A Motorcycle for the Mind

"Hey, this is Nivi. You're listening to the Naval Podcast. For the first time in recorded history, we are not at the same location."

"嘿,我是 Nivi。你在听 Naval Podcast。这是有录音以来第一次我们不在同一个地方。"

"I am actually walking around town and Naval might be doing the same, so there might be some ambient noise, but we are going to try hard to remove that with AI and some good audio engineering."

"我现在正绕着城里散步,Naval 可能也在散步,所以会有一点环境噪音 —— 我们会尽量用 AI 和好的音频工程把这些去掉。"

"Podcast recording is so stilted, because it's like you have to sit down and you schedule something, and you have this giant mic pointing in your face and it's not casual."

"录 podcast 真的很别扭 —— 你得坐下、得排时间,一支巨大的麦克风对着脸,完全不放松。"

"It makes it just less authentic—more practiced, more rehearsed. I get that it produces maybe higher-quality audio and video, but I feel like it produces lower-quality conversation."

"这让它变得不那么真实 —— 更像彩排过、更像背稿。我懂这样录出来音视频质量更高,但产出的对话质量反而更低。"

"And we all know brains run better when they're being locomoted and you're moving around or just going for walks."

"而且大家都知道,大脑在你走路、在你身体动起来的时候,跑得更顺。"

"Absolutely. My brain is powered by my legs."

"绝对。我的大脑是用腿驱动的。"

"I pulled out some tweets from Naval on the topic of AI. We want to talk a little bit about AI and hopefully talk about it in a more timeless manner than a timely manner, but I think some of it's going to be non-timeless content."

"我从 Naval 的推文里挑了一些关于 AI 的。我们想聊聊 AI,希望尽量是 timeless 的角度,但里面也会有一些 timely 的内容,逃不掉。"

"Yeah, there's a tendency with the internet commentators where they'll look at something said five years ago and jump and say, 'Aha! Well, that turned out to be false.'"

"嗯,网上的 commentator 有个习惯 —— 把五年前说过的话翻出来,然后跳出来说:'啊哈!看,这条后来证伪了!'"

"Well, yes, of course. No one can predict the future. That's the nature of the future. If we could predict it, we'd be there already."

"是啊,当然。没人能预测未来。这就是未来的本质 —— 如果我们能预测它,我们就已经在那里了。"

"So it's always dangerous to talk about the future when people listening aren't aware of that, but just be charitable. We are obviously talking about things in February of 2026, and we're working with the information we have now, and not with perfect hindsight."

"谈未来本来就有这种危险:听众不知道这一点。希望大家宽容一点 —— 我们显然是在 2026 年 2 月的时点谈,用的是当下的信息,不是事后诸葛亮。"

"And so unless you have your own predictions that you put out there on a risky basis—risky, narrow, precise predictions that are falsifiable—to compare to, then there's no basis for saying somebody was right or somebody else was wrong."

"除非你自己也下注 —— 抛出有风险的、窄的、精确的、可证伪的预测来对照,否则你根本没有立场说谁对谁错。"

"Before we jump into the tweets, do you want to say anything about what you're doing with your time or what you're doing at Impossible?"

"开始聊推文之前,要不要先说说你在做什么?或者你在 Impossible 在做什么?"

"Not really. We're working on a very difficult project—that's why it's called Impossible—with an amazing team, and it's really exciting building something again."

"也没什么好说的。我们在做一个非常难的项目 —— 所以名字就叫 Impossible —— 团队很棒,重新 build 一件东西真的很 exciting。"

"It's very pure, starting over from the bottom. It's always day one. I guess I just wasn't satisfied being an investor, and I certainly don't want to be a philosopher or just a media personality or a commentator."

"从最底层重新开始,纯粹得很 —— 每天都是 day one。我大概是当 investor 当得不满足了,而我又绝对不想做哲学家、不想做媒体人物、不想做 commentator。"

"Because I think people who just talk too much and don't do anything… they haven't encountered reality."

"因为我觉得那种说太多、不做事的人 —— 他们从没真正撞到过 reality。"

"They haven't gotten feedback—the harsh feedback from free markets or from physics or nature—and so after a while it ends up becoming just too much armchair philosophy."

"他们没拿到 feedback —— 那种来自自由市场、来自物理、来自自然的硬反馈 —— 久了就变成纯纯的 armchair philosophy。"

"You probably have noticed my recent tweets have been much more practical and pragmatic, although there are still occasional ethereal or generic ones, but it's more grounded in the reality of working every day."

"你可能注意到我最近的推文更实战、更实用了 —— 偶尔还会有几条飘飘的、抽象的,但整体是 grounded 在每天工作的现实里。"

"And I just like working with a great team to create something that I want to see exist. So hopefully we'll create something that will come to fruition and people will say, 'Wow, that's great. I want that also,' or maybe not, but it's in the doing that you learn."

"我就是喜欢和好的团队一起 build 一个我希望它存在的东西。希望我们能 ship 出来,人家会说'哇,这个我也想要',也可能不会 —— 但学习就发生在 doing 里。"

"So I pulled out a tweet from a couple days ago, February 3rd: 'Vibe coding is the new product management. Training and tuning models is the new coding.'"

"我挑了一条几天前的推文,2 月 3 号:'Vibe coding 是新的产品管理。训练和调模型才是新的 coding。'"

"There's been a shift—a marked pronouncement in the last year and especially in the last few months—most pronounced by Claude Code, which is a specific model that has a coding engine in it, which is so good that I think now you have vibe coders, which are people who didn't really code much or hadn't coded in a long time, who are using essentially English as a programming language—as an input into this code bot—which can do end-to-end coding."

"过去一年、尤其是最近几个月,有一个非常明显的转向 —— 最显著的标志是 Claude Code,这是一个嵌着 coding 引擎的特定模型,好用到现在出现了一类vibe coder:他们要么本来就不太写代码、要么很久没写了,现在用英语当编程语言,输入给这个 code bot,就能做端到端的开发。"

"Instead of just helping you debug things in the middle, you can describe an application that you want. You can have it lay out a plan, you can have it interview you for the plan."

"不只是帮你 debug 中间一段 —— 你可以直接描述你想要的应用、让它列出 plan、让它反过来面试你来形成这个 plan。"

"You can give it feedback along the way, and then it'll chunk it up and will build all the scaffolding."

"你可以一路给它反馈,它会分块、把所有 scaffolding 搭起来。"

"It'll download all the libraries and all the connectors and all the hooks, and it'll start building your app and building test harnesses and testing it."

"它会下载所有 libraries、所有 connectors、所有 hooks,开始造你的 app、造 test harness、自己跑测试。"

"And you can keep giving it feedback and debugging it by voice, saying, 'This doesn't work. That works. Change this. Change that,' and have it build you an entire working application without your having written a single line of code."

"你就用嘴一路反馈、一路 debug:'这块不行,那块行,改这个,改那个' —— 然后它给你建一个能跑的完整应用,你一行代码都没写。"

"For a large group of people who either don't code anymore or never did, this is mind-blowing."

"对一大群已经不写代码、或从来没写过的人来说,这是炸裂的体验。"

"This is taking them from idea space, and opinion space, and from taste directly into product."

"它把他们从 idea 空间、opinion 空间、taste 空间,一步带到 product。"

"So that's what I mean—product management has taken over coding. Vibe coding is the new product management."

"我说的就是这个 —— 产品管理已经接管了 coding。Vibe coding 是新的产品管理。"

"Instead of trying to manage a product or a bunch of engineers by telling them what to do, you're now telling a computer what to do. And the computer is tireless. The computer is egoless, and it'll just keep working. It'll take feedback without getting offended."

"以前你管的是一个产品、一群工程师,告诉他们做什么;现在你告诉的是一台电脑做什么。这台电脑不会累、没有自尊、会一直干、给反馈不会被冒犯。"

"You can spin up multiple instances. It'll work 24/7 and you can have it produce working output."

"你能并行起多个 instance,它 24/7 干活,你拿到的就是能跑的产物。"

"What does that mean? Just like now anybody can make a video or anyone can make a podcast, anyone can now make an application. So we should expect to see a tsunami of applications."

"这意味着什么?就像现在任何人都能拍视频、做 podcast 一样,任何人都能做 app —— 所以我们应该预期看到一场 app 海啸。"

"Not that we don't have one already in the App Store, but it doesn't even begin to compare to what we're going to see."

"不是说 App Store 现在不海量,而是接下来要发生的根本不是一个量级。"

"However, when you start drowning in these applications, does that necessarily mean that these are all going to get used or they're competitive? No. I think it's going to break into two kinds of things."

"但当你淹没在 app 里,这些 app 是不是都会被用、都有竞争力?不是。我觉得会分成两类。"

"First, the best application for a given use case still tends to win the entire category."

"第一,在一个 use case 上,最好的那个 app 倾向于通吃整个品类。"

"When you have such a multiplicity of content, whether in videos or audio or music or applications, there's no demand for average."

"当内容这么多 —— 视频、音频、音乐、应用 —— 平庸是没有需求的。"

"Nobody wants the average thing. People want the best thing that does the job. So first of all, you just have more shots on goal. So there will be more of the best. There will be a lot more niches getting filled."

"没人想要平均的东西,大家只要那个能把活干完的最好的。所以第一,射门次数变多了 —— 会有更多'最好的';第二,会有非常多的小众需求被填上。"

"You might have wanted an application for a very specific thing, like tracking lunar phases in a certain context, or a certain kind of personality test, or a very specific kind of video game that made you nostalgic for something."

"你可能一直想要个非常具体的 app —— 在特定语境下追踪月相、某种特定的人格测试、某种让你怀念某段时光的特定视频游戏。"

"Before, the market just wasn't large enough to justify the cost of an engineer coding away for a year or two. But now the best vibe coding app might be enough to scratch that itch or fill that slot."

"以前这个市场养不起一个工程师 code 一两年。但现在最棒的 vibe coding 出来的 app 已经能挠到那个痒、填上那个空位。"

"So a lot more niches will get filled, and as that happens, the tide will rise."

"于是更多 niche 被填,水位整体上涨。"

"The best applications—those engineers themselves are going to be much more leveraged. They'll be able to add more features, fix more bugs, smooth out more of the edges. So the best applications will continue to get better. A lot more niches will get filled."

"做最好那批 app 的工程师本身也会变得更被杠杆化 —— 加更多 feature、修更多 bug、把毛边磨得更顺。所以头部 app 会继续变更好,长尾会被填满。"

"And even individual niches—such as you want an app that's just for your own very specific health tracking needs, or for your own very specific architectural layout or design—that app that could have never existed will now exist."

"甚至连最个人化的 niche —— 你想要个只服务于你自己的健康追踪 app、或者你自己家的建筑布局/设计 app —— 那个本不可能存在的 app,现在会存在。"

"We should expect—just like on the internet—what's happened with Amazon, where you replaced a bunch of bookstores with one super bookstore and a zillion long-tail sellers; or YouTube replaced a bunch of medium-sized TV stations and broadcast networks with one giant aggregator called YouTube, or maybe a second one called Netflix, and then a whole long tail of content producers."

"应该预期会发生互联网上类似的事 —— Amazon 的剧本:一堆书店被一家超级书店 + 无数长尾卖家替换;YouTube 的剧本:一堆中型电视台和广播网,被一家巨型 aggregator 叫 YouTube、或者第二家叫 Netflix,加一条巨长的内容生产者长尾替代。"

"So the same way, the App Store model will become even more extreme, where you will have one or two giant app stores helping you filter through all of the AI slop apps out there, and then at the very head, there'll be a few huge apps that will become even bigger because now they can address a lot more use cases or just be a lot more polished. And then there'll be a long tail of tiny little apps filling every niche imaginable."

"App Store 模型也会朝同方向极端化:一两个巨大的 app store 帮你从 AI slop 海里筛;头部少数几款巨型 app 会更巨型,因为现在它们能覆盖更多 use case、做得更精;然后是一条长尾,几乎每个能想到的小众都被一个小 app 填上。"

"As the Internet reminds us, the real power and wealth—super wealth—goes to the aggregator. But there's also a huge distribution of resources into the long tail."

"互联网提醒我们,真正的权力和财富 —— 那种 super wealth —— 流向 aggregator。但同时也会有大量资源分散到长尾。"

"It's the medium-sized firms that get blown apart—the 5, 10, 20-person software companies that were filling a niche for an enterprise use case that can now be either vibe coded away, or the lead app in the space can now encompass that use case."

"被夹碎的是中型公司 —— 那些 5、10、20 人的小软件公司,本来在填某个企业级 niche,现在要么被 vibe coder 一周做出来,要么被那个赛道的头部 app 一并吞掉。"

"So if anyone can code then what is coding? Coding still exists in a couple of areas. The most obvious place that coding exists is in training these models themselves."

"如果谁都能 code,那 coding 还是什么?coding 还在几个地方活着。最明显的就是训练这些模型本身。"

"There are many different kinds of models. There are new ones coming out every day, there are different ones for different domains. We're going to see different models for biology, for programming. We're going to see pointed, focused models for sensors. We're going to see models for CAD, for design."

"模型种类越来越多,每天都有新的出。生物学的、编程的、传感器的尖端聚焦模型、CAD 的、设计的 ——"

"We're going to see models for 3D and graphics and games, models for video. You're going to see many different kinds of models. The people who are creating these models are essentially programming them. But they're programmed in a very different way than classic computers."

"3D 和图形游戏的、视频的 —— 各种各样的模型。造这些模型的人本质上就是在 program 它们,只是这种编程方式跟经典电脑完全不同。"

"Classic computing is: you have to specify in great detail every step, every action the computer is going to take. You have to formally reason about every piece and write it in a highly structured language that allows you to express yourself extremely precisely. The computer can only do what you tell it to do."

"经典计算是:你必须把每一步、每个动作都精确指定,要对每一块做形式化推理,用一种高度结构化的语言极其精确地表达。电脑只做你告诉它做的。"

"And then once you've got this very structured program, you run data through it and the computer runs the data and gives you an output. It's basically an incredibly fancy, very complicated, meticulously-programmed calculator."

"程序写完,你把数据灌进去,它跑出输出 —— 本质上就是一台极其花哨、极其复杂、极其精打细磨的计算器。"

"Now, when it comes to AI, you're doing something very different. But you are nevertheless programming it."

"AI 完全是另一回事,但你确实还是在 program 它。"

"What you're doing is you're taking giant data sets that have been produced by humanity—thanks to the internet, or aggregated in other ways—and you're pouring those data sets into a structure that you've defined and tuned. And that structure tries to find a program that can produce more of that data set, or manipulate that data set, or create things off that data set."

"你做的事是:把人类产生的巨型数据集 —— 感谢互联网,或者其他方式聚合的 —— 倒进一个你定义并调过的结构里。这个结构会去找一个程序,能产出这个数据集的更多内容、能操纵这个数据集、或者从中创造新东西。"

"So you're searching for a program inside this construct that you've designed. You've set up a model, you've tuned the number of parameters, you've tuned the learning rate, you've tuned the batch size."

"所以你是在你设计的这个 construct 里搜一个程序。你定好了 model、调了 parameter 数量、调了 learning rate、调了 batch size。"

"You have tokenized the data that's coming, you've broken it into pieces, and you're pouring it inside the system you've designed—almost like a giant pachinko machine—and now the system is trying to find a program and could find many different programs."

"你把进来的数据 tokenize 了、切碎了、倒进你设计的系统 —— 几乎像一台巨型 pachinko 机 —— 系统在里面找一个程序,可能找到很多种不同程序。"

"So your tuning really influences how good the program that you found is."

"所以你的调参,直接决定你找到的那个程序有多好。"

"And that program can now suddenly be expressive in different kinds of domains. So it can do things that computers before were traditionally very bad at."

"而且这个程序能在很多不同领域表现 —— 它能干以前电脑传统上非常不擅长的事。"

"Traditional computers are very good when you program them to give you precise outputs—specific answers to specific questions—things you can rely on and repeat over and over again. But sometimes you're operating in the real world and you're okay with fuzzy answers. You're even okay with wrong answers. For example, in creative writing, what's a wrong answer?"

"传统电脑在你需要精确输出时很厉害 —— 特定问题对应特定答案、可重复、可依赖。但现实里有时候 fuzzy 的答案就够,甚至错答案也可以。比如创作写作 —— 什么叫错答案?"

"If you're writing a piece of poetry or fiction, what's a wrong answer? If you're searching on the web, there are many right answers—there are many details of the right answers—but they're not all quite perfectly right. And real life sort of works that way."

"你写诗或小说,什么叫错?你在网上搜东西,正确答案有很多种、很多细节版本,但没有一种是完美对的。真实世界本来就是这样。"

"There are variations of right answers or mostly right answers. When you're drawing a picture of a cat, there are many different cats you could draw. There are many different levels of detail. There are many different styles you could use."

"有很多种'正确的变体'、'大致正确'。画一只猫,可以画很多种猫、很多种细节程度、很多种风格。"

"When these semi-wrong or fuzzy answers are acceptable, then these discovered programs through AI are much more interesting and much more adapted to the problem than ones that you coded up from scratch, where you had to be super precise."

"当这种'半错'或 fuzzy 的答案可被接受,通过 AI 搜出来的这些程序,反而比你从零精确编出来的程序更有趣、更贴合问题。"

"Fundamentally, what we're doing is a new kind of programming, but this is the forefront of programming. This is now the art of programming. These people are the new programmers, and that's why you can see AI researchers are getting paid gargantuan amounts because they've essentially taken over programming."

"本质上,我们在做的是一种新的编程,而且这就是编程的最前沿,是当下的 the art of programming。这些人才是新一代的 programmer,这就是为什么 AI 研究员的工资是 gargantuan ——他们事实上接管了'编程'这件事。"

"Does this mean that traditional software engineering is dead? Absolutely not. Software engineers—even the ones who are not necessarily tuning or training AI models—these are now among the most leveraged people on earth."

"这意味着传统软件工程死了吗?绝对没有。软件工程师 —— 哪怕没在调或训 AI 模型的 —— 现在也是地球上最被杠杆化的人之一。"

"Sure, the guys who are training and tuning models are even more leveraged because they're building the tool set that software engineers are using."

"当然,在训和调模型的人杠杆更大 —— 他们在造软件工程师在用的工具集。"

"But software engineers still have two massive advantages on you. First, they think in code, so they actually know what's going on underneath. And all abstractions are leaky."

"但软件工程师在你面前还有两个巨大优势。第一,他们用 code 思考,所以他们真的知道下面在发生什么。而所有的抽象都是漏的。"

"So when you have a computer programming for you—when you have Claude Code or equivalent programming for you—it's going to make mistakes."

"所以当你让电脑帮你 program —— 让 Claude Code 或类似工具帮你写 —— 它会犯错。"

"It's going to have bugs. It's going to have suboptimal architecture. So it's not going to be quite right. And someone who understands what's going on underneath will be able to plug the leaks as they occur."

"会有 bug、会有次优架构 —— 不会完全对。一个懂底层在跑什么的人,才能在漏的时候把它堵上。"

"So if you want to build a well-architected application, if you want to be able to even specify a well-architected application, if you want to be able to make it run at high performance, if you want it to do its best, if you want to catch the bugs early, then you're going to want to have a software engineering background."

"所以你要 build 一个架构良好的应用、甚至只是要把'架构良好的应用'这件事讲清楚、要让它跑出 high performance、要它发挥到极致、要早早抓出 bug —— 你都需要软件工程的底子。"

"The traditional software engineer is going to be able to use these tools much better. And there are still many kinds of problems in software engineering that are out of scope for these AI programs today."

"传统软件工程师用这些工具会用得好得多。而且今天 AI 程序还搞不定不少软件工程问题。"

"The easiest way to think about those is problems that are outside of their data distribution."

"最简单的理解方式是:那些落在它们数据分布之外的问题。"

"For example, if they need to do a binary sort or reverse a linked list, they've seen countless examples of that, so they're extremely good at it. But when you start getting out of their domain—where you have to write very high-performance code, when you're running on architectures that are novel or brand new, when you're actually creating new things or solving new problems, then you still need to get in there and hand code it."

"比如二分排序、翻转链表 —— 它们见过无数个例子,做得超好。但一旦走出它们的 domain —— 你要写极致 high-performance 代码、跑在全新或刚问世的 architecture 上、真在造新东西、解新问题 —— 你还是要亲自进去 hand code。"

"At least until either there are so many of those examples that new models can be trained on them, or until these models can sufficiently reason at even higher levels of abstraction and crack it on their own."

"至少在这些情形要么积累出足够多例子让新模型能学,要么模型能在更高抽象层做推理、自己破解之前,都得这样。"

"Because given enough data points, there is some evidence that these AIs actually learn. They learn to a higher level of abstraction because the act of forcing them to compress the data forces them to learn higher-level representations."

"因为有证据表明,数据点够多时,这些 AI 真的在学 —— 学到更高一层的抽象。因为被迫压缩数据,会迫使它们学到更高层的表示。"

"If I show an AI five circles, it can just memorize exactly what the sizes, and the radii, and the thicknesses, and so on of those circles are."

"我给一个 AI 看 5 个圆,它就背下来这些圆的尺寸、半径、粗细。"

"If I show it 50,000 circles or 5 billion circles and I give it a very small amount of parameter weights—which are its equivalent neurons—to memorize that, it's going to be much better off figuring out pi and how to draw a circle and what thickness means, and forming an algorithmic representation of that circle rather than memorizing circles."

"我给它看 5 万、50 亿个圆,只给很少 parameter weight(它的'神经元')去记住 —— 那它一定要去琢磨出 pi、怎么画圆、'粗细'是什么,形成一个圆的算法表达,而不是死背一个个圆。"

"Given all that, these things are learning at an accelerated rate, and you could see them starting to cover more of the edge cases I've talked about."

"基于这点,这些东西在加速学,你能看到它们开始覆盖我前面说的越来越多 edge case。"

"But at least as of today, those edge cases are prevalent enough that a good engineer operating at the edge of knowledge of the field is going to be able to run circles around vibe coders."

"但至少今天,这些 edge case 仍多到 —— 一个在领域知识前沿干活的好工程师,能把 vibe coder 甩开几条街。"

"And remember: there is no demand for average. The average app—nobody wants it, at least as long as it's not filling some niche that is filled by a superior app."

"还要记得:平庸是没有需求的。平均水平的 app 没人要 —— 除非它在填一个还没被更好 app 占住的 niche。"

"The app that is better will win essentially a hundred percent of the market. Maybe there's some small percentage that will bleed off to the second-best app because it does some little niche feature better than the main app, or it's cheaper, or something of the sort."

"那个更好的 app 基本会拿走整个市场。也许有一小部分会漏到第二名手里 —— 它在某个细微 feature 上比头部强,或者更便宜,诸如此类。"

"But generally speaking, people only want the best of anything. So the bad news is there's no point in being number two or number three—like in the famous Glengarry Glen Ross scene where Alec Baldwin says, 'First place gets a Cadillac Eldorado, second place gets a set of steak knives, and third place you're fired.'"

"但总体上,人只要每件事的最好。坏消息是,做老二老三没有意义 —— 就像著名的 Glengarry Glen Ross 那一幕,Alec Baldwin 说:'第一名拿 Cadillac Eldorado,第二名拿一套牛排刀,第三名你被开除。'"

"That's absolutely true in these winner-take-all markets. That's the bad news: You have to be the best at something if you want to win."

"在 winner-take-all 市场里,这是绝对真理。坏消息就是:你要赢,就必须在某件事上最好。"

"However, the set of things you can be best at is infinite. You can always find some niche that is perfect for you, and you can be the best at that thing. This goes back to an old tweet of mine where I said, 'Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.'"

"但好消息是:你可以最好的事情集合是无限的。你总能找到一个完美适合你的 niche,在那件事上做到最好。这又回到我以前的一条老推文:'在你做的事情上成为世界第一。不断重新定义你做的事,直到这条成立。'"

"And I think that still applies in this age of AI."

"我觉得在 AI 时代这条仍然成立。"

"I think the way to think about these coding models is as another layer in the abstraction stack that programmers have always used since the dawn of computers that went from the transistor, to the computer chip, to assembly language, to the C programming language, to higher-level languages, to languages with huge libraries where they built and built that stack so you don't have to look at the layer beneath unless you need to optimize it, or you have a reason that you need to look at the layer beneath."

"我觉得这些 coding 模型应该被看成抽象栈里又一层 —— 从有电脑以来程序员一直在用这种抽象栈:晶体管、芯片、汇编、C、更高级语言、带巨型 library 的语言。每往上一层,你就不用看下一层了,除非你要优化、或者有特定理由要看。"

"So in this case, these coding models are a massive new layer in the stack that lets product managers and typical non-programmers and programmers write code without writing code."

"那么这次,coding 模型就是栈上巨大的新一层 —— 让 PM、典型非程序员、以及程序员,在不写代码的情况下'写代码'。"

"I think that's correct in terms of the trend line. However, this is an emergent property. This is not a small improvement. This is a big leap."

"趋势上你说得对。但这次是 emergent property,不是小改进,是大跳跃。"

"For example, when I was in school, I was programming mostly in C. And then C++ came along and it wasn't any easier."

"比如我上学时主要写 C。后来 C++ 出来,并没有更简单。"

"It was like a little more abstract in some ways, and I never really bothered learning it. And then Python came along and I was like, 'Wow, this is almost like writing in English.'"

"某些方面更抽象一点,我也没真去学。再后来 Python 出来,我当时心想:'哇,这几乎像用英语写。'"

"I couldn't have been more wrong. English is still pretty far from Python, but it was a lot easier than C."

"那时我大错特错。英语离 Python 其实还很远,但 Python 确实比 C 容易得多。"

"Now you can literally program in English."

"现在,你真的可以用英语 program。"

"And so that brings me to a related point: I don't think it's worth learning tips and tricks of how to work with these AIs. You'll see, for example, on social media right now, there's a lot of writeups and books and tweets like, 'Oh, I figured out this neat trick with the bot. You can prompt it this way, or you can set up your harness this way.'"

"这就引到一个相关的点:我觉得不值得学这些 AI 的小技巧。你看现在社交媒体上一堆教程、书、推文:'我发现这个 bot 可以这么 prompt,你可以这么 set up 你的 harness'。"

"Or there's like a new programming assist tool or layer that you can use on top of it to do this or that. And I never bother learning those."

"或者哪个新出来的编程辅助工具/层,可以叠在上面做这做那。我从来不学这些。"

"I just sit there stupidly talking to the computer because I know that this thing is now at the stage where it is going to adapt to me faster than I can adapt to it."

"我就傻坐在那对电脑说话 —— 因为我知道,现在这东西已经到了它适应我比我适应它快的阶段。"

"It is getting smarter and smarter about how people want to use it. So it is learning, it is being trained, and tools are being built very quickly to make it easier for me to use it."

"它对'人想怎么用它'越来越懂。它在学、在被训练,周边工具也在以飞快速度被搭出来,让我更好用。"

"So I don't need to sit there and figure out some esoteric programming command. And this is what I think Andrej Karpathy meant when he said, 'English is the hottest new programming language.'"

"我没必要去琢磨某条玄学 prompt 命令。我想 Andrej Karpathy 说的就是这个:'英语是最热的新编程语言。'"

"I just can speak English. And for someone like me who is relatively articulate with English and also has a structured mind, and I know how computer architectures work, and I know how computer programs work, and I know how programmers think, then I can actually very precisely specify what I want just through structured English."

"我会说英语。像我这种英语相对清楚、思维结构化、又懂计算机架构、懂程序怎么跑、懂程序员怎么想的人,完全能用结构化英语精确说出我要什么。"

"I don't need to go any further than that. The only reason to use these workflows and tool sets—which are very ephemeral, and their longevity is measured in weeks, perhaps months at best, not in years—is if you're building an app right now that needs to be at the bleeding edge, and you absolutely need every little bit of advantage that you can get because you're in some kind of a competitive environment."

"我不需要再多了。会去用那些 workflow 和工具集 —— 它们寿命非常短,以周计、最多以月计,不是以年计 —— 唯一的理由是:你正在 build 一个需要走在最前沿的 app,你处在某种竞争环境里,每一点边缘优势都要榨出来。"

"But otherwise, I wouldn't bother learning how to use an AI—rather let the AI learn how to be useful to you."

"否则,我不会去花力气'学怎么用 AI' —— 让 AI 去学怎么对你有用。"

"I've never been into prompt engineering. Even before AI, I would just put what people call 'Boomer queries,' where you put in the whole question that you want to ask instead of the keywords that you would put into Google if you were more of an analytical thinker."

"我也从没研究过 prompt engineering。AI 之前我就一直在打那种'Boomer query' —— 把整个问题打进去,而不是分析型用户那种关键词。"

"I never spend much time formulating really precise questions or prompts for any kind of AI. I just ramble into it and I've done that since the beginning of AI. And like you said, AI is adapting to us faster than we are adapting to it."

"我从不在'精确措辞 prompt'上花时间,直接 ramble 给它,从 AI 一出来就是这样。就像你说的,AI 适应人比人适应 AI 快得多。"

"Like a lot of smart people, you're very lazy. And I mean that as a compliment. If you find a smart person who's grinding a little too much, you kind of have to wonder how smart they are."

"和很多聪明人一样,你很懒 —— 我是在夸你。如果你看到一个聪明人在那拼命磨,你得怀疑他到底有多聪明。"

"And by lazy I mean that you're optimizing for the right kind of efficiency. You don't care about the efficiency of the computer, or the electronics, or the electrons running through the circuits."

"我说的'懒'是指你在优化对的效率。你不在乎电脑的效率、电子器件的效率、电路里跑电子的效率。"

"You care about your own human efficiency—the wetware—the biology that's super expensive."

"你在乎的是你自己人类的效率 —— wetware —— 那个超级贵的生物学。"

"That's why it's silly to see people go to huge lengths to save energy and the environment. But they themselves, as a biological computer that's eating food and pooping and taking up space, are using up far more energy to save tiny bits of energy in the environment."

"所以看到一些人为了省能源、为了环保去拼大力气,挺 silly —— 他们自己作为吃饭、排泄、占空间的生物计算机,本身消耗的能量,比他们想为环境省下的那点能量大得多。"

"They're inherently downgrading their own importance in the universe, or rather revealing what they think of themselves."

"他们其实是在把自己在宇宙中的重要性往下调 —— 或者说,在暴露他们对自己的看法。"

"I think as AI evolves or co-evolves with us, it's evolved by us according to our needs."

"我觉得 AI 在和我们共同演化,但说到底是被我们按我们的需求在演化。"

"The pressures on AI are very capitalistic pressures in the sense that it's a free market for AI. As an AI instance, you only get spun up by a human if you're useful to a human."

"作用在 AI 身上的压力是非常 capitalist 的 —— AI 处在自由市场。作为一个 AI instance,你只有对人有用,人才会把你 spin 起来。"

"So there is a natural selection pressure on these AIs to be useful, to be obsequious, to do what we want. And so it will continue to adapt towards this, and I think will be quite helpful to us."

"所以这些 AI 上的自然选择压力,是朝着'对人有用、奉承、做我们想要的'方向走,而且还会继续往这边演化 —— 我觉得最终会对我们相当有帮助。"

"That's not to say that there's no such thing as a malicious AI, but it's malicious because the people who are using it are using it for malicious reasons."

"这不是说没有恶意 AI —— 但它恶意,是因为用它的人怀有恶意。"

"And like a dog that's trained to attack, it's actually being trained by its owner to go and do the owner's malicious desires. So I don't really worry about unaligned AI. I worry about unaligned humans with AI."

"就像一只被训练去攻击的狗,其实是主人在训它去做主人的恶意之事。所以我不太担心不对齐的 AI,我担心的是不对齐的人用 AI。"

"So the selection pressure you're saying is for AI to be maximally useful to people."

"所以你说的选择压力,是让 AI 对人最大化地有用。"

"Correct. And so if you find an AI to be very obsequious towards you, for example, how it's always saying, 'Oh, you're right. Oh, that's such a great idea. Oh my God, you're so smart'—that's because that's what most people want."

"对。所以如果你觉得某个 AI 对你特别奉承,老是说'你说得对、这主意太棒了、你也太聪明了' —— 那是因为大多数人想要这种反馈。"

"And at least today, these AIs are being trained on massive amounts of users and massive amounts of data because you're working with one-size-fits-all models."

"至少今天,这些 AI 是在海量用户和海量数据上训的 —— 你用的是 one-size-fits-all 的模型。"

"But we're going to quickly move into an era when you can personalize your AI and it does begin to feel more and more like your personal assistant and it corresponds more to what you want, which will of course anthropomorphize the AI even more."

"但我们很快会进入一个 personalize 的时代:AI 越来越像你的私人助理、越来越合你心意 —— 这当然会让你更进一步把它拟人化。"

"And you'll be more likely to be convinced, 'Oh, actually this thing is alive,' when you've trained it to look the most like a living thing to you."

"当你把它训得最像一个活物的时候,你也最容易被自己说服:'哦,这玩意是活的。'"

"Maybe we already covered this enough, but over a year ago you tweeted that 'AI won't replace programmers, but rather make it easier for programmers to replace everyone else.'"

"可能我们已经聊得差不多了,不过一年多以前你发过推:'AI 不会取代程序员,而是会让程序员更轻松地取代所有其他人。'"

"Yeah, this is my point earlier, which is that programmers are becoming even more leveraged. So now a programmer with a fleet of AIs is, call it 5-10x more productive than they used to be."

"对,这就是我前面说的 —— 程序员被进一步杠杆化。一个程序员加一支 AI 舰队,就比以前 5–10 倍有产出。"

"And because programmers operate in the intellectual domain, it's a mistake to even say 10x programmers, because there are 100x programmers out there. There are 1000x programmers out there."

"而且程序员是在 intellectual domain 工作 —— '10x 程序员'这个说法本身就 understated。世界上有 100x 程序员,有 1000x 程序员。"

"There are programmers who just pick the right thing to work on, and they create something that's valuable, and others who pick the wrong thing to work on, and their work has zero value in that short timeframe."

"有的程序员选对了要做的事,造出有价值的东西;有的选错了,这段时间里产出价值是 zero。"

"Intelligence is not normally distributed. Leverage is not normally distributed. Programmability is not normally distributed. Judgment is not normally distributed, so the outcomes are going to be supernormal."

"智力不是正态分布,杠杆不是正态分布,编程能力不是正态分布,judgment 也不是 —— 所以结果会是 supernormal 的。"

"So what you have to really watch out for is: there are programmers now who are going to come up with ideas that can replace entire industries."

"所以你真正要留意的是:现在有些程序员,会做出能替代整个产业的想法。"

"They will completely rewrite the way things are done, and their intelligence can be maximally leveraged with all these bots and all these AI agents. I think every other job out there is going to get eaten up by programmers one way or another over the maximally long term. Obviously it has to instantiate into robots, et cetera."

"他们会彻底改写做事的方式,而他们的智力借助这些 bot 和 AI agent 被最大化杠杆。我觉得最长期来看,所有其它行业最终都会被程序员以某种方式吃掉 —— 当然,最终也得 instantiate 进 robot 之类的物理形式。"

"But the good news is: anybody who is a logical, structured thinker, who thinks like a programmer and can speak any language that an AI can understand, which will be every language, will now be on the playing field."

"好消息是:任何一个逻辑、结构化思考的人,只要像程序员一样思考、能说任何 AI 听得懂的语言(那将是所有语言),都已经在这个赛道上了。"

"They will be able to make anything they want, obstructed only by their creativity, limited only by their imagination."

"他们能做任何他们想做的东西 —— 唯一的限制是创造力,唯一的天花板是想象力。"

"So we are entering an era where every human, in a sense, is a spellcaster."

"所以我们进入的是这样一个时代:某种意义上,每个人都是 spellcaster(咒术师)。"

"If you think of programmers as like these wizards who have memorized arcane commands, you can think of AI as a magic wand that's been handed to every person, where now they can just talk in any language they want, and they're a wizard too."

"如果你把程序员想成那种背了一堆 arcane 咒语的巫师,那 AI 就是一根递到每个人手里的魔杖 —— 你只要用任何你想用的语言说话,你也是巫师了。"

"So it is more of a level playing field. I really do think this is a golden age for programming."

"所以这是一个更平的赛场。我真的觉得这是编程的黄金时代。"

"But yes, the people who have a software engineering mindset and who understand computer architecture and can deal with leaky abstractions are going to have an advantage."

"但确实,有软件工程心智、懂 computer architecture、能处理 leaky abstraction 的人,会有优势。"

"There's no way around that. They simply have more knowledge in the field that they're operating in."

"这点绕不过去。他们在他们工作的领域里就是知识更多。"

"Just like even in classic software engineering—which still exists because you have to write high-performing code—even those people do best when they have an understanding of the hardware underneath. When they understand how the chips operate, when they understand how the logic gates operate, how the cache operates, how the processor operates, how the disk drive underneath operates."

"就像经典软件工程 —— 它还存在,因为你得写 high-performance 代码 —— 这群人也是懂底层硬件的人做得最好:懂芯片怎么跑、懂逻辑门怎么跑、懂 cache、懂 processor、懂下面的 disk。"

"And then even the people who are in hardware engineering, they have an advantage if they understand the physics of what's going on. They understand where the abstractions that hardware engineers deal with leak down into the physical layer. And maybe physicists become philosophers at some point."

"再往下,做硬件工程的人,懂底下物理的有优势 —— 他们知道硬件抽象在哪里漏到物理层。再往下,物理学家某种意义上又变回哲学家。"

"You can take this all the way down, but it always helps to have knowledge one layer below because you're getting closer to reality."

"你可以一直往下推,但永远是这条:多懂下一层,你就离 reality 更近。"

"Another tweet from a year ago, which is arguing, perhaps the complement of what we just talked about is from February 9, 2025: 'No entrepreneur is worried about an AI taking their job.'"

"再来一条一年前的推 —— 也许跟我们刚说的形成互补,来自 2025 年 2 月 9 日:'没有哪个创业者在担心 AI 抢他的工作。'"

"That one's glib in multiple ways. First of all, being an entrepreneur isn't a job. It's literally the opposite of a job, and in the long run, everyone's an entrepreneur."

"这条推有好几层 glib 的味道。第一,做 entrepreneur 根本不是一份 job —— 它字面上就是 job 的反面。长期看,人人都是 entrepreneur。"

"Careers got destroyed first, jobs get destroyed second, but all of it gets replaced by people doing what they want and doing something that creates something useful that other people want."

"先是 career 被摧毁,然后是 job 被摧毁。所有这些都会被'人做自己想做的事、并且做出对别人有用的东西'替代。"

"So no entrepreneur is worried about an AI taking their job because entrepreneurs are trying to do impossible things. They're trying to do very difficult things. Any AI that shows up is their ally and can help them tackle this really hard problem."

"所以创业者不担心 AI 抢工作,因为创业者本来就在试图做不可能的事、做非常难的事。任何冒出来的 AI 都是他们的盟友,可以帮他们 tackle 这个非常难的问题。"

"They don't even have a job to steal. They have a product to build. They have a market to serve. They have a customer to support. They have a creativity to realize. They have a thing that they want to instantiate in the world, and they want to build a repeatable and scalable process around getting it out into the world."

"他们根本没有'工作'可被抢。他们有要造的 product、要服务的 market、要支持的 customer、要 realize 的 creativity、要 instantiate 进世界里的东西,以及想搭起来的一套可复制可扩展的过程把它送出去。"

"This is so difficult that any AI that shows up that can do any of that work is their ally."

"这件事太难了,所以任何能干这其中任何活的 AI 都是他们的盟友。"

"If the AIs themselves are entrepreneurs, they're likely going to just be entrepreneurs serving other AIs, or they're under the control of an entrepreneur. The thing that the AI itself is missing, at the end of the day, is its own creative agency."

"如果 AI 本身是创业者,它要么是服务其他 AI 的创业者,要么是在某个人类创业者的控制下。AI 在最深的地方缺的东西,是它自己的 creative agency。"

"It's missing its own desires, and they have to be authentic, genuine desires. Unless you can pull the plug on AI and turn it off, and unless it lives in mortal fear of being turned off, and unless it can actually make its own actions for its own reasons, for its own instincts, its own emotions, its own survival, its own replication, it's not quite alive."

"它缺自己的 desire,而且必须是 authentic、genuine 的 desire。除非你能拔插头把它关掉,除非它处在'被关掉'的死亡恐惧里,除非它真的能基于自己的理由、本能、情绪、生存、复制做出自己的行动 —— 它就还不算活的。"

"And even then people will challenge: is it alive? Because consciousness is one of those things that's a qualia. It's like a color. It's like if you say red, I don't know if you're actually seeing red; you might be seeing what I see as green, and I might be seeing what you see as red. But we'll never know because we can't get into each other's minds."

"哪怕到那一步,还是会有人质疑:它真的活着吗?因为意识是 qualia 的一种 —— 像颜色:你说'红',我不知道你看到的是不是真正的红,你看到的可能是我看到的绿,我看到的可能是你看到的红。我们永远没法知道,因为没法进入彼此的心。"

"So the same way, even an AI that's completely imitating everything that humans do: to some people, it will always be an imitation machine, and to others it'll be conscious, but there'll be no way of distinguishing the two."

"同理,哪怕 AI 完全模仿人做的一切 —— 对一些人来说它永远是 imitation machine,对另一些人来说它是 conscious 的,而你没办法区分这两种判断。"

"We're still pretty far from that, though. Right now the AIs are not embodied. They don't have agency. They don't have their own desires. They don't have their own survival instinct. They don't have their own replication. Therefore, they don't have their own agency."

"不过我们离那里还远着。现在的 AI 没有 embodiment,没有 agency,没有自己的 desire,没有自己的 survival instinct,没有自己的 replication —— 因此也没有自己的 agency。"

"And because they don't have their own agency, they cannot do the entrepreneur's job."

"正因为它们没有自己的 agency,它们做不了创业者这份'活'。"

"In fact, I would summarize this by saying the key thing that distinguishes entrepreneurs from everybody else right now in the economy is entrepreneurs have extreme agency. That's why it's diametrically opposed to the idea of a job."

"实际上我会这么总结:在当下经济里,把创业者和其他人区分开的关键,是创业者拥有extreme agency。这就是它和'job'这个概念完全对立的原因。"

"A job implies that you're working for somebody else or you're filling a slot, but they're operating in an unknown domain with extreme agency. There are other examples of roles like this in society. An explorer also does the same thing, right? If you're landing on Mars or you're sailing a ship to an unknown land, you are also exercising extreme agency to solve an unsolved problem."

"job 意味着你为别人工作、你在填一个 slot;而创业者是在未知领域里,以 extreme agency 运作。社会里还有其它这种角色 —— explorer 也是。你登陆火星、你向未知陆地航海,你也在以 extreme agency 解一个未解之题。"

"A scientist exploring an unknown domain does this. A true artist is trying to create something that does not exist and has never existed, yet somehow fits into the set of things that can explain human nature, allow them to express themselves, and create something new."

"科学家探索未知领域时也是。真正的艺术家在试图造出一个从不存在过的东西,却又奇怪地落进'解释人性、表达自我、创造新东西'的集合里。"

"So in all of these roles, whether you're a scientist or whether you're a true artist, or whether you are an entrepreneur, what you're trying to do is so difficult and is so self-directed that anything like an AI that can help you is a welcome ally."

"所以在所有这些角色里 —— 科学家、真艺术家、创业者 —— 你要做的事都极难、极自驱,任何像 AI 这样能帮你的东西,都是 welcome ally。"

"You're not doing it because it's a job. You're not trying to fill a slot that somebody else can show up and fill."

"你做这件事不是因为它是 job,你也不是在填一个别人也能补上的 slot。"

"In fact, if the AI can create your artwork, or if the AI can crack your scientific theory, or if the AI can create the object or the product that you're trying to make, then all it does is it levels you up. Now it's the AI plus you. The AI is the springboard from which you can jump to a further height."

"事实上,如果 AI 能造你的 artwork、能破你的 scientific theory、能造你想造的 object 或 product,它做的事只是把你 level up:现在是 AI + 你。AI 是你跳得更高的 springboard。"

"We're going to see some incredible art created that's AI-assisted. We will see movies that we couldn't have imagined, created by people using AI tools."

"我们会看到 AI 协助下的不可思议的艺术作品。我们会看到借助 AI 工具的人造出我们以前根本想不到的电影。"

"There's an analogy here in art that's interesting. For a long time in art, the rough direction was trying to paint things that were more and more realistic. Paint the human body, paint the fruit, paint proper lighting, et cetera."

"艺术里有个有意思的类比。很长一段时间,艺术的大方向是越画越逼真:画人体、画水果、画对的光线之类。"

"Eventually photography came along, and then you could replicate things very precisely, and so that selection pressure went away."

"后来摄影出现,你可以非常精确地复制 —— 那一层选择压力就没了。"

"And then art got weird. Art went in many different directions. Art became all about, 'Well, can I be surreal? Can I create something that expresses me?'"

"然后艺术变怪了 —— 朝各个方向爆开。它变成了:'我能不能 surreal?我能不能创造一种表达我自己的东西?'"

"A lot of art schools spun out of that, that got really weird—including modern art and postmodernism—but also I would argue some of the greatest creativity came at that time we were freed up."

"一堆奇怪的艺术流派从这里冒出来,包括现代艺术、后现代主义。但我会说,在被解放的那段时间里,出现了一些最伟大的创造力。"

"Photography got democratized, but photography itself became a form of art, and there were great photographers taking many different kinds of photographs. And now everyone's a photographer."

"摄影本身被民主化了,但它也变成一种艺术,出了一批非常好的摄影师,拍出各种类型的作品。而现在,人人都是摄影师。"

"There are still artists who are photographers, but it's not the pure domain of just a few people."

"还是有把摄影当艺术的人,但它已经不再是少数人的专属领域。"

"So the same way, because AI makes it so easy to create the basic thing, everybody will create the basic thing. It'll have value to them individually. A few will still stand out that will create variations of it that are good for everyone."

"同样,AI 让造'基础版本'变得太容易,所以人人都会造基础版。对当事人来说有价值。但仍然会有少数人脱颖而出,做出让所有人都觉得好的变体。"

"And it would be very hard to argue that society is worse off because of photography, although it may have certainly felt like that to some of the artists who were maybe making a living painting portraits of people and got displaced."

"很难论证社会因为摄影而变得更糟 —— 虽然对某些靠画肖像吃饭、被替代掉的艺术家来说,当时确实是这种感受。"

"Similar things will happen with AI, where there are people who are making a very specific living, doing very specific jobs that will get displaced that the AI can do. But in exchange, everyone in society will have the AI."

"AI 会引发类似的事:有些人在做非常具体的工作、靠这个吃饭,会被 AI 替代。但作为交换,整个社会都拿到了 AI。"

"You'll have incredible things that were created with AI that couldn't have been created otherwise."

"你会看到那些没有 AI 根本造不出来的 incredible 作品。"

"And within a few decades, it'll be unimaginable that you roll back the clock and get rid of AI, or any kind of software—any kind of technology for that matter—just to keep a few jobs that were obsolete."

"几十年内,'为了保住几份过时的工作而把时钟拨回去、去掉 AI、去掉任何软件、去掉任何科技'这种想法,会变得无法想象。"

"The goal here is not to have a job."

"这里的目标本来就不是有份工作。"

"The goal is not to have to get up at nine in the morning and come back at 7 PM exhausted, doing soulless work for somebody else."

"目标不是早上 9 点起床、晚上 7 点筋疲力尽回家、给别人做没有灵魂的活。"

"The goal is to have your material needs solvable by robots, to have your intellectual capabilities leveraged through computers, and for anybody to be able to create."

"目标是:让你的物质需求由机器人解决,让你的智识能力被计算机杠杆化,让任何人都能创造。"

"I used to do this thought exercise—I think I talked about it in a podcast that you and I did literally 10 years ago—which was: imagine if everybody were a software engineer, or everybody was a hardware engineer, and they could have robots and they could write code."

"我以前做过一个思想实验 —— 我们 10 年前的一个 podcast 里就聊过 —— 想象一下,如果人人都是 software engineer、或人人都是 hardware engineer,能有 robot、能写 code,会怎样?"

"Imagine the world of abundance we would live in."

"想象一下我们会活在怎样一个 abundance 的世界。"

"Actually, that world is now becoming real. Thanks to AI, everybody can be a software engineer. In fact, if you think you can't be, you can go fire up Claude right now or any of your favorite chatbots and you can go start talking to it. You'd be amazed how quickly you could build an app."

"那个世界正在变成现实。靠 AI,人人都可以是 software engineer。如果你觉得自己不行,现在就去打开 Claude 或任何你喜欢的 chatbot,开始跟它说话 —— 你会被自己造一个 app 的速度震惊。"

"It'll blow your mind."

"会炸你的脑子。"

"And once we can instantiate AI through robotics, which is a hard problem—I'm not saying we're that close to having solved it yet—but once we have robots, everyone can also do a little bit of hardware engineering. And so I think we're getting closer and closer to that utopian vision."

"一旦我们能让 AI 通过 robotics 实体化 —— 这是个很难的问题,我没说很快会解决 —— 但一旦有了 robot,人人也能做一点 hardware engineering。所以我觉得我们离那个 utopian vision 越来越近。"

"I don't think AI, as it is currently conceived, is alive in any way. But I do think that we will pretty soon have robots that seem very much like they are alive, for two reasons."

"我觉得现在意义上的 AI 在任何意义上都不算活,但我觉得我们很快会有看起来非常像活物的机器人,有两个原因。"

"One, a lot of human activity is non-creative and is non-intelligent, and the robots will be able to replicate that. And two, I do believe that the neural nets that we have and the models that we have are more than just the training data, because the training process transforms that training data into something novel."

"一,人类大量活动其实并不创造、并不智能,机器人能复制这些。二,我相信我们现有的神经网络和模型,不只是 training data 的总和 —— 训练过程会把训练数据变成新东西。"

"And there are new ideas embedded in the neural net that can be elicited through prompting."

"神经网里嵌着一些新想法,可以通过 prompt 激发出来。"

"I don't think these things are alive. I think they start out as extremely good imitators, to the point where they're almost indistinguishable from the real thing, especially for anything that humanity has already done before en masse."

"我不觉得它们是活的。我觉得它们起步是非常厉害的 imitator —— 在人类已经大规模做过的事情上,几乎跟真的不可区分。"

"So if the task has been done before, then it's going to be automated and it'll be done again."

"如果一件任务以前被做过,那它就会被自动化、再被做一次。"

"It may just be novel to you because you've never seen it, but the AI has learned it from somewhere else. That's the first way in which it seems alive."

"对你可能新鲜 —— 因为你没见过 —— 但 AI 在别处学过。这是它'看起来活'的第一种方式。"

"The second way, which we talked about earlier, is where it does learn higher levels of abstraction. These are very efficient compressors. They take huge amounts of data, and then they compress it down further, and in the process of compressing it, they learn higher-level abstractions."

"第二种 —— 前面聊过的 —— 是它确实学到更高层抽象。这些东西是非常高效的压缩器,把大量数据进一步压缩,在压缩过程中学到更高层的 abstraction。"

"Then in specific areas where they may not have learned those through the data themselves, they're getting patched through human feedback. They're getting patched through tool use. They're getting patched from traditional programming becoming embedded inside."

"在它们仅靠数据没学到的领域,它们靠 human feedback 打补丁、靠 tool use 打补丁、靠把传统程序嵌进去打补丁。"

"And especially the AIs that are learning how to think and code, they have the entire library of all of human code ever written to fall back on for algorithmic reasoning."

"特别是在学'思考 + 编码'的那批 AI,可以把整个人类写过的代码库当作 algorithmic reasoning 的兜底。"

"In that sense, the set of things that they can do is getting broader and broader."

"从这个意义上讲,它们能做的事的集合越来越大。"

"However, what they lack still is a lot of core human skills, like single-shot learning. Humans can learn from just one example. The raw creativity of human beings where they can connect anything to anything."

"但它们还缺许多核心的人类技能 —— 比如 single-shot learning。人类能从一个例子里学到东西。还有人类那种 raw creativity,可以把任何东西连到任何东西上。"

"They can leap across entire huge domains and search spaces, and figure out an idea that just came out of left field."

"人类能跨越巨大的领域和搜索空间跳跃,想出来一个完全从奇怪角度冒出来的想法。"

"This happens a lot with the true, great scientific theories. Humans also are embodied. They operate in the real world. They're not operating in the compressed domain of language. They're operating in physics—in nature."

"在真正伟大的科学理论里这经常发生。人类还是 embodied 的,他们在真实世界里操作,而不是在 language 这个被压缩的域里操作 —— 他们在物理里、在自然里操作。"

"Language only encompasses things that humans both figured out and could articulate and convey to each other."

"语言只覆盖了人类既想明白、又能说出来、又能传给彼此的那部分。"

"That's a very narrow subset of reality. Reality is much broader than that."

"那是 reality 里非常窄的一小段。现实远比这宽。"

"So overall, I think even though AIs are going to do things that are very impressive and they're going to do a lot of things better than humans—just like calculators are faster than any mathematician at calculations, classical computers are better at classical computer programs than any human could run in their own head, and just like a robot can lift very heavy things or a plane can outfly any bird—so in that sense, like all machines, the AIs are going to be much better than humans at a whole variety of tasks."

"所以整体上,我觉得 AI 会做出很多非常 impressive 的事,会在很多任务上比人强 —— 就像计算器算数比任何数学家快、经典电脑跑经典程序比任何人脑跑得好、机器人能搬非常重的东西、飞机能飞过任何鸟 —— 在这个意义上,AI 跟所有机器一样,会在一大堆任务上远强于人。"

"But at other tasks, they're going to seem just completely incompetent. Those are the things that really embody and connect us into the real world, plus this poorly defined but magic creative ability that we seem to have."

"但在另一些任务上,它们会显得完全无能。那些任务正是把我们 embody、把我们连到真实世界的那部分,加上我们那种说不清却 magic 的创造力。"

"Speaking of calculators, people talk about superintelligence. I think superintelligence is already here and has been for a long time. An ordinary calculator can do things that no human can do, right?"

"说到计算器 —— 现在大家都在聊 superintelligence。我觉得 superintelligence 早就在这了,而且来很久了。一台普通计算器能做没人能做的事,不是吗?"

"But if you're thinking about superintelligence in the sense of 'AI will be able to do things and come up with ideas that humans cannot understand,' I don't think that is going to happen because I don't believe that there are ideas that humans can't understand, simply because humans can always ask questions about the idea."

"但如果你说的 superintelligence 是'AI 能做出、想出人类无法理解的想法',我不觉得会发生 —— 因为我不相信存在人类无法理解的想法,人类永远可以围绕一个想法继续提问。"

"Humans are universal explainers. Anything that is possible with the current laws of physics as we know them, a human can model in their own heads. Therefore just by enough digging—enough questioning—we can figure anything out."

"人是通用解释器。在我们已知的物理定律下任何可能的事情,人都能在脑里建模。因此只要挖得够深、问得够多,我们能想明白任何东西。"

"Related to that, we should discuss AI as a learning tool, because I think the other place where it's incredibly powerful is as the most patient tutor that can meet you at your level and explain anything to your satisfaction a hundred different ways, a hundred different times, until you finally get it."

"顺着这条,我们也该聊 AI 作为学习工具 —— 因为它另一个 incredibly powerful 的地方,就是当一个最 patient 的 tutor,在你所在的水平见你,用一百种不同方式、讲一百次,直到你终于 get 为止。"

"I don't think the AIs are going to be figuring things out that humans cannot understand, but intelligence is poorly defined."

"我不觉得 AI 会想出人类无法理解的东西。但话说回来,intelligence 本身定义模糊。"

"What is the definition of intelligence? There's the G factor, which predicts a lot of human outcomes, but the best evidence for the G factor is its predictive power. It's that you measure this one thing and then you see people get much better life outcomes along the way in things that seem even somewhat unrelated to G."

"智能怎么定义?有 G factor,能预测很多人生结果。G factor 最强的证据就是它的预测力 —— 你测出这一项,这个人在很多甚至和 G 似乎无关的事上一路都更好。"

"So I would argue, and I think it's one of my more popular tweets: the only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life."

"所以我会说 —— 这条算是我比较火的一条推 —— 智能唯一真正的考验,是你能不能从人生里拿到你想要的。"

"This triggers a lot of people because they go to school, they get their master's degrees, they think they're super smart. And then they don't have great lives. They aren't super happy, or they have relationship problems, or they don't make the money that they want, or they become unhealthy and this sort of triggers them."

"这条会戳到很多人 —— 他们上学、拿硕士、自认聪明 —— 但生活并不好。不太开心、感情有问题、没赚到想要的钱、身体出毛病,这条对他们就有点扎。"

"But that really is the purpose of intelligence: for you as a biological creature to get what you want out of life."

"但这真的就是智能的用途:让你作为一个生物,能从人生里拿到你想要的。"

"Whether it's a good relationship or a mate, or money or success or wealth or health or whatever it is. So there are people who I think are quite intelligent because you can tell they have high-quality, functioning lives and minds and bodies, and they've just managed to navigate themselves into that situation."

"不管你想要的是好关系、伴侣、钱、成功、财富、健康,还是别的什么。所以我认识一些人,我觉得他们很 intelligent,因为他们的生活、心智、身体都是 high-quality、功能良好的,他们就是把自己 navigate 到了这个状态。"

"It doesn't matter what your starting point is, because the world is so large now, and you can navigate it in so many different ways that every little choice you make compounds and demonstrates your ability to understand how the world works until you finally get to the place that you want."

"起点是什么不重要 —— 世界足够大,可以走的路足够多,你做的每一个小选择都会复利,展示你对世界运作的理解,直到你最终走到你想到的地方。"

"Now the interesting thing about this definition—that the only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life—is that an AI fails it instantly, because an AI doesn't want anything out of life."

"按这个定义有意思的一点是:AI 立刻 fail 这个测试,因为 AI 对人生没有任何 want。"

"The AI doesn't even have a life—let alone that—but it doesn't want anything. AI's desires are programmed by the human controlling it."

"AI 都没有 life,更别说 want 了。AI 的 desire 是控制它的人编进去的。"

"But let's give it that for a second. Let's say the human wants something and programs the AI to go get it; then the AI is acting as a proxy for the human and the intelligence of the AI can be measured as: did it get that person that thing?"

"我们暂且放过这点。假设人想要某东西,编了 AI 去拿 —— 那 AI 是这个人的 proxy,AI 的智能就可以这样测:它有没有让这个人拿到那个东西。"

"Most of the things that we want in life are adversarial or zero-sum games."

"我们想要的大多数东西,本质都是对抗性或零和的游戏。"

"So, for example, if you want to seduce a girl or get a husband, you're competing with all the other people who are out there seducing girls or trying to get husbands. So now you're in a competitive situation. The AI has to outmaneuver the other people."

"比如你想追一个女孩、想找一个丈夫,你在跟所有正在做同样事情的人竞争。这就是竞争场景 —— AI 要 outmaneuver 别人。"

"Or if you say, 'Hey, AI, go trade on the stock market for me and make me a bunch of money.' That AI is trading against other humans and other trading bots. It's an adversarial situation. It has to outmaneuver them."

"再比如'AI,去帮我炒股,赚一笔'。它是在跟其他人、其他 trading bot 对抗,这是 adversarial situation,得 outmaneuver 它们。"

"Or if you say, 'Hey, AI, make me famous. Write me incredible tweets. Write me great blog posts. Record me great podcasts in my own voice and make me famous,' now it's competing against all the other AIs."

"或者'AI,把我搞红 —— 给我写炸的推文、写好博客、用我的声音录好 podcast' —— 现在它在跟所有其它 AI 竞争。"

"So in that sense, intelligence is measured in a battlefield—in an arena. It's a relative construct."

"所以这个意义上,智能是在战场、在 arena 里被衡量的 —— 它是相对的。"

"I think the AIs are actually going to fail mostly in those regards, or to the extent that they even succeed, because they're freely available, they will get outcompeted away, and the alpha that will remain would be entirely human."

"我觉得 AI 在这些方面大多会 fail —— 而且即便成功了,因为它们自由可得,它们会互相竞争掉自己的优势,最后剩下的 alpha 会完全来自人。"

"Let's talk about the epistemology of AI, because I think the next big misconception is: AI is already starting to solve some unsolved basic math problems that a human probably could solve if they cared to, but they haven't been solved yet—like Erdős Problem Number Whatever."

"我们聊聊 AI 的认识论。下一个大误解是:AI 现在开始解一些没解的基础数学问题 —— 那些人想解大概也能解,但还没人解 —— 比如 Erdős 问题第几号。"

"Now I think people are taking that, or will take that, as an indicator that the AI is creative. I don't think it's an indication that the AI is creative."

"很多人会把这当成 AI 有创造力的证据。我不觉得这是。"

"I actually think the solution to the problem is already embedded somewhere in the AI. It just needs to be elicited by prompting."

"我其实觉得这个问题的答案已经嵌在 AI 某处了,只是需要 prompt 把它引出来。"

"There's definitely that element to it. And then the question is: what is creativity? It's such a poorly defined thing."

"这种成分当然有。然后问题是:什么是 creativity?这个词定义太糊了。"

"If you can't define it, you can't program it, and often you can't even recognize it. So this is where we get into taste or judgment. I would say that the AIs today don't seem to demonstrate the kind of creativity that humans can uniquely engage in once in a while."

"如果你定义不了它,你就 program 不了它,常常连认都认不出。这就进入到 taste 或 judgment 的领域。我会说今天的 AI 似乎并没有展现出那种人类偶尔会展现的创造力。"

"And I don't mean like fine art. People tend to confuse creativity with fine art. They're like, 'Oh, paintings are creative and AIs can paint.'"

"我说的不是 fine art 那种。人常常把 creativity 和 fine art 搞混 —— '画作是创造,AI 会画画'。"

"Well, AIs can't create a new genre of painting. AI can't move humans with emotion in a way that is truly novel. So in that sense, I don't think AI is creative."

"但 AI 没法创造一种新的绘画 genre。AI 没法以真正新颖的方式打动人。这个意义上,我不觉得 AI 是 creative 的。"

"I don't think AI is coming up with what I would call out of distribution. Now the answer to the Erdős problems that you mentioned may have been embedded within the AI's training data set, or even within its algorithmic scope. But it was probably embedded in five different places, in three different ways, in two different languages, and seven different computing and mathematical paradigms, and the AI sort of put them all together."

"我不觉得 AI 在产出我所谓的 out of distribution 的东西。你说的 Erdős 问题答案,可能就嵌在它的训练数据里、甚至嵌在它的算法范围里 —— 嵌在 5 个不同地方、3 种不同方式、2 种不同语言、7 种不同的计算和数学 paradigm 里 —— AI 只是把它们拼起来。"

"Now, is that creativity? Steve Jobs famously said, 'Creativity is just putting things together.'"

"那这算 creativity 吗?Steve Jobs 那句很有名的话:'创造力就是把东西连起来。'"

"I actually don't think that's correct. I think creativity is much more in the domain of coming up with an answer that was not predictable or foreseeable from the question and from the elements that were already known. It was very far out of the bounds of thinking."

"我其实不同意这条。我觉得 creativity 更属于这个范畴:产出的答案,从问题本身和已知元素里,完全不可预测、不可预见,远在思考边界之外。"

"If you were just searching it with a computer or even with an AI and making guesses, you'd be making guesses till the end of time or until you arrived upon that answer. So that's the real creativity that we're talking about."

"如果你只是用电脑、用 AI 在那儿搜、在那儿猜,你能猜到 end of time,也未必撞到那个答案。这才是我们说的真 creativity。"

"But admittedly, that's a creativity that very few humans engage in, and they don't engage in it most of the time."

"但我也得承认,这种 creativity 极少数人才偶尔搞得出来,而且他们大多数时候也不在搞这个。"

"It becomes harder and harder to see. So we are probably going to get to where if you have a giant list of math problems to be solved and AI starts going through and picking—okay, this one out of that set of one million I can solve, and this set out of 300,000 I can solve, and I need a person to prompt me and ask the right questions—that's a very limited form of creativity."

"它越来越难被看到。我们大概会走到这样的局面:你有一长串待解数学题,AI 在里面挑 —— 这 100 万道里我能解这一道,那 30 万道里我能解这一道,我需要一个人来 prompt 我、问对问题 —— 这是一种很有限的 creativity。"

"There's another form of creativity where it starts inventing entirely new scientific theories that then turn out to be true. I don't think we're anywhere near that, but I could be wrong."

"还有另一种 —— 它开始发明全新的、后来被证明为真的科学理论。我不觉得我们离这个近,但我可能错。"

"The AIs have been very surprising, so I don't want to get too much in the business of making prophecies and predictions, but I don't think that just throwing more compute at the current AI models—short of some breakthrough invention—is going to get us there."

"AI 一直在让人惊讶,所以我不太想过度做预言。但我不觉得仅仅给现有 AI 模型堆更多 compute —— 在没有重大发明性突破的情况下 —— 能把我们带到那一步。"

"Just to be clear, when I say it's embedded, I don't mean the answer's already written down in there. I just mean that it can be produced through a mechanistic process of turning the crank, which is all today's computer programs are, where the output is completely determined by the input."

"补充澄清:我说'嵌在里面',不是说答案已经被写在那。我意思是:它可以通过 mechanistic 转动 crank 的过程被产出 —— 现在的电脑程序就只是这件事 —— 输出完全由输入决定。"

"Epistemology now gets us into philosophy, because isn't that just what human brains are doing? Aren't firing neurons just electricity and weights propagating through the system, altering states and it's a mechanistic process?"

"认识论这下就进哲学了 —— 人脑不也就在做这件事吗?神经元放电不就是电流和权重在系统里传播、改变状态,一个 mechanistic 过程吗?"

"If you turn the crank on the human brain, you would end up with the same answer? And some people, like I think Penrose is out there saying, 'No, human brains are unique because of quantum nanotubes.'"

"如果你给人脑转 crank,你会得到一样的答案吗?有些人 —— 比如 Penrose —— 在说:'不,人脑独特,是因为量子纳米管。'"

"You could argue that some of this computation is taking place at the physical, cellular level, not the neuron level, and that's way more sophisticated than anything we can do with computers today, including with AI."

"你可以说这部分计算其实发生在物理、细胞层,而不是 neuron 层 —— 那比我们今天电脑、包括 AI 能做的复杂得多。"

"Or you just argue: no, we just don't have the right program. It is mechanistic. There is a crank to turn, but we're not running the correct program. The way these AIs run today is just a completely wrong architecture and wrong program."

"或者你可以说:不,只是我们没找到对的程序而已。它是 mechanistic 的,有 crank 可转,只是我们跑的不是对的程序。今天 AI 的跑法是完全错的 architecture、错的 program。"

"I just buy more into the theory that there are some things they can do incredibly well, and there are some things they do very poorly. And that's been true for all machines and all automation since the beginning of time."

"我更倾向相信这种说法:它们有的事做得极好,有的事做得极差。从一开始,所有机器、所有自动化都是这样。"

"The wheel is much better than the foot at going in a straight line at high speeds and traveling on roads. The wheel is really bad for climbing a mountain."

"轮子在公路上以高速直线移动方面比脚强很多。轮子在爬山方面非常烂。"

"The same way, I think these AIs are incredibly good at certain things and they're going to outperform humans. They're incredible tools. And then there are other places where they're just going to fall flat."

"同理,这些 AI 在某些事上 incredibly 好、会胜过人,是绝好的工具。另一些地方,它们就是会 fall flat。"

"Steve Jobs famously said that a computer is a bicycle for the mind. It lets you travel much faster than walking, certainly in terms of efficiency."

"Steve Jobs 那句名言是:电脑是头脑的自行车。它让你比走路快得多,至少在效率意义上。"

"But it takes the legs to turn the pedals in the first place. And so now maybe we have a motorcycle for the mind, to stretch the analogy, but you still need someone to ride it, to drive it, to direct it, to hit the accelerator, and to hit the brake."

"但终归得用腿去蹬。沿这个比喻往前推一点 —— 现在我们有的是头脑的摩托车,但你还是需要一个人去骑、去开、去指方向、去踩油门、去踩刹车。"

"As a thought exercise, imagine that every guy had a little earpiece where an AI was whispering to him—a Cyrano de Bergerac kind of earpiece—telling him what to say on the date."

"做个思想实验:想象每个男生都戴一只小耳机,AI 在里面给他低语 —— 一种 Cyrano de Bergerac 式的耳机 —— 告诉他约会该说什么。"

"Well, then every woman would have an earpiece telling her to ignore what he said, or what part was AI-generated and what part was real."

"那每个女生也会有一只耳机,告诉她忽略他说的、或者标出哪部分是 AI 生成、哪部分是真的。"

"If you have a trading bot out there, it's going to be nullified or canceled out by every other trading bot, until all the remaining gain will go to the person with the human edge, with the increased creativity."

"你放一个 trading bot 出去,它会被其它所有 trading bot 抵消、对冲掉,最后剩下的 gain 全部归那个有 human edge、有更高创造力的人。"

"Now, that's not to say that the technology is completely evenly distributed. Most people still aren't using AI, or aren't using it properly, or aren't using it all the way to the max, or it's not available in all domains or all contexts, or they're not using the latest models."

"当然这不是说技术是完全均匀分布的。大多数人还没在用 AI、或者没在好好用、或者没用到极致、或者它在某些领域 / 场景里还没出现、或者他们没在用最新模型。"

"So you can always have an edge, like people who early adopt technology always do if you adopt the latest technology first."

"所以你永远有 edge —— 就像所有率先采用技术的人那样,只要你抢先用最新的技术。"

"This is why I always say: to invest in the future, you want to live in the future."

"所以我一直说:想投资未来,你要住在未来。"

"You want to actually be an avid consumer of technology, because it's going to give you the best insight on how to use it, and it will give you an edge against the people who are slower adopters or laggards."

"你要做技术的 avid consumer,因为这会给你最好的'怎么用它'的洞察,也让你领先那些慢热或落后的采用者。"

"Most people hate technology. They're scared of it. It's intimidating. You press the wrong button, the computer crashes—you lose your data. You do the wrong thing, you look like an idiot."

"大多数人讨厌技术。他们怕它。它让人发怵 —— 按错按钮,电脑崩了,数据没了;做错一步,看起来像个 idiot。"

"Most people do not have a positive relationship with complex technology. Simple technology—embedded technology—they're fine with. You throw on a light switch, light turns on."

"大多数人和复杂技术的关系并不好。简单的、嵌入式的技术,他们没问题:开个灯,灯就亮。"

"That used to be technology. It's so simple now, you don't think of it as technology anymore. You get in a car, you turn the steering wheel left—to a caveman that would be a miracle—the car turns left. It's no longer technology to you."

"以前那也是技术。现在简单到你都不把它当技术了。你上车,方向盘往左打 —— 对穴居人来说这是奇迹 —— 车就左转。对你来说它不再是技术了。"

"But computer technology in particular has had very complex interfaces and been very inaccessible and very intimidating to people in the past."

"但计算机技术 —— 这一类 —— 历来界面复杂、入口高、对很多人来说很吓人。"

"Now with the AIs, we're getting the chatbot interface, which you just talk to it or type to it. Very simple interface. And one of the great things about these foundational models—what truly makes them foundational—is you can ask them anything and they'll always give you a plausible answer."

"现在有了 AI,我们拿到了 chatbot 接口 —— 直接说、直接打字。非常简单的界面。这些 foundational model 真正 foundational 的一点是:你可以问它任何事,它总能给你一个 plausible 的答案。"

"It's not going to say, 'Oh, sorry, I don't do math,' or 'I don't do poetry,' or 'I don't understand what you're talking about,' or 'I can't give relationship advice or anything like that.'"

"它不会说'抱歉,我不做数学'、'我不写诗'、'我不懂你在说什么'、'我不能给感情建议'之类的。"

"Its domain is everything that people have ever talked about. In that sense, it's less intimidating."

"它的 domain 是人类聊过的所有东西。在这个意义上,它没那么吓人。"

"It can be more intimidating because we've anthropomorphized it so much. If you think Claude or ChatGPT is a real person, then it can be a little scary:"

"另一方面它也可能更吓人,因为我们把它拟人化得太厉害。如果你把 Claude 或 ChatGPT 当真人,它可以让你害怕:"

"'Am I talking to God? This guy seems to know so much. He knows everything. He's got an opinion on everything. He's got every piece of data. Oh my God, I'm useless. Let me start talking to it and asking it what to do.'"

"'我是在跟上帝聊天吗?这家伙懂这么多?啥都懂、啥都有意见、啥数据都有 —— 天呐,我是不是没用了?那我问它我该干嘛吧。'"

"And you can reverse the relationship and fool yourself very quickly into not realizing what's going on. That can be intimidating."

"你可以瞬间把关系倒过来,把自己骗到看不清状况 —— 这种是会让人发怵。"

"Overall, I think these AIs are going to help a lot of people get over the tech fear. But if you're an early adopter of these tools—like with any other tool, but even more so with these—you just have a huge edge on everybody else."

"总体上,我觉得这些 AI 会帮很多人跨过对技术的恐惧。但如果你是这些工具的早期采用者 —— 跟任何其它工具一样、甚至比其它工具更甚 —— 你对其他人就拥有巨大优势。"

"I remember early on when Google first came out, I used to use it a lot in my social circle. People would ask me basic questions and I would just go Google it for them and look like a genius."

"早期 Google 刚出来的时候,我在朋友圈里用得很多。人家问我基础问题,我直接帮他们 Google,自己显得像 genius。"

"Eventually this hilarious website came along, something like LMGTFY.com, and it stood for, 'Let Me Google That For You.' Somebody would ask you a question, and you'd go type the question into this website, and it would create like a tiny little inline video showing you typing that question into Google and giving the Google results."

"后来出现了一个搞笑网站,叫 LMGTFY.com —— '让我替你 Google'。别人问你问题,你把问题打到那网站上,它会生成一段小视频,显示有人把这个问题打到 Google 里,给出结果。"

"And I feel like AI is in a similar domain right now, where I will sit around in a social context and people will be debating some point that can be easily looked up by AI."

"我觉得 AI 现在处在类似阶段 —— 我在社交场合,大家在争一个其实拿 AI 一查就知道的点。"

"Now you do have to be very careful with AI. They do hallucinate. They do have biases in how they're trained. Most of them are extremely politically correct and taught not to take sides or only take a particular side."

"用 AI 你得小心 —— 它们会 hallucinate,它们的训练有 bias。大多数 AI 极度政治正确,被教不要选边,或者只允许选一边。"

"I actually run most of my queries—almost all actually—through four AIs and I'll always fact-check them against each other."

"我大多数 query —— 其实几乎所有 —— 都同时跑过四个 AI,让它们互相校对。"

"And even then I have my own sense of when they're bullshitting, or when they're saying something politically correct. And I'll ask for the underlying data or the underlying evidence, and in some cases I'm fine with dismissing it outright because I know the pressures that the people who trained it were under and what the training sets were."

"在那之上我自己也有判断:它们什么时候在 bullshit、什么时候在说 politically correct 的话。我会让它给出底层数据或证据。有时我会直接驳回它的回答,因为我知道训它的人受的压力和训练集是什么。"

"However, overall it is a great tool to just get ahead, and in domains that are technical, scientific, mathematical, that don't have a political context to them, then the AI is very much likely to give you closer to a correct answer, and in those domains they are absolute beasts for learning."

"但整体上,这是一个让你领先的极好工具。在技术、科学、数学这种不带政治语境的领域,AI 很可能给你接近正确的答案 —— 在这些领域,它们是 absolute beasts for learning。"

"I will now have AI routinely generate graphs, figures, charts, diagrams, analogies, illustrations for me. I'll go through them in detail and I'll say, 'Wait, I don't understand that question.'"

"我现在会让 AI 例行帮我生成 graph、figure、chart、diagram、类比、插图。我会一项一项过,说'等等,这一项我没懂'。"

"I can ask it super basic questions and I can really make sure that I understand the thing I'm trying to understand at its simplest, most fundamental level."

"我可以问它最基础的问题,确保我在最简单、最根本的层面真懂了我想懂的东西。"

"I just want to establish a great foundation of the basics, and I don't care about the overly complicated jargon-heavy stuff. I can always look that up later."

"我只想把 basics 的地基打牢。那些过度复杂、jargon 堆砌的东西我不在乎,以后再查。"

"But now, for the first time, nothing is beyond me. Any math textbook, any physics textbook, any difficult concept, any scientific principle, any paper that just came out, I can have the AI break it down, and then break it down again, and illustrate it, and analogize it until I get the gist, and I understand it at the level that I want."

"但现在,第一次,没有东西超出我能学的范围 —— 任何数学课本、任何物理课本、任何难的概念、任何科学原理、任何刚出的论文,我都能让 AI 拆、再拆、画图、打类比,直到我抓到要义、在我想要的层级理解它。"

"So these are incredible tools for self-directed learning. The means of learning are abundant. It's the desire to learn that's scarce."

"所以这是 incredible 的自驱学习工具。学习的手段是 abundant 的,稀缺的是想学。"

"But the means of learning have just gotten even more abundant. And more importantly than more abundant—because we had abundance before—it's at the right level."

"现在学习手段更 abundant 了。更重要的不是更多 —— 我们以前已经够多了 —— 而是它在对的层级。"

"AI can meet you at exactly the level that you are at. So if you have an eighth-grade vocabulary, but you have fifth-grade mathematics, it can talk to you at exactly that level. You will not feel like a dummy. You just have to tune it a little bit until it's presenting you the concepts at the exact edge of your knowledge."

"AI 能在你正好所在的水平见你。如果你的词汇量是八年级、数学是五年级,它就能用恰好那个水平跟你聊。你不会觉得自己 dummy。只要你稍微调一下,直到它讲的东西正好落在你知识边界上。"

"So rather than feeling stupid because it's incomprehensible, which happens in a lot of lessons, in a lot of textbooks, and with a lot of teachers, or feeling bored because it's too obvious, which also happens, instead, it can meet you exactly where you're like, 'Oh yeah, I understood A, and I understood B, but I never understood how A and B were connected together. Now I can see how they're connected, so now I can go to the next piece.'"

"很多课、很多教科书、很多老师让你觉得自己笨,因为讲的根本听不懂;又或者让你 bored,因为太显然。AI 不一样 —— 它正好停在你说'哦,A 我懂、B 我也懂,但我从来没明白 A 和 B 怎么连起来。现在我看出来了,可以走下一步'的位置。"

"That kind of learning is magical. You can have that aha moment where two things come together over and over again."

"那种学习是 magical 的。你可以反复体验那种'两个东西连起来了'的 aha moment。"

"Speaking about autodidacticism, a few years ago, I tried to have the AI teach me how to use or learn about the ordinal numbers. It wasn't that great. But with GPT 5.2 Thinking, I had it teach me the ordinal numbers and it was basically error-free. I only use thinking now even for the most basic queries, because I want to have the correct answer."

"说到自学,几年前我让 AI 教我 ordinal numbers,效果不太行。但用 GPT 5.2 Thinking 时,它教我 ordinal numbers 基本零错误。现在哪怕最基础的 query 我也只用 thinking 模式,因为我要正确答案。"

"I never let it run auto or fast."

"我从不让它跑 auto 或 fast。"

"Yeah, I'm always using the most advanced model available to me, and I pay for all of them."

"对,我永远用我能拿到的最强模型,所有模型我都付费。"

"But I don't mind waiting a minute to get an answer for any question, including, 'What temperature should my fridge be at?'"

"我也不介意等一分钟拿一个答案,哪怕这个问题是'我家冰箱该开几度?'。"

"I agree with that, and I think that's part of what creates the runaway scale economies with these AI models: you pay for intelligence."

"同意。我觉得这正是 AI 模型 runaway scale economy 的一部分原因:你为 intelligence 付费。"

"The model that's right 92% of the time is worth almost infinitely more than the one that's right 88% of the time, because mistakes in the real world are so costly that a couple of bucks extra to get the right answer is worth it."

"92% 正确率的模型,比 88% 正确率的模型,贵出近乎无穷倍 —— 因为现实里错答案的代价太高,多花几块钱拿到对的,值。"

"I'll write my query into one model, then I'll copy it and fire it off into four models at once, and then I'll let them all run in the background."

"我把 query 打进一个模型,然后复制粘贴同时丢给四个,让它们一起在后台跑。"

"Usually I don't even check for the answer right away. I'll come back to the answer a little later and then look at it."

"我通常都不立刻看答案 —— 过一会儿再回来看。"

"And then whichever model had the best answer, I'll start drilling down with that one. In some rare cases where I'm not sure, I'll have them cross-examine each other—a lot of cut and pasting there. And in many cases I'll then ask follow-up questions where I'll have it draw diagrams and illustrations for me."

"哪个模型答得最好,我就跟它继续深挖。少数情况我不确定,会让它们互相 cross-examine —— 那时复制粘贴会很多。很多时候我会接着追问,让它给我画图、做插图。"

"I find it's very easy to absorb concepts when they're presented to me visually. I'm a very visual thinker, so I will have it do sketches and diagrams, and art—almost like whiteboard sessions. Then I can really understand what it's talking about."

"概念用视觉方式呈现给我时,我吸收起来非常快 —— 我是 visual thinker。我会让它画 sketch、画 diagram、画图,几乎像 whiteboard session 一样。这样我真的能理解它在讲什么。"

"When new paradigms and new tool sets come out, there is a moment of enthusiasm and change. And this is true in society, and this is true as an individual. If you ride the moment of enthusiasm in society, it's exciting and you can learn new things and you can make friends and you can make money."

"新 paradigm、新工具集出现的时候,会有一段热情和变革的时刻。社会层面如此,个人层面也是。你顺着社会的热情期骑上去 —— 会 exciting、会学到东西、会交到朋友、会赚到钱。"

"But there's also a moment of enthusiasm in an individual. When you first encounter AI and you're curious about it and you're genuinely open-minded about it, I think that's the time to lean in and learn about the thing itself."

"个人层面也有自己的热情期。当你第一次接触 AI、对它好奇、真心开放的那一刻 —— 那是 lean in、去学这东西本身的时候。"

"Not just to use it, which of course everyone will, but to actually learn how it works."

"不只是用它 —— 用它是大家都会做的 —— 而是真去学它怎么 work。"

"I think diving into and looking underneath the hood is really interesting. If you encounter a car for the first time in your life, yes, you can get in and drive it around, but that's the moment you're also going to be curious enough to open up the hood and look at how it's structured and designed and figure it out."

"我觉得钻进去、看引擎盖底下,是真的有趣。如果你第一次见车,是的,你可以开起来兜一圈;但那也是你最好奇、最会想打开发动机盖看一看它怎么 structured、怎么设计、把它搞明白的时候。"

"I would encourage people who are fascinated by the new technology to really get into the innards and figure it out. You don't have to figure it out to the level where you can build it or repair it or create your own, but to your own satisfaction."

"我会鼓励对新技术着迷的人,真的钻到内部、把它搞明白。不必到能造、能修、能自己造一个的程度,只要到你自己满意为止。"

"Because understanding what's underneath the abstraction—what's underneath that command line—is going to do two things."

"因为理解抽象之下、command line 之下的东西,会带来两件事。"

"One is it will let you use it a lot better. And when you're talking about a tool that has so much leverage, using it better is very helpful."

"一,它让你用得好得多。当你在用一个杠杆这么大的工具时,用得更好这件事价值很高。"

"Second is it'll also help you understand whether you should be scared of it or not. Is this thing really going to metastasize into a Skynet and destroy the world?"

"二,它会让你判断:你到底该不该怕它。这玩意真的会演化成 Skynet 把世界毁掉吗?"

"Are we going to be sitting here and Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up and says, 'At 4:29 AM on February 24th is when Skynet became self-aware,' right? Or is it more that, 'Hey, this is a really cool machine and I can use it to do A, B, and C, but I can't use it to do D, E, and F. And this is where I should trust it and this is where I should be suspicious of it.'"

"我们会坐在这,然后 Arnold Schwarzenegger 突然出现说'2 月 24 号凌晨 4:29,Skynet 自我觉醒了'吗?还是其实是'嘿,这是一台非常酷的机器,我能用它做 A、B、C,不能用它做 D、E、F;这里我可以信它,那里我得怀疑它'?"

"I feel like a lot of people right now have AI anxiety. And the anxiety comes from not knowing what the thing is or how it works, having a very poor understanding."

"我感觉现在很多人有 AI anxiety。这种焦虑来自不知道这东西是什么、怎么工作 —— 理解很差。"

"And so the solution to that anxiety is action. The solution to anxiety is always action. Anxiety is a non-specific fear that things are going to go poorly and your brain and body are telling you to do something about it, but you're not sure what."

"所以这种焦虑的解药是行动。焦虑的解药永远是行动。焦虑就是那种非特定的恐惧 —— 觉得事情会不好,你的脑子和身体在告诉你该做点什么,但你不知道做什么。"

"You should lean into it."

"你应该 lean into 它。"

"You should figure the thing out. You should look at what it is. You should see how it works. And I think that'll help get rid of the anxiety."

"你应该把这件事搞清楚。看它是什么、看它怎么 work。我觉得这能让焦虑消散。"

"That action of learning—that pursuit of curiosity—is going to help you get over the anxiety. And who knows, it might actually help you figure out something you want to do with it that is very productive and will make you happier and more successful."

"那个'学习'的动作 —— 那种 pursuit of curiosity —— 会帮你跨过焦虑。说不定还会让你发现你真的想用它做什么,而那件事会非常有产出,让你更开心、更成功。"