38岁创办黑石，今天管理着超过5000亿美元资产|《财富》专访苏世民

黑石集团首席执行官苏世民建立了世界上最大的投资公司之一，该集团专门从事私募股权、信贷和对冲基金投资策略。在自己的新书《追求卓越的教训》（What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence）中，苏世民披露了他从业50年来得到的一些最主要教训。

在这本半回忆录、半领导指南的书中，苏世民回顾了自身职业生涯中最光彩（和黯淡）的时刻，包括放弃高管职位去创立黑石集团，刚刚成为基金经理后去融资以及应对总统CEO顾问团队解散后的余波（我个人很喜欢苏世民谈到和“碧昂斯夫妇见面”的那段。他写道：“我们交谈了几分钟，回忆了2005年她在肯尼迪中心举办的演唱会。”）。

1985年创立黑石集团时苏世民38岁，此后一直担任负责人。如今，黑石管理着5450亿美元资产，有2500名员工。最近该公司从上市合伙企业改制为公司，从而降低了持有其股票的难度，也让它得以成为更多指数的成份股。

我和苏世民进行了一次全面探讨，内容涉及黑石在中国的业务，围绕着人工智能的伦理问题，加密货币的兴起以及他是否认为衰退就在眼前。

以下是我们对话的节选:

你投资了哪些对象？你觉得哪里有增长机会？

增长一定会出现在科技、服务和体验方面。就拿购物中心来说吧。我小时候人们的看法大概是，购物中心会出什么问题？现在，这个问题叫做亚马逊。原因就是科技创新改变了人们的购物模式，改变了配送机制，这导致了购物中心破产。它颠覆了人们认为理所当然的一系列事物。彻底拆解一个稳定的结构需要10年时间。

2011年我们看到了这一点，当时我们刚开始收购仓库。过去八年我们一直是世界上最大的仓库买家，而我们这样做是因为亚马逊和零售商需要把它们的商品放在那里，然后再运走。所以这个领域出现了爆炸性增长。如果现在进行投资，你得意识到几乎所有的业务模式都将发生改变。

你觉得还有哪个行业会出现亚马逊那样的增长？

人工智能。AI将影响整个医疗保健行业，从计费、住院、诊断，到药物开发和远程医疗，它将会显著增长。你可以看到这一切，而且仅在医院就会有许多不一样的东西进入我们的视野。AI将对我们的社会产生深远影响。

这样的创新在伦理方面也会产生显著影响。

这就是我给麻省理工和牛津捐了这么多钱的原因。[注：苏世民向麻省理工捐款3.50亿美元用于计算机和AI研究，并为牛津大学的AI伦理研究捐款1.88亿美元。]其中一笔涉及技术创新，另一笔则是要让它在社会上变得合理。哪些是好结果？哪些是不那么好的结果？谁来做这样的判断？你怎么防止出现坏结果？这是我们必须面对的挑战。

考虑到科技进步的速度，你对我们能足够快地解决伦理问题有信心吗？

和许多科技领域的东西一样，它发展的速度超过了我们控制和进行布置的能力。另一方面，经营着公司或者参与发现AI的人都目睹了互联网的发展。在我见到的参与过互联网发展的成熟人士中，无一个不为自己开发了互联网而感到后悔。

他们说：“我们那时候只是觉得这真的很酷。世界上所有的人都能联络，它会是一次正和博弈。”他们当时不知道[互联网]能摧毁监管能力。所有的东西都是如此的短视，有如此之多的分歧，而社交媒体又非常有破坏性。看着自己创造的东西，他们说：“如果能收回来，我一定会把它收回来。”我很震惊。所以就AI来说，我们必须妥善处理，以防这项技术凌驾于社会之上。

在AI伦理方面，人们的兴趣非常大，他们怀着巨大的善意，想做一些重要的事。无论在哪个国家，如果大量裁员，就会出现某种社会不稳定局面。我们这些西方国家已经有这种情况了。就连中国也有可能出现这样的事，尽管他们在这个领域已经投入了如此多的资金，实际上他们也创造了大量的新工作。

说到创新，《财富》2007年的一篇报道将你称为“另类投资世界的主人”，原因是黑石成名于另类资产投资。你怎么看待比特币和其他加密货币这样的前沿资产？

我对它们不太感兴趣，因为我很难理解那些东西。我在一个需要有人控制货币的世界里长大。人们想控制货币是有原因的，正因为如此，所有的政府都这样做。不可能有人说：“我不在乎。”其目的之一是尽可能地确保经济不过量。另一个目的是控制不良行为。所以你可以在没有人知道的情况下进行交易的想法可能带来许多犯罪行为，脏钱、毒品资金会充斥整个世界。它只会鼓励这样的活动。

也许我眼光有限，但这是个问题。如果他们可以解决这个问题，同时解决控制货币供应的问题，那也许还好。这并不意味着应用于不可交易货币的区块链技术不是件好事。它显然是件好事。

你为什么会这么说呢？

你可以通过一定的方法获得各种各样的应用。[区块链技术]是个非常好的想法，它最终会得到使用，因为它是一项好技术。但就我的感觉而言，把它用于创造货币是一种相当怪异的事。

所以，你确实认为黑石今后会投资使用区块链技术的公司？

那会是件好事，因为这项技术很可靠，而且非常有意思。

但你绝不会持有比特币？

这个问题很容易回答，不会。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman has built one of the largest investment firms in the world, which specializes in private equity, credit, and hedge fund investment strategies. In his new book, What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence, Schwarzman reveals some of the biggest lessons he’s learned from his 50-year career in business.

Part memoir, part leadership guide, Schwarzman addresses the highlights (and low lights) of his career including quitting his high-power job to start Blackstone, raising capital as a first-time fund manager, and dealing with the fallout from the unraveling of his presidential CEO business council. (I personally enjoyed the part when he talks about meeting “Beyoncé and her husband Jay-Z.” He writes: “We talked for a few minutes, reminiscing about her Kennedy Center performance in 2005.”)

Schwarzman was 38 years old when he founded Blackstone in 1985, and he’s been at the helm ever since. Today, the firm boasts $545 billion in assets under management and 2,500 employees. Blackstone recently converted from a publicly traded partnership to a corporation, which makes it easier to own Blackstone stock and allows the firm to be included in more indexes.

I sat down with Schwarzman for a wide-ranging conversation about Blackstone’s dealings in China, the ethical challenges surrounding artificial intelligence, the rise of cryptocurrencies, and whether he sees a looming recession on the horizon.

Below is an excerpt from our conversation.

What are you investing in, and where do you see growth opportunities?

Growth is certainly going to technology, services, and experiences. You have things like shopping centers. When I grew up, it was like: What could go wrong with a shopping center? And now that thing is called Amazon. Just that technological innovation has changed people’s shopping patterns, changed the delivery mechanism, and it’s led to shopping centers going bankrupt. It’s disrupted a whole chain of things people took for granted. It took 10 years for an entire stable structure to be dismantled.

We saw that in 2011 when we started buying warehouses. We’ve been the largest buyer of warehouses in the world for the last eight years, and we did that because that’s where Amazon and retailers needed to stage their goods before they get delivered. So that area has exploded with growth. If you’re investing now, you have to recognize that almost everything’s about to have its business model changed.

What’s another example of a sector you think will experience Amazon-like growth?

Artificial intelligence. AI will affect the whole healthcare industry, from billing, to admissions, to diagnostics, to the development of drugs, to telemedicine, which will have enormous growth. You look at all of this, and there are a lot of different things that go into what you or I believe is just a hospital. AI is going to have a profound impact on our society.

There will also be serious ethical implications that come with that innovation.

That’s why I did this big donation at MIT and Oxford. [Note: Schwarzman donated $350 million to MIT for computing and AI research and $188 million to Oxford University for AI ethics research.] One involves technological innovation, and the other is about making sense of it in society. What are good outcomes and what are not-so-good outcomes? Who makes that determination, and how do you control for not having bad outcomes? That’s a challenge that we have to face.

Are you confident we’ll be able to solve the ethical challenges quickly enough given the pace at which technology is evolving?

Like most things in technology, it’s moving faster than your ability to control and implement things. On the other hand, everybody who’s running a company or is part of the discovery of AI watched the Internet get developed. I haven’t met a mature person yet who was involved in the development of the internet that hasn’t regretted they developed it.

They said, “We just thought this would be really cool. Everyone in the world can connect, and it’ll be a positive sum game.” They weren’t aware that [the internet] would destroy the ability to govern. Everything is so short-term, there’s so much divisiveness, and social media is very destructive. They’ve looked at what they’ve created, and they’ve all said, “If I could have it back, I’d take it back.” I was shocked. So with AI, we have to get right on it so that the technology itself doesn’t overwhelm society.

There’s enormous interest and good will to doing something important in terms of AI ethics. No matter what country you’re in, if you make a huge cut in your workforce, you’ll have social unrest of some type. We already have that in the West. You could even have that in China, although they’re investing so much in the area, they’re actually creating a whole bunch of new jobs too.

Speaking of innovation, a 2007 Fortune article called you “the master of the alternative universe” because Blackstone made its name by investing in alternative assets. What do you think about frontier assets like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?

I don’t have much interest in that because it’s hard for me to understand. I was raised in a world where someone needs to control currencies. There’s a reason to want to control currencies, which is why governments all do it. There’s no one who says, “I don’t care.” Part of that is to make sure the economy is as insulated as it can be from excesses. Another part of it is to control bad behavior. So the idea that you can transact without anybody knowing anything, you could have a lot of criminal behavior — dirty money, drug money — running all over the world. It only encourages that kind of activity.

I may be a limited thinker, but that’s a problem. If they could solve that problem and also the problem of controlling the money supply, then it might be OK. That doesn’t mean that the blockchain technology applied to non-tradable currencies is not a good thing. That is clearly a good thing.

And why do you say that?

There’s all kinds of uses you can have from certain executions. [Blockchain technology] is a very good idea, and it will end up being adopted because it’s good technology. Applying it to the creation of money is sort of, for my taste, pretty odd.

So in the future, you do see Blackstone investing in companies that are using blockchain technology?

That would be good because it’s a sound, very interesting technology.

But you’re not going to own any Bitcoin?

That’s an easy one: No.