數(shù)據(jù)民主的隱患

Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, had a great line in his Davos speech last week: “The pace of change has never been this fast, and yet it will never be this slow again.”

加拿大總理賈斯廷•特魯多(Justin Trudeau)不久前在達沃斯(Davos)論壇發(fā)言時說了句十分精辟的話：“改變從未如此之快，而且再也不會比今天更慢。”

For me, that was the key message of the World Economic Forum. The headlines may have talked about President Donald Trump’s “America first” speech, but the back story was the fragility of nation states in a time of technological change.

在我看來，這是本屆世界經(jīng)濟論壇(WEF)傳遞出的關(guān)鍵信息。雖然頭條新聞談論的可能都是美國總統(tǒng)唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)的“美國優(yōu)先”演說，但背景故事卻是技術(shù)變革的時代各個民族國家的脆弱性。

The topic of “the digital economy and society” was the most popular this year at the WEF in terms of the number of sessions and social media buzz — and no wonder. The dirty secret of Davos is that the much-lauded “Fourth Industrial Revolution” — shorthand for the rise of ubiquitous automation, big data and artificial intelligence — is making most people less, not more, secure, at least in the short term.

“數(shù)字經(jīng)濟與社會”是今年世界經(jīng)濟論壇上最熱門的話題，不僅有很多分論壇討論這一話題，同時還在社交媒體上引發(fā)了熱議——這不足為奇。達沃斯骯臟的秘密是，備受贊頌的“第四次工業(yè)革命”——即對無處不在的自動化、大數(shù)據(jù)和人工智能浪潮的簡稱——這一趨勢至少在短期內(nèi)會使大多數(shù)人更危險，而不是更安全。

The ability of a range of companies — in insurance, healthcare, retail and consumer goods — to personalise almost every kind of product and service based on data streams is not just a business model shift. It is a fundamental challenge to liberal democracy.

保險、醫(yī)療、零售和消費品行業(yè)的眾多企業(yè)能夠根據(jù)數(shù)據(jù)流個性化幾乎每一種產(chǎn)品和服務，這不僅僅是商業(yè)模式的轉(zhuǎn)變，也是對自由民主的一個根本性挑戰(zhàn)。

Consider the changes being wrought in the insurance business. For 200 years, it has been based on the notion of risk pooling: average the cost of insuring individual homes, cars and lives, and then divide the cost among the collective. In the age of data, insurance groups will be able to take information from tracking boxes in our cars or sensors embedded in our homes and use it to craft hyper-personalised policies.

試想一下保險業(yè)正在發(fā)生的變化。200年來，保險業(yè)的運作一直是基于風險共擔的概念：計算個人住房、車輛或人壽保險的平均成本，然后分給個體。數(shù)據(jù)時代，保險集團將能夠從我們車上的追蹤盒或安裝在我們家里的傳感器中獲取信息，并利用這些信息制定高度個性化的保單。

For example, you might be rewarded for putting a new plumbing system into your own old house (the sensors will measure how well it works), or stopping more quickly at red lights. But you might also be blamed when your 16-year-old puffs weed in his bedroom (smoke detectors will relay the message to your insurer in real time) or if you fail to shovel the snow off the front stoop before it ices up (now insurers could know exactly when and if you did, and limit their own risk of liability if a passer-by slips).

例如，如果你給自己的舊房子安了一套新的管道系統(tǒng)(傳感器將測量它的工作效果)，或在遇到紅燈時更快地停下，就可能獲得獎勵。但如果你16歲的孩子在他的房間吸大麻(煙霧探測器會將信息實時傳遞給你的保險公司)，或你沒能及時把門前的雪鏟掉、讓它結(jié)了冰(現(xiàn)在，你什么時候鏟雪和你鏟沒鏟雪保險公司都能準確地知道，并降低經(jīng)過的行人滑倒時他們承擔責任的風險)，就可能算你的責任。

Of course, you’ll be able to opt in and out of all this, though probably not very transparently or cheaply (consider that on commercial platforms such as Facebook or Google, you basically have to forfeit your rights to use the product or service easily). But the more disturbing implication is that there may now be an uninsurable underclass who can no longer be floated by averaging. Who will insure them? Most likely subprime lenders or the state.

當然，你可以對整個這種狀況選擇接受或拒絕，雖然這種選擇也許并不是很透明或者實惠(要知道，在像Facebook或谷歌(Google)這樣的商業(yè)平臺上，基本上你必須放棄你的權(quán)利，才能便捷地使用它們的產(chǎn)品或服務)。但更令人不安的是，如今可能存在一個無法獲得保險的下層階級，這些人無法再享有平均帶來的好處。誰將給他們投保?很可能是次貸提供機構(gòu)或政府。

Which brings up another dirty secret of the digital age. Just as the US government has for years subsidised low-cost retailers that do not pay their workers a living wage, so the government will probably be asked to underwrite the safety net for a new digital underclass.

由此引出了數(shù)字時代另一個骯臟的秘密。就像美國政府多年來一直補貼那些不向工人支付基本生活工資的低價零售商一樣，人們很可能要求政府為數(shù)字時代一個新的下層階級提供社會保障。

The problem is that the public sector does not have the capacity to do this. It is coping with trillions of dollars of debt that has been created since the financial crisis, not to mention more partisan politics that make it tough to create consensus on much of anything. As digital bifurcation grows, it is very likely that disenchantment with the state will increase as well, fuelling the vicious cycle of political disenchantment and dysfunctional economics.

問題是公共部門沒有能力這樣做。它正在應付金融危機以來產(chǎn)生的數(shù)萬億美元的債務，更不用說還有弄得任何事情都難以達成共識的黨派政治了。隨著數(shù)字時代分歧的加劇，人們對國家的失望情緒也很可能增加，從而助長政治幻滅和經(jīng)濟狀況失衡的惡性循環(huán)。

The other risk is that rather than demanding more, not only of governments, but of the companies that are monetising our data, citizens will remain passive.

另一種風險是，公民將繼續(xù)保持被動，而不是對政府及那些變現(xiàn)我們數(shù)據(jù)的企業(yè)要求更多。

It’s a topic that financier George Soros addressed in his speech at Davos, where he noted that technology groups were “inducing people to give up their autonomy . . . it takes a real effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called ‘the freedom of mind’. There is a possibility that once lost, people who grow up in the digital age will have difficulty in regaining it.”

這是金融家喬治•索羅斯(George Soros)在達沃斯演講中談到的一個話題，他指出科技團體正在“勸誘人們放棄自主權(quán)……要費老大勁才能堅持和捍衛(wèi)約翰•斯圖爾特•密爾(John Stuart Mill)所說的‘心靈自由’。一旦失去，成長于數(shù)字時代的人們可能將再難重獲它。”

Mr Soros noted the risk of “alliances between authoritarian states and these large, data-rich IT monopolies that would bring together nascent systems of corporate surveillance with an already developed system of state-sponsored surveillance”.

索羅斯注意到一種隱患，即“威權(quán)國家可能與這些擁有大量數(shù)據(jù)的壟斷型大IT公司結(jié)成聯(lián)盟，將剛剛誕生的企業(yè)監(jiān)控系統(tǒng)與國家支持的已經(jīng)很發(fā)達的監(jiān)控系統(tǒng)結(jié)合起來”。

It sounds Orwellian, but it is the state of play in China, where the country’s big technology groups and the government are closely aligned. Indeed, some of the digital scientists I spoke to in Davos professed envy for the ease of data gathering even as they expressed their concerns about the political implications.

這聽起來像奧威爾小說中描述的事情，但這就是中國正在發(fā)生的事情，在中國，大型科技集團與政府密切聯(lián)系在一起。事實上，我在達沃斯與一些數(shù)字科學家們聊過，他們在擔憂政治影響的同時，也對能夠方便地收集數(shù)據(jù)艷羨不已。

This is why the most optimistic moment I had in Davos was with Illah Nourbakhsh, a professor at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon, who, having become quite worried about the points I have just made, launched a project to educate elementary school children about the power of data, its risks and rewards, and how to use it to advocate for themselves.

正因如此，我在達沃斯感到最樂觀的時刻，就是遇到卡內(nèi)基梅隆大學(Carnegie Mellon University)機器人研究所教授伊拉•努爾巴赫什(Illah Nourbakhsh)的時候。他對我上文所提的問題非常擔憂，于是發(fā)起了一個項目，教育小學生們了解數(shù)據(jù)的力量、風險與回報，以及如何利用數(shù)據(jù)實現(xiàn)自己的主張。

Under the scheme, children might track, say, the number of cars idling

努爾巴赫什說，根據(jù)這項計劃，孩子們可以追蹤比如停在校外但沒有熄火的車輛的數(shù)量，計算潛在的污染，然后召開家庭會議，討論如何“挑戰(zhàn)現(xiàn)有的能源結(jié)構(gòu)”(實際意思就是：敦促他們的校長制定新的停車規(guī)則)。

outside their school, calculate the potential pollution generated, then call a family meeting to discuss how to “challenge the incumbent power structures”, as Mr Nourbakhsh says (translation: push their principal for new parking rules).

這一構(gòu)想旨在創(chuàng)造了解數(shù)據(jù)力量的新一代公民科學家。我預測，如果他們真的了解數(shù)據(jù)的力量，他們將會要求更多的所有權(quán)以及自己控制數(shù)據(jù)的權(quán)利。

The idea is to create a new generation of citizen scientists who understand 譯者/何黎