dreaming. It reflects a deeper issue that the tech industry faces as it moves into a new phase — and one that will have real-world implications for investors⁸.

推动这种言论的不仅仅是转瞬即逝的加州梦想。它反映出科技行业进入新阶段面临的更深层次的问题，这个问题将对投资者产生切实的影响。

Companies like Google and Facebook — where Mr Thiel was the first outside investor⁷ — made their fortunes at a time when the digital and physical worlds were largely separate. But technologies like robotics and artificial intelligence are breaking down that barrier, pushing algorithms deeper into the functioning of the everyday world.

谷歌和Facebook这类公司——塞尔是Facebook第一个外部投资者——是在数字和真实世界基本上分离的时候异军突起的。但机器人和人工智能等技术打破了数字和真实世界之间的壁垒，推动算法深入日常世界的运行。

Hence the dream of an idealised place that is both open to — and safe for — experimentation⁹. But it is little help to present-day tech companies, which will have to make their products function in today’s world.

因此人们梦想有这样一个理想之地，它对前沿实验既是开放的，也是安全的。但这对当前的技术公司没有什么帮助，这些公司将不得不让它们的产品在当今世界运行。

Last week’s news of a fatal accident involving Tesla Motors’ autonomous¹⁰ driving technology is a case in point. The first death of a person at the wheel of a car that was operating under its own control raises difficult ethical¹¹ and regulatory issues.

最近涉及特斯拉汽车(Tesla Motors)自动驾驶技术的致命车祸是一个很好的例子。第一例自动驾驶死亡事故引发了棘手的道德和监管问题。

From the purely¹² rationalistic position taken by Tesla boss Elon Musk¹³, one death after the 130m miles of autonomous driving his vehicles have clocked up is better than the average fatality¹⁴ rate on US roads. Even before this, “the better-than-human threshold had been crossed”, Tesla declared in a defensive¹⁵ blog post on Wednesday.

从特斯拉老板埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)所采取的纯理性的角度看，自动驾驶行驶超过1.3亿英里以来才发生一例车祸死亡，在安全记录上优于美国道路交通的平均致命事故率。特斯拉发布的一篇采取守势的博文称，甚至在该事故发生之前，“自动驾驶就已跨过了比人工驾驶更安全的门槛”。

On the other hand, if it is found that the technology resulted in a death that an attentive¹⁶ driver would readily have avoided, it would be a setback¹⁷. It also would raise the question of whether the messy human world, where streets were not designed for robots and other drivers make mistakes, can ever be made safe for driverless vehicles.

另一方面，如果人们发现，自动驾驶技术导致了一起专心驾驶的司机本可轻松避免的死亡事故，那将是一个挫折。它也将令人质疑，杂乱的人类世界——街道并非为机器人设计，其他驾驶者会犯错——究竟能否被改造得对无人驾驶汽车安全。

This puts US regulators in an unenviable position as they consider how to respond. And what goes for cars may one day go for many other everyday situations, as algorithms are embedded¹⁸ in more objects.

美国监管者正在考虑如何做出回应，他们的处境不令人羡慕。随着算法被植入更多物体，汽车发生的情况，有朝一日也可能发生在其他许多日常场合。

With its threat of punitive¹⁹ damages through the court system, the US can be a risky²⁰ place for product experimentation. Mr Musk said on Wednesday that the crash had not yet led to any product liability suits. But regulators may still be cautious. Driverless-cars development is already threatened by fragmented state-level regulation, and the Tesla crash certainly won’t help.

由于可能被法庭判决支付惩罚性损害赔偿金，在美国进行产品试验风险很大。马斯克最近表示，此次事故还没有导致任何产品责任诉讼。但监管者仍可能采取谨慎态度。无人驾驶汽车的发展已经受到各自为政的各州监管的威胁，特斯拉的撞车事故当然不会有帮助。

The danger for tech is that it ends up like the pharmaceuticals²¹ industry, which has complained for years about a supposedly risk-averse regulatory system that adds huge costs and delays to new drugs that might offer benefits. Yet drug development has not been driven offshore²², despite repeated warnings. The US is still the world’s richest drugs market, so it makes sense to persevere²³.

高技术的风险在于，它最终就像制药行业一样，后者多年来抱怨：厌恶风险的监管体系增加了巨额成本，并拖延了可能造福于人类的新药上市。然而药物研发并未被挤出境外，尽管有人再三警告。美国仍然是全球最富裕的药物市场，因此坚持是明智的。

The same might not be true of technologies like driverless cars and drones. China is racing²⁴ to capitalise on the technology and Baidu — whose expertise²⁵ in deep learning stems partly from Silicon Valley — has a goal of getting to mass production in five years.

无人驾驶汽车和无人机等技术可能不会这样。中国正在抢着利用这种技术，百度(Baidu)制定了在5年内大规模生产的目标——该公司在深度学习上的专长部分源于硅谷。

There are at least two things Silicon Valley could do to help itself. One is to pay more attention to designing the new interactions between humans and “intelligent” machines. Tesla warns its drivers to keep their hands on the wheel at all times, but it also brags²⁶ that its technology is better than a human driver — the kind of mixed message that makes it harder for the humans still in the loop to know exactly when and how they may be called on to override²⁷ the technology.

硅谷至少可以做两件事来自助。一是更加致力于设计人类与“智能”机器之间新的互动。特斯拉警告，驾驶者必须时刻将手放在方向盘上，但它也夸口称，其技术比人类驾驶者更加优越，这种混杂信息让仍然“在环”的人类更难知道自己何时以及如何被要求接手，取代无人驾驶技术。

The second is to do more to educate users about both the benefits and the risks of robotics and AI. That would help to ensure an appropriate response to the shortcomings of the technology — especially when, inevitably²⁸, a human dies due to the acts or omissions²⁹ of a robot.

二是采取更多举措来教育用户，让他们明白机器人和人工智能带来的益处和风险。这将有助于确保对技术缺陷做出正确回应，尤其是在人类不可避免因机器人的行为或遗漏而死亡的时候。