Why AI safety requires more than industry self-regulation
Warnings about the threats of artificial intelligence (AI) appear to have motivated the technology’s decisionmakers.
关于人工智能（AI）威胁的警告似乎激励了该技术的决策者。
Within hours of each other, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of xAI, and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind endorsed , with varying degrees of specificity, the need to slow the pace of frontier AI development.
几个小时内，Anthropic 的 Dario Amodei、OpenAI 的 Sam Altman、xAI 的 Elon Musk 和 Google DeepMind 的 Demis Hassabis 都以不同程度的具体程度认可了放慢前沿人工智能发展步伐的必要性。
As the executives responsible for the most consequential decisions about AI suggested tapping the brakes, President Donald Trump responded by stepping on the accelerator .
当负责人工智能最重要决策的高管建议踩刹车时，唐纳德·特朗普总统的回应是踩油门。
“We can put guardrails, we can do this and that,” he allowed , before dismissing the warnings as “things that won’t happen.” The imperative, he said, was competition with China, “We’re leading China in AI …Whoever wins AI wins.”
“我们可以设置护栏，我们可以做这做那，”他承认，然后将这些警告视为“不会发生的事情”。他说，当务之急是与中国竞争，“我们在人工智能领域领先中国……谁赢得人工智能，谁就获胜。”
The industry leaders arguing to prioritize safety ahead of growth agree on less than the headlines suggest.
主张将安全置于增长之上的行业领导者的共识并不像头条新闻所暗示的那样。
Amodei proposed a generalized three-part plan of independent evaluators embedded inside frontier labs, coordination among companies, and global policy compatibility.
阿莫迪提出了一个由三部分组成的通用计划，包括嵌入前沿实验室的独立评估员、公司之间的协调以及全球政策兼容性。
An hour after its posting, Musk (from whom Anthropic buys data center capacity) posted on X, “Dario is right.” Ninety minutes later, Altman posted , “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier.” That evening Hassabis said the proposal “points towards the right path forward,” adding, “The details need working through.”
发布一小时后，马斯克（Anthropic 向其购买数据中心容量）在 X 上发布，“达里奥是对的。”九十分钟后，奥特曼发帖称，“我同意达里奥的观点，我们需要在边境上步调。”当天晚上，哈萨比斯表示，该提案“指出了正确的前进道路”，并补充道，“细节需要解决。”
We cannot underestimate the significance of this development or the need for details.
我们不能低估这一发展的重要性或对细节的需求。
Acknowledging the problem is not the same as creating a mechanism for containing it.
承认问题并不等于创建遏制问题的机制。
The executives whose decisions have created the current race to scale capabilities are now warning that developments may be moving too quickly.
那些决策引发了当前扩展能力竞赛的高管现在警告说，发展可能进展得太快。
It would be a mistake to simply admire the problem.
单纯地欣赏这个问题是错误的。
Oversight is an empty vessel until decisions are made about who writes the rules, to whom they apply, how compliance is verified, and how they are enforced.
在决定由谁编写规则、规则适用于谁、如何验证合规性以及如何执行规则之前，监督是一个空容器。
Such decisions move beyond political performance to determine whether there will actually be meaningful oversight of the problems AI presents.
这些决定超越了政治表现，以确定是否会对人工智能带来的问题进行真正有意义的监督。
Thus far in the digital era, Big Tech companies have largely made their own rules free of meaningful oversight.
到目前为止，在数字时代，大型科技公司基本上已经制定了自己的规则，不受有意义的监督。
Those policies tended to prioritize private gain while leaving the public to absorb the consequences.
这些政策往往优先考虑私人利益，而让公众承担后果。
Big Tech, now joined by OpenAI and Anthropic, has become Big AI.
Big Tech 现在加入了 OpenAI 和 Anthropic，成为了 Big AI。
Left to their own devices, the companies with the best understanding of AI’s risks have been the very ones racing to scale its capabilities.
如果放任自流，那些最了解人工智能风险的公司正是那些竞相扩展其能力的公司。
Filling the oversight vessel requires the kind of difficult decisions the industry has opposed, and federal policymakers have avoided thus far in the digital era.
填补监管空白需要做出业界反对的艰难决定，而联邦政策制定者在数字时代迄今为止一直在避免这样做。
This includes what standards of behavior and measurement to apply, which models are covered, what information must be disclosed, and the rights of victims when things go wrong.
这包括适用哪些行为和衡量标准、涵盖哪些模型、必须披露哪些信息以及出现问题时受害者的权利。
Implementing Amodei’s threshold idea for embedded evaluators, for instance, will require enforceable decisions on their selection and qualifications, who pays them, the standards they will apply, and their authority to take action, including delaying or denying release of a model.
例如，要实施 Amodei 的嵌入式评估者门槛理念，需要对他们的选择和资格、支付费用的人、他们将采用的标准以及他们采取行动的权力（包括延迟或拒绝发布模型）做出可执行的决定。
The kind of oversight reportedly under consideration by the Trump administration gives the industry an important role in making and administering their own oversight.
据报道，特朗普政府正在考虑的这种监督使该行业在制定和管理自身监督方面发挥着重要作用。
When the regulated write the rules, they assume the role of “pseudo-governments.” Self-determined and self-enforced rules are self-interested rules.
当被监管者制定规则时，他们就扮演了“伪政府”的角色。自我决定和自我执行的规则是自利的规则。
The truly existential question about AI is whether decisions about its power and behavior should be delegated to a handful of firms, their executives, and investors.
关于人工智能的真正存在问题是，关于其权力和行为的决策是否应该委托给少数公司、其高管和投资者。
The principal impediment to oversight of AI, as demonstrated by Trump’s comments regarding the AI leaders’ proposal, is the so-called “race with China.” The major AI lab executive absent from the call for an industry pacing of development, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, wrote in August that government oversight would slow down AI development and “add significant risk to American leadership.” Shortly thereafter he and Trump had a telephone conversation in which he opposed even the industry-oriented oversight plan under consideration at the White House.
正如特朗普对人工智能领导人提案的评论所表明的那样，人工智能监管的主要障碍是所谓的“与中国的竞赛”。 Meta 首席执行官马克·扎克伯格 (Mark Zuckerberg) 缺席了行业发展节奏的呼吁，而主要的人工智能实验室高管则在 8 月份写道，政府的监督将减缓人工智能的发展，并“给美国的领导地位带来重大风险”。此后不久，他和特朗普进行了电话交谈，其中他甚至反对白宫正在考虑的以行业为导向的监督计划。
So long as the “race with China” underpins AI policy, nationalistic fear will trump apocalyptic fear.
只要“与中国竞赛”支撑着人工智能政策，民族主义恐惧就会战胜世界末日恐惧。
Competition with China has been the go-to antiregulation argument throughout the digital era.
在整个数字时代，与中国的竞争一直是反监管争论的焦点。
While it has been undeniably successful in shaping the lack of meaningful American digital policy, it has fueled a race to the bottom that prioritized the interests of a few companies over public interests ranging from safety to maintaining a competitive marketplace.
虽然无可否认，它在塑造缺乏有意义的美国数字政策方面取得了成功，但它也助长了一场逐底竞争，将少数公司的利益置于从安全到维持竞争市场等公共利益之上。
Trump’s Sept.
特朗普的九月。
24 summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping offers a rare opportunity to begin to decelerate the AI race from a zero-sum scorecard to mutual cooperation against mutual catastrophe.
24 日与中国国家主席习近平的峰会提供了一个难得的机会，可以开始减缓人工智能竞赛从零和计分卡到相互合作应对共同灾难的速度。
In the process, it offers the opportunity for American policymakers to begin to replace the unilateral decisions of the handful of executives who control the leading AI labs with public interest-oriented decisions about tolerable risk, release schedules, safeguards, and the race to scale.
在此过程中，它为美国政策制定者提供了机会，让他们开始以公共利益为导向的有关可容忍风险、发布时间表、保障措施和规模竞争的决策来取代控制领先人工智能实验室的少数高管的单方面决策。
The AI executives have told us the threat is real.
人工智能高管告诉我们威胁是真实的。
The question now becomes whether anyone besides them gets to decide what happens next.
现在的问题是，除了他们之外，是否还有人可以决定接下来会发生什么。