日本的机器人痴迷症之忧

    新井纪子不是第一位呼吁公众关注日本男孩和他们的玩具可能带来危害的女性，她也不会是最后一位。她的担心似乎不无道理。这位数学家表示，日本，甚至可能是所有的工业化社会，都会因为日本男性对创造人工智能生命的沉迷而招致无法预料的后果。

    她认为，在美国于20世纪80年代减少这个领域的研究工作之后，日本取得了领先地位。新井纪子是日本国立情报学研究所（National Institute of Informatics, NII）的数学教授，她说：“因为对人形机器人的执着梦想，日本无法放弃人工智能。在这里，许多聪明的年轻人都对人工智能感兴趣。与欧洲或美国不同，人工智能科学家在日本非常受人尊敬。”

    日本人对机器人的亲密情谊由来已久。是的，日本文化中的想象力在《终结者》风格的、冷酷无情的科幻机器人身上得到了体现，但是还有许多机器人与人类相似，而且是人类的好朋友和好帮手，就像漫画中的哆啦A梦一样。日本还在机器人技术的研究与开发上保持着全球领先的地位。最近英国驻日本大使馆的首席科学官就这个主题发布了一份报告，其中写道：“日本成功地保持了很高的专利率，而且在语音识别领域得到了迅速发展。”

    新井纪子花了一年时间来研究人工智能的经济效益。2010年，她出版了一本书，阐述人工智能对办公室工作的影响。书名很简单：《电脑如何代替我们工作》（How Computers Can Take Our Jobs）。“我想知道人工智能能否创造更多的工作机会，又有多少白领的工作会在未来10年或者20年内被机器取代。就算这个比例只有10%，那也将会是一场大灾难。”言下之意，她认为人工智能在就业方面产生的经济影响将远远超出这个数字。新井纪子还思考了让机器和算法在工作场所取代人类（就像它们在交易场所取代人类一样）将会产生什么样的伦理后果。毕竟它们并不能真正明白自己到底在做什么。

    新井纪子表示，根据股市暴跌体现的情况来看，人工智能的机器学习能力超过了人类所能理解和推理的范围。“股市暴跌时，我们总会有20%的错误率，这会危害我们的社会。我们不能理解机器，它们也不能理解我们。”她补充说，相信这样的机器会像人类一样思考是非常愚蠢的事。最后我们没法搞清楚为什么它们会给出正确或错误的答案。

    这是因为，我们使用逻辑来给机器编程，但却并不意味着机器总能遵循逻辑规则来输出结果。她指出：“人工智能的机器与工厂的机器人是不同的。后者的行为可以通过物理和科学原理简单地解释。这是个严重的伦理问题。”

    新井纪子在国立情报学研究所开展了一个项目，研究在不远的未来，人工智能和机器学习能发展到什么程度。众所周知，东京大学（Tokyo University）的入学考试难度很高。这个项目的目的就是制造一个能够通过这项考试的机器人。这个项目如今被称作“Todai机器人”（日语把东京大学称作Todai）。两年前，新井纪子启动了第一轮试验，将最新的人工智能技术植入机器人来破解似乎难以解决的题目。与日本一般的入学考试不同，东京大学的考试非常严格，还包含短文写作。她表示，由于人工智能在日本很受尊敬，她的任务避免了不少麻烦。

    Noriko Arai is not the first woman to spotlight the hazard that boys and their toys can present, and she won't be the last. Her concerns may well be merited. Japan, and possibly all industrialized societies, says this mathematician, is about to reap the unintended consequences of a mostly, but not exclusively, Japanese male obsession with creating artificial intelligent life.

    She claims Japan obtained a lead in the field after the U.S. pulled back on research efforts in the 1980s. "The Japanese couldn't give up the dream of AI because of this persistent dream of humanoid robots," says Arai, who works as a professor of mathematics at Japan's National Institute of Informatics (NII). "There are lots of intelligent youngsters interested in AI here, and AI scientists, unlike in Europe or the U.S., are highly esteemed."

    Japan has a long of history of friendliness towards robots. Yes, the Japanese cultural imagination has yielded its fair share of ruthless Terminator-style sci-fi robots, but many of them are human-like, friendly helpers like the comic character Doraemon. Japan also maintains a global lead in R&D on robotics. "Japan has successfully maintained its high patents rate and achieved rapid growth in the areas of speech recognition," says a report published recently on the subject by the British-Embassy-in-Japan's chief science officer.

    Arai devoted a year to study the economic impact of artificial intelligence. She published a book in Japan in 2010 on AI's effects on office jobs titled simply "How Computers Can Take Our Jobs." "I wanted to know if we can get more jobs from AI [and] how much white-collar jobs will be replaced by machines in the next 10 to 20 years. If it is just 10% of such jobs, it will be a catastrophe," hinting that she expects the economic impact of AI on employment to be much larger than that. Arai also considered the ethical consequences of having machines and algorithms replace humans in the workplace -- as they have on the trading floor -- without really understanding how they work.

    As market flash crashes have shown, Arai says AI machine learning is beyond human understanding and reasoning. "As with flash crashes, we will always have 20% incorrectness, which will harm our society. We can't understand machines and they don't understand us," she says. It is foolish to believe such machines will think like humans, she adds. Ultimately, we can't work out why they come up with correct answers or wrong answers.

    Just because we program a machine using logic, that doesn't mean a machine will always follow logical rules to reach their outcomes. "In the case of AI machines, they are not like factory robots whose actions can be precisely explained by physics and science. This is a serious ethical problem," she points out.

    Arai launched a project within NII to see just how far AI and machine learning could go in the near future. The aim is to build a robot that could pass the notoriously hard Tokyo University entrance exam. Known now as the Todai Robot project -- Tokyo University goes by the name "Todai" in Japanese -- Arai kicked off the first experiments two years ago, integrating the latest AI know-how to crack seemingly insurmountable problems. Unlike the general entrance exam in Japan, the rigorous Todai exam includes written essays. Her task has been eased, she says, by the respect AI receives in Japan.