A After years in the wilderness, the term ' artificial intelligence’ (Al) seems poised to make a comeback. A.沉寂多年后，“人工智能”（AI）这个词似乎摆出了一副意欲归来的架势。 Al was big in the 1980s but vanished in the 1990s. AI 是 20 世纪 80 年代的 一件大事，却在 19 世纪 90 年代消失。 It re-entered public consciousness with the release of Al, a movie about a robot boy. 随着电影《AI》（讲述一个机器人男孩）的发行，它又一次进入了公众的视野。 This has ignited public debate about Al, but the term is also being used once more within the computer industry. 这又一次引燃了关于 AI 的公开辩论，而计算机行业也开始再次使用这种说法。 Researchers, executives and marketing people are now using the expression without irony or inverted commas. 研究人 员、管理人员和营销人员在使用这种表达方式时已经不再冷嘲热讽，也不会再加上引号。 And it is not always hype. 而且它也不再只是广告宣传。 The term is being applied, with some justification, to products that depend on technology that was originally developed by Al researchers. 这个词正在被合理的应用到依赖于某些技术的产品当中，而这些技术最初是由 AI 工 作者研发出来的。 Admittedly, the rehabilitation of the term has a long way to go, and some firms still prefer to avoid using it. 必须承认，这个词的复苏还有很长的路要走，而且很多公司仍然对它持回避态度。 But the fact that others are starting to use it again suggests that Al has moved on from being seen as an over-ambitious and under-achieving field of research. 但 是其他公司已经开始再次使用这个词, 这表明 AI 已经不再仅仅被人们看作是一个野心过大却成就不 足的研究领域。

B The field was launched, and the term ' artificial intelligence' coined, at a conference in 1956 by a group of researchers that included Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Herbert Simon and Alan Newell, all of whom went on to become leading figures in the field. B.1956 年，一群研究人员召开了一次会议，开创了这一领域，也创造了“人工智能”这一术语，参加会议的有 Minsky, John McCarthy, Herbert Simon 和 Alan Newell，他们后来都成为该领域的领军人物。 The expression provided an attractive but informative name for a research programme that encompassed such previously disparate fields as operations research, cybernetics, logic and computer science. 人工智能是一个有吸引力又有内涵的名称，它的研究囊括了诸多在过去看来完全不相关的学科，如操 作法研究、控制论、逻辑学和计算机科学等。 The goal they shared was an attempt to capture or mimic human abilities using machines. 这些学科拥有同一个目标，就是要用机器捕捉或者模仿人 类的各种能力。 That said, different groups of researchers attacked different problems, from speech recognition to chess playing, in different ways; 这就意味着各组研究人员要用不同的方法攻克各自的问题，如语音识别和下象棋等。 Al unified the field in name only. AI只是在名称上将它们进行了统一。 But it was a term that captured the public imagination. 这一名称牢牢抓住了公众的想象力。

C Most researchers agree that Al peaked around 1985. C.研究人员大都认为 AI 的巅峰期是在 1985 年。 A public reared on science-fiction movies and excited by the growing power of computers had high expectations. （当年的—译者注）大众看着科幻电影长大，为计算机不断强大的能力兴奋不已，他们自然（对 AI—译者注）抱有很高的期望。 For years, Al researchers had implied that a breakthrough was just around the corner. 多年来，AI 研究人员一直 在暗示，他们即将取得重大突破。 Marvin Minsky said in 1967 that within a generation the problem of creating ' artificial intelligence, would be substantially solved. Marvin Minsky 在 1967 年说，再有一代人的努力，创造“人工智能”所 面临的问题就将被彻底解决。 Prototypes of medical-diagnosis programs and speech recognition software appeared to be making progress. 医疗诊断程序和语音识别软件的雏形似乎表现出了一些进步。 It proved to be a false dawn. 事实却证明这只是一场空欢喜。 Thinking computers and household robots failed to materialise, and a backlash ensued. 会思维的计算机和会做家务的机器人终究没能成为现实，后坐力随之产生。 There was undue optimism in the early 1980s,’ says David Leake, a researcher at Indiana University. “1980 年代早期，人们存在着一种莫名的乐观主义，”David Leake 说， Then when people realised these were hard problems, there was retrenchment. “所以，当人们意识到这些问题 的难度时，人们便开始退缩。 By the late 1980s, the term Al was being avoided by many researchers, who opted instead to align themselves with specific sub-disciplines such as neural networks, agent technology, case-based reasoning, and so on. 到了 20 世纪 80 年代末，很多研究人员都避讳 AI 这种说法，他们转向去 研究一些具体的分支学科，如神经网络、介入技术以及案例分析推理等。

D Ironically, in some ways Al was a victim of its own success. D.具有讽刺意味的是，从某种意义上讲，AI 的成功导致了 AI 的牺牲。 Whenever an apparently mundane problem was solved, such as building a system that could land an aircraft unattended, the problem was deemed not to have been Al in the first place. 每当一个非常现实的问题被解决时（例如无人飞机起降系统），人们首先考虑到的肯定不是 AI。 'If it works, it can't be Al,’ as Dr Leake characterises it. 正如 Leake 博士总结的一样，“有东西在发挥作用，但不是 AI”。 The effect of repeatedly moving the goal-posts in this way was that Al came to refer to 'blue-sky* research that was still years away from commercialisation. 这样反复地改变目标，导致 AI 所涉及的“蓝天”研究要经历多年才能实现 商业化。 Researchers joked that Al stood for 'almost implemented'. 研究人员开玩笑说，AI 意味着“几乎完成”。 Meanwhile, the technologies that made it onto the market, such as speech recognition, language translation and decision-support software, were no longer regarded as Al. 与此同时，实现市场化所需的技术，如语音识别、 翻译和决策软件等，也不再被认为是 AI 范畴。 Yet all three once fell well within the umbrella of Al research. 然而，这三者都曾一度归属于 AI 研究的范畴。

E But the tide may now be turning, according to Dr Leake. E.但是 Leake 博士说，现在，潮流正在改变方向。 HNC Software of San Diego, backed by a government agency, reckon that their new approach to artificial intelligence is the most powerful and promising approach ever discovered. 由政府支持的圣地亚哥 HNC 软件公司说，他们最新的人工智能研究方式是有史以来最强大、最有希望的。 HNC claim that their system, based on a duster of 30 processors, could be used to spot camouflaged vehicles on a battlefield or extract a voice signal from a noisy background - tasks humans can do well, but computers cannot. HNC 声称，他们的系统建立在一个以三十 个处理器为内核的基础之上，该系统将被用于识别战场上的伪装车辆，或从嘈杂的背景中提取出讲话信号，这些工作人类可以做得很好，但计算机尚且无法做到。 'Whether or not their technology lives up to the claims made for it, the fact that HNC are emphasising the use of Al is itself an interesting development,’ says Dr Leake. “无论他们的技术能否达到他们所宣称的那样，HNC 已经开始强调使用 AI 的这一事实本身就是一个很大的进步”Leake 博士如是说。

F Another factor that may boost the prospects for Al in the near future is that investors are now looking for firms using clever technology, rather than just a clever business model, to differentiate themselves. F.另一个可能在不远的将来改善 AI 使用前景的因素是，投资者现在已经开始关注那些使用智能 科技的公司，而不再仅仅关注智能化的商业运营模式，并以此来显示自己的与众不同。 In particular, the problem of information overload, exacerbated by the growth of e-mail and the explosion in the number of web pages, means there are plenty of opportunities for new technologies to help filter and categorise information - classic Al problems. 值得一提的是， 电子邮件以及网页数量的增长进一步加剧了信息过载问题，这意味着我们有很多机会用新技术来辅助 过滤和分类信息，而这是典型的 AI 可以解决的问题。 That may mean that more artificial intelligence companies will start to emerge to meet this challenge. 这也许意味着会有更多的人工智能企业开始迎接这一挑战。

G The 1969 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, featured an intelligent computer called HAL 9000. G.在 1969 年的电影《2001：宇宙大冒险》中，有一个名为 HAL9000 的智能计算机角色。 As well as understanding and speaking English, HAL could play chess and even learned to lipread. 它不仅能听能讲英文，还能下象棋，甚至懂唇语。 HAL thus encapsulated the optimism of the 1960s that intelligent computers would be widespread by 2001. HAL 表现出在 20 世纪 60 年代，人们对智能计算机将在 2001 年普及所持的乐观态度。 But 2001 has been and gone, and there is still no sign of a HAL-like computer. 但是 2001 年已经过去，HAL 那样的计算机却仍未出现。 Individual systems can play chess or transcribe speech, but a general theory of machine intelligence still remains elusive. 个人电脑系统可以 下象棋，也能听写，但是一个主要的机器智能理论还没有成形。 It may be, however, that the comparison with HAL no longer seems quite so important, and Al can now be judged by what it can do, rather than by how well it matches up to a 30-year-old science-fiction film. 也许，与 HAL 进行对比已经显得不那么重要，现在应该用它能做的事来评判 AI，而不是看它能够与一部 30 多年前的科幻电影匹配到何种程度。 'People are beginning to realise that there are impressive things that these systems can do,' says Dr Leake hopefully. “人们开始意识到，这些智能系统可以做很多让人印象深刻的事，”Leake 博士充满希望地说道。