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Everyone from a tech bro placing his hopes for human advancement on a superhuman intelligence to an army relying on AI software to list targets evinces the same desire for an objective authority figure to which one can turn.
每个人，从将人类进步的希望寄托在超人智能上的科技兄弟，到依靠人工智能软件列出目标的军队，都表现出对一个可以求助的客观权威人物的同样渴望。
When we look to artificial intelligence to make sense of the world – when we ask it questions about reality or history or expect it to represent the world as it is – are we not already bound up in the logic of AI?
当我们指望人工智能来理解世界时——当我们向它询问关于现实或历史的问题，或期望它能如实呈现世界时——我们难道不是已经被束缚在人工智能的逻辑之中了吗？
We are awash with digital detritus, with the cacophony of the present, and in response, we seek out a superhuman assistant to draw out what is true from the morass of the false and the misleading – often to only be misled ourselves when AI gets it wrong.
我们被数字垃圾所淹没，被当下的嘈杂声所困扰，作为回应，我们寻求一个超人助手，从虚假和误导的泥潭中找出真实的东西——但往往当人工智能出错时，我们自己也会被误导。
We are living in a time where truth is unstable, shifting, constantly in contestation.
我们生活在一个真相不稳定、变化无常、不断受到质疑的时代。
Think of the embrace of conspiracy theories, the rise of the anti-vax movement, or the mainstreaming of racist pseudoscience.
想想对阴谋论的拥抱，反疫苗运动的兴起，或者种族主义伪科学的主流化。
Every age has its great loss – for modernism, it was the coherence of the self; for postmodernism, the stability of master narratives – and now, in the 21st century, there is an increasing pressure on the notion of a shared vision of reality.
每个时代都有其巨大的损失——对于现代主义来说，是自我的连贯性；对于后现代主义来说，是主叙事的稳定性——而现在，在21世纪，对共享现实愿景的概念的压力越来越大。
When the systems that give shape to things start to fade or come into doubt, as has happened to religion, liberalism, democracy and more, one is left looking for a new God.
当赋予事物形态的体系开始褪色或受到质疑时，就像宗教、自由主义、民主等所发生的那样，人们就会开始寻找新的上帝。
There is something particularly poignant about the desire to ask ChatGPT to tell us something about a world in which it can occasionally feel like nothing is true.
有一种特别强烈的愿望，就是想让ChatGPT告诉我们一些关于这个世界的事情，在这个世界里，有时会让人觉得没有什么是真实的。
To humans awash with a sea of subjectivity, AI represents the transcendent thing: the impossibly logical mind that can tell us the truth.
对于沉浸在主观性海洋中的人类来说，人工智能代表着一种超越的事物：它是一种具有不可思议逻辑思维的东西，可以告诉我们真相。
Lingering at the edges of Clarke's short story about the Tibetan monks was a similar sense of technology as the thing that lets us exceed our mere mortal constraints.
在克拉克关于西藏僧侣的短篇小说的边缘徘徊着一种类似的感觉，即技术是让我们超越仅仅是凡人限制的东西。
But the result is the end of everything.
但结果是一切的终结。
In turning to technology to make a deeply spiritual, manual, painstaking task more efficient, Clarke's characters end up erasing the very act of faith that sustained their journey toward transcendence.
在转向技术以提高一项深刻的精神、手工、艰苦的任务的效率时，克拉克的角色最终抹去了维持他们走向超越之旅的信仰行为。
But here in the real world, perhaps meeting God isn't the aim.
但是在这个现实世界中，也许遇见上帝并不是目的。
It's the torture and the ecstasy of the attempt to do so.
这是尝试这样做的痛苦和狂喜。
Artificial intelligence may keep growing in scope, power and capability, but the assumptions underlying our faith in it – that, so to speak, it might bring us closer to God – may only lead us further away.
人工智能的范围、能力和力量可能会持续增长，但是我们对它的信念所基于的假设——也就是说，它可能会让我们更接近上帝——可能只会让我们离上帝更远。
In 10 or 20 years from now, AI will undoubtedly be more advanced than it is now.
在10年或20年后，人工智能无疑会比现在更加先进。
Even so, if I'm lucky enough to be around, I'll step out of my home with my AI assistant whispering in my ear.
即便如此，如果我足够幸运还在人世，我会走出家门，耳边传来我的人工智能助手的低语。
There will still be cracks in the sidewalk.
人行道上仍会有裂缝。
The city in which I live will still be under construction.
我所居住的城市仍将处于建设中。
Traffic will probably still be a mess, even if the cars drive themselves.
交通可能仍然会是一团糟，即使汽车是自动驾驶的。
Maybe I'll look around, or look up at the sky, and my AI assistant will tell me something about what I see.
也许我会四处看看，或者抬头看看天空，然后我的人工智能助手会告诉我一些关于我所看到的东西的信息。
But things will still keep moving on only slightly differently than they do now.
但是事情仍会继续发展，只是与现在略有不同。
And the stars?
还有星星呢？
Against what might now seem like so much change, the sky will still be full of them.
面对现在看来如此多的变化，天空中仍将充满它们。
