美国人工智能领域的秘密武器：中国人才（中英）
文库划重点：神经网络和深度学习是人工智能领域最近发展的基石。麦克罗波洛智库的研究发现，一半以上的论文作者在美国工作。
更多的中国顶尖人工智能人才最终流向美国，数量远高于其他地方。128位在中国大学取得本科学位、在该人工智能学术会议上发表过论文的研究人员中，现在有超过一半在美国工作。
When the Defense Department launched Project Maven, an effort to remake American military technology through artificial intelligence, it leaned on a team of about a dozen engineers working at Google. Many of them, according to two people familiar with the arrangement, were Chinese citizens. 美国国防部启动一项用人工智能重塑美国军事技术的努力，即梅文计划(Project Maven)时，靠的主要是一个在谷歌工作的有十几名工程师的团队。据两名知情人士说，该团队中有不少人是中国公民。
The Pentagon was fine with that, they said, even amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing. Classified data was not involved, the Pentagon reasoned, and the American military needed the most qualified minds for the job. 知情人士说，五角大楼并不认为那是个问题，即使是在华盛顿与北京的紧张局势不断升级的情况下。五角大楼的理由是，该项目不涉及机密数据，而美国军方需要最合格的人才来做这项工作。
The Trump administration is now moving to limit Chinese access to advanced American research, as relations between the United States and China reach their worst point in decades. That worries many of the companies and scientists in the heady realm of cutting-edge A.I., because much of the groundbreaking work coming out of the United States has been powered by Chinese brains. 现在，随着中美关系已冷却到数十年来的最低点，特朗普政府正在采取行动，限制中国获得美国的先进研究成果。这让处于尖端人工智能热门领域的许多公司和科学家感到担忧，因为很多来自美国的开创性工作都是华人的智慧推动的。
A new study from MacroPolo — a think tank run by the Paulson Institute, which promotes constructive ties between the United States and China — estimated that Chinese-educated researchers contributed to nearly one-third of the papers accepted and promoted at a prestigious A.I. conference last year, more than those from any other country. But it also found that most of them lived in the United States and worked for American companies and universities. 促进美中建设性关系的保尔森基金会(Paulson Institute)下属的麦克罗波洛智库(MacroPolo)一新项研究估计，被去年的一个赫赫有名的人工智能学术会议接受和发表的论文中，有近三分之一来自曾在中国读大学的研究人员，比任何其他国家大学毕业的作者贡献的论文都要多。但这项研究也发现，他们中的大多数在美国生活，为美国的公司和大学工作。
The study shows they are helping to power American dominance over a strategically important field, one that can enable computers of the future to make decisions, identify faces, find criminals, pick military targets and drive vehicles. 这项研究表明，他们正在帮助美国在一个具有重要战略意义的领域占主导地位。人工智能技术将让未来的计算机能做决定、识别人脸、发现罪犯、挑选军事目标，以及驾驶车辆。
Outside politics, many studied in the United States, grew comfortable living there and found work with American employers. They now worry that the flow of students and professionals will come to an end. 撇开政治不谈，他们中的许多人在美国读了研究生，适应了那里的生活，并在美国雇主那里找到了工作。他们现在担心，这种学生和专业人员的流动将会结束。
“Sacrificing international students is killing the goose that lays the golden egg,” said Lisa Li, a Chinese engineer who recently graduated from Johns Hopkins University, adding, “It will eventually destroy the future competitiveness of America.” “让国际学生成为牺牲品是自绝才源，”最近从约翰霍普金斯大学(Johns Hopkins University)毕业的中国工程师丽莎·李(Lisa Li)说。“这最终会摧毁美国的未来竞争力。”
China sees artificial intelligence as a field of strategic importance. It has thrown vast amounts of money at researchers with an aim of getting them to work for Chinese companies and institutions. 中国将人工智能视为具有战略重要性的领域。它向研究人员投入了大量的资金，目的是吸引他们回来为中国企业和机构工作。
The United States has noted China’s technology ambitions with alarm. Last month, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration planned to cancel the visas of Chinese researchers and graduate students who have direct ties to universities affiliated with China’s military. 美国已注意到中国的计划，并有所警惕。《纽约时报》上个月曾报道，特朗普政府计划取消与中国军事院校有直接关系的中国研究人员和研究生的签证。
Efforts that broadly block Chinese talent could undermine the American lead in A.I., said Matt Sheehan, an analyst with MacroPolo who co-authored the study. 大范围阻止中国人才的努力可能会削弱美国在人工智能领域的领先地位，麦克罗波洛智库的分析师、该研究的联名作者马特·希恩(Matt Sheehan)说。
“These are some of the brightest minds in China, and they’re choosing to work for American research labs, teach American students, and help build American companies,” Mr. Sheehan said. “If the U.S. no longer welcomed these top researchers, Beijing would welcome them back with open arms.” “他们都是中国最聪明的人才，他们选择为美国的研究实验室工作，在美国教书，帮助成立美国的公司，”希恩说。“如果美国不再欢迎这些顶尖研究人员，北京会张开双臂欢迎他们回去。”
MacroPolo looked at a sample of papers published last year at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. NeurIPS, as it is known, focuses on theoretical advances in neural networks and deep learning, which have anchored recent developments in A.I. It found that more than half of the papers were written by authors in the United States. 麦克罗波洛智库分析了在去年的神经信息处理系统大会(Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems)发表的论文样本。这个被称为NeurIPS的会议关注的是神经网络和深度学习理论方面的进展，神经网络和深度学习是人工智能领域最近发展的基石。麦克罗波洛智库的研究发现，一半以上的论文作者在美国工作。
The think tank also looked at where the authors went to school. It found that nearly 30 percent of them pursued undergraduate degrees at universities in China, more than any other country. But more than half went on to study, work and live in the United States. 该智库也分析了这些作者的教育背景。结果发现，其中有近30%是在中国大学读的本科，高于任何其他国家。但有超过一半的人继续在美国学习、工作和生活。
Chinese A.I. researchers may have more opportunities in the United States. MacroPolo found that the top homes of the authors included Google, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Microsoft Research. Tsinghua University and Peking University, two of China’s best universities, were the only Chinese institutions among the top 25. 中国的人工智能研究者也许在美国有更多的机会。麦克罗波洛智库的研究发现，论文作者最常见的工作单位依次是谷歌、斯坦福大学、卡内基梅隆大学、麻省理工学院和微软研究院。中国最好的两所大学——清华和北大，是前25名中仅有的两家中国院校。
Multiple studies indicate that Chinese nationals who studied A.I. in the United States were likely to remain. Through 2018, nine out of 10 who completed doctorate degrees stayed for at least five years after graduation, according to a study from Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. 多项研究表明，在美国学习人工智能的中国公民很可能会留在美国。乔治城大学(Georgetown University)安全与新兴技术中心(Center for Security and Emerging Technology)的一项研究显示，截止2018年，在美国获得博士学位的中国公民中，有90%的人在毕业后会继续留在美国至少五年。
Those numbers showed no signs of decline, but some organizations say that more recent tensions between the United States and China have already begun to affect talent flows. 这些数字没有下降的迹象，但一些组织表示，中美之间最近的紧张关系已经开始影响人才流动。
“I am terrified by what the administration is doing,” said Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a high-profile research lab based in Seattle, which has seen a significant decrease in the number of applications from Chinese researchers. “How many times can you push people out the door and put obstacles in their way before they say, ‘I am not going to try.’” “我对政府的做法感到恐惧，”艾伦人工智能研究所(Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence)首席执行官奥伦·埃齐奥尼(Oren Etzioni)说。这家位于西雅图的知名研究实验室已经看到来自中国研究人员的申请显著减少。“把他们拒之门外，给他们设置障碍，你能这样做多少次，他们才会说，‘我不打算试了’？”
Chinese-born researchers are a fixture of the American A.I. field. Li Deng, a former Microsoft researcher and now chief A.I. officer at the hedge fund Citadel, helped remake the speech recognition technologies used on smartphones and coffee-table digital assistants. Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford University professor who worked for less than two years at Google, helped drive a revolution in computer vision, the science of getting software to recognize objects. 中国出生的研究人员在美国的人工智能领域很常见。前微软研究员、现任对冲基金公司城堡(Citadel)的首席人工智能官邓力，对提高语音识别技术有很大贡献，这种技术被用于智能手机和摆在咖啡桌上的数字助理设备。斯坦福大学教授李飞飞(Fei-Fei Li)在谷歌工作了不到两年，她帮助推动了计算机视觉领域的一场革命，这种技术让软件能识别物体。
At Google, Dr. Li helped oversee the Google team that worked on Project Maven, the Pentagon effort. Google declined to renew the Pentagon contract two years ago after some employees protested the company’s involvement with the military. The Google team worked to build technology that could automatically identify vehicles, buildings and other objects in video footage captured by drones. In the spring of 2018, at least five of the roughly dozen researchers on the team were Chinese nationals, according to one of the people familiar with the arrangement. 在谷歌，李飞飞是参与五角大楼梅文计划团队的负责人之一。两年前，谷歌拒绝与五角大楼续签合同，原因是一些员工抗议公司参与军方工作。谷歌那个团队的工作是开发能在无人机拍摄的视频中自动识别车辆、建筑物和其他物体的技术。据两名知情人士之一说，2018年春在这个团队工作的大约12名研究人员中，至少五人是中国公民。
A certain amount of government restriction is natural. The Pentagon typically bars citizens of rival foreign powers from working on classified projects. China also has a long history of carrying out industrial espionage in the United States. 政府采取一定程度的限制措施很自然。五角大楼通常禁止来自竞争对手国家的公民参与机密项目。中国也有在美国从事工业间谍活动的漫长历史。
A.I. is different, people in the industry argue. Researchers generally publish what they find, and anybody can use it. So what the industry is looking for is not intellectual property, but the minds that conduct the research. 但业界人士认为，人工智能领域不同。这个领域的研究人员通常会发表他们的发现，任何人都可以使用这些发现。所以这个领域要的不是知识产权，而是能从事研究的大脑。
“For much of basic A.I. research, the key ingredient in progress is people rather than algorithms,” said Jack Clark, policy director of OpenAI, a prominent lab in San Francisco, and the co-chair of the AI Index, an annual effort to track the progress of A.I. research, including the role of Chinese researchers. “人工智能基础研究进展的大部分关键因素是人，而不是算法，”旧金山著名的开放人工智能研究中心(OpenAI)的政策主任杰克·克拉克(Jack Clark)说，他也是跟踪人工智能研究年度进展、包括中国研究人员贡献的人工智能指数项目(AI Index)的联席主任。
“There’s a lot of open source technology lying around for researchers to use, but relatively few researchers with the sorts of long-term idiosyncratic agendas that yield field-changing advances.” “有很多可供研究人员拿来使用的开源技术，但是，有能改变领域的那种长期、独特议程的研究人员相对较少。”
Peter Chen, a prominent Chinese-born researcher who is a legal U.S. resident, said that further government crackdowns could hurt companies across the community, including his start-up, a robotics company called Covariant.AI that is based in Berkeley, Calif. “If this continues, there will be people we can’t get,” he said. “It will definitely affect our ability to recruit talent.” 在中国出生的著名研究人员彼得·陈(Peter Chen)现在在美国有永久居住权，他说，政府进一步的限制可能会伤害整个领域，包括他的初创企业、位于加州伯克利的机器人公司Covariant.AI。“如果这种情况继续下去，我们就会找不到人了，”他说。“这肯定会影响我们招聘人才的能力。”
For many Chinese students, the decision to stay or go has been more personal than political. Robert Yan, a former Google employee, returned to China to work at an A.I. start-up. The Bay Area didn’t suit him. He hated driving and missed Chinese food. A native of Shanghai, he thought he could advance more quickly in his home culture. 对许多中国留学生来说，留在美国还是回国的决定更多是出于个人考虑，而无涉政治。前谷歌员工罗伯特·严(Robert Yan)回到了中国，在一家人工智能初创企业工作。他不习惯旧金山湾区的生活。他讨厌开车，很想念中国菜。作为一个土生土长的上海人，他认为在家乡的文化中他会进步得更快。
Still, Mr. Yan said, only about one out of 10 of his Chinese colleagues in the United States chose to go home. For those looking to do high-end theoretical research, many Chinese companies still weren’t the best place, he said. 尽管如此，严先生说，他在美国的中国同事中，只有大约十分之一的人选择了回国。他说，对于那些希望进从事高端理论研究的人来说，许多中国公司仍不是最佳选择。
“Compared to Google I now have far less freedom,” Mr. Yan said. “At a start-up you need to have a reason to do each task. We’re chasing efficiency. That does not facilitate doing things because you’re curious.” “和在谷歌的时候相比，我现在的自由少多了，”严先生说。“在初创公司，你做每项任务都需要有个理由。我们在追求效率。这不适合你因为好奇想做的事情。”
Ms. Li, the Johns Hopkins graduate, helped organize a petition supporting foreign student access to the United States. She prefers living in the United States in part because China’s tech industry is riddled with sexism. 约翰霍普金斯大学的毕业生丽莎·李帮助组织了一份支持外国学生继续来美国读书的请愿书。她更喜欢美国的生活，部分原因是中国的科技行业充斥着性别歧视。
“I’m big and I’m loud,” Ms. Li said. “Respect for female engineers is very important to me.” “我个头大，嗓门大，”丽莎·李说。“女工程师受尊重对我来说非常重要。”
（译者：外语观察公众号）
（原文出处之一：https://cn.nytimes.com/technology/20200610/china-ai-research-education/）
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