未來圖靈

1月6日，OpenAI CEO 山姆?奧特曼（Sam Altman）在X 平臺發布名為Reflections（反思）的長文博客，再度聚焦 OpenAI 發展歷程。

奧特曼回顧 OpenAI 成立以來，感慨這些年五味雜陳，是其人生中最有成就感卻也最累、壓力最大的時段，尤其過去兩年更是不愉快。不過，他心懷感激，并表示若能重來，愿以不同方式處事，如今的自己相較一年前已成長為更優秀、更成熟的領導者。

進展方面，OpenAI 已確信知曉如何構建傳統意義上的通用人工智能（AGI），且預計 2025 年首批 AI 智能體將 “進軍” 勞動力市場，切實改變公司產出模式，還堅信向大眾普及優秀工具會催生廣泛效益。展望未來，OpenAI 目標更遠，已朝著超級智能邁進。

圖片Sam Altman社交媒體

以下為博客全文及翻譯：

The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into the next paradigm of models that can do complex reasoning. New years get people in a reflective mood, and I wanted to share some personal thoughts about how it has gone so far, and some of the things I’ve learned along the way.

ChatGPT 兩周歲生日剛過去一個多月，如今我們已經邁入了能夠進行復雜推理的模型的下一個范式。新年總會讓人陷入沉思，我想分享一些個人的想法，談談到目前為止事情的進展，以及我在此過程中學到的一些東西。

As we get closer to AGI, it feels like an important time to look at the progress of our company. There is still so much to understand, still so much we don’t know, and it’s still so early. But we know a lot more than we did when we started.

隨著我們越來越接近通用人工智能（AGI），審視公司的進展感覺像是一個關鍵時刻。仍有諸多需要了解的東西，仍有太多我們未知的領域，而且現在還為時尚早。但與剛起步時相比，我們已經懂得多得多了。

We started OpenAI almost nine years ago because we believed that AGI was possible, and that it could be the most impactful technology in human history. We wanted to figure out how to build it and make it broadly beneficial; we were excited to try to make our mark on history. Our ambitions were extraordinarily high and so was our belief that the work might benefit society in an equally extraordinary way.

大約九年前，我們創立了 OpenAI，因為我們堅信通用人工智能（AGI）是能夠實現的，并且它可能會成為人類歷史上最具影響力的技術。我們想要弄清楚如何構建它，使其廣泛造福人類；我們滿懷熱忱，試圖在歷史上留下自己的印記。我們雄心勃勃，同樣也堅信這項工作可能會以一種非凡的方式惠及社會。

At the time, very few people cared, and if they did, it was mostly because they thought we had no chance of success.

在當時，幾乎沒人在意，即便有人在意，也大多是因為他們認為我們沒有成功的機會。

In 2022, OpenAI was a quiet research lab working on something temporarily called “Chat With GPT-3.5”. (We are much better at research than we are at naming things.) We had been watching people use the playground feature of our API and knew that developers were really enjoying talking to the model. We thought building a demo around that experience would show people something important about the future and help us make our models better and safer.

2022 年，OpenAI 還只是一個默默耕耘的研究實驗室，當時在研發一個暫時被稱作 “與 GPT-3.5 對話” 的項目。（我們搞研究的本事可比給項目起名的本事強多了。）我們一直在觀察人們使用我們應用程序接口（API）的測試功能，并且了解到開發者們非常喜歡與模型對話。我們當時認為，圍繞這種體驗打造一個演示版本，既能向人們展示有關未來的一些重要東西，又有助于我們把模型改進得更好、更安全。

We ended up mercifully calling it ChatGPT instead, and launched it on November 30th of 2022.

所幸最后我們將它命名為 ChatGPT，并在 2022 年 11 月 30 日推出。

We always knew, abstractly, that at some point we would hit a tipping point and the AI revolution would get kicked off. But we didn’t know what the moment would be. To our surprise, it turned out to be this.

從抽象意義上來說，我們一直都知道，在某個時刻我們會迎來一個轉折點，人工智能革命將會爆發。但我們不知道那一刻何時到來。令我們驚訝的是，這個轉折點就是 ChatGPT 的推出。

The launch of ChatGPT kicked off a growth curve like nothing we have ever seen—in our company, our industry, and the world broadly. We are finally seeing some of the massive upside we have always hoped for from AI, and we can see how much more will come soon.

ChatGPT 的推出開啟了一條我們前所未見的增長曲線，無論是在我們公司、我們所處的行業，還是在更廣泛的世界范圍內都是如此。我們終于看到了一直以來希望從人工智能身上獲得的一些巨大優勢，而且我們也能預見到，更多的優勢很快就會到來。

It hasn’t been easy. The road hasn’t been smooth and the right choices haven’t been obvious.

這一路走來并不容易。道路并不平坦，正確的選擇也并非顯而易見。

In the last two years, we had to build an entire company, almost from scratch, around this new technology. There is no way to train people for this except by doing it, and when the technology category is completely new, there is no one at all who can tell you exactly how it should be done.

在過去的兩年里，我們幾乎是從零開始，圍繞這項新技術建立起了一整個公司。除了親身實踐，沒有別的辦法來培養員工適應這項工作，而且當技術領域全新未知時，根本沒有人能確切地告訴你該怎么做。

Building up a company at such high velocity with so little training is a messy process. It’s often two steps forward, one step back (and sometimes, one step forward and two steps back). Mistakes get corrected as you go along, but there aren’t really any handbooks or guideposts when you’re doing original work. Moving at speed in uncharted waters is an incredible experience, but it is also immensely stressful for all the players. Conflicts and misunderstanding abound.

在幾乎毫無經驗的情況下如此高速地建立一家公司，過程混亂不堪。常常是前進兩步，后退一步（有時甚至是前進一步，后退兩步）。錯誤會在前進過程中得到糾正，但在開創性工作中，確實沒有什么手冊或路標可循。在未知水域中快速前行是一種不可思議的體驗，但對所有參與者來說，也是壓力巨大的。沖突和誤解比比皆是。

These years have been the most rewarding, fun, best, interesting, exhausting, stressful, and—particularly for the last two—unpleasant years of my life so far. The overwhelming feeling is gratitude; I know that someday I’ll be retired at our ranch watching the plants grow, a little bored, and will think back at how cool it was that I got to do the work I dreamed of since I was a little kid. I try to remember that on any given Friday, when seven things go badly wrong by 1 pm.

這些年是我迄今為止人生中最有成就感、最有趣、最美好、最吸引人、最疲憊、最緊張的幾年，尤其是過去的兩年，格外不愉快。但最強烈的感受是感激；我知道，有朝一日我退休后會在我們的牧場看著植物生長，或許會有點無聊，那時我會回想起，能從事從小就夢想的工作是多么酷的一件事。在任何一個周五，當下午 1 點前有七件事都出了大差錯的時候，我都會試著想起這一點。

A little over a year ago, on one particular Friday, the main thing that had gone wrong that day was that I got fired by surprise on a video call, and then right after we hung up the board published a blog post about it. I was in a hotel room in Las Vegas. It felt, to a degree that is almost impossible to explain, like a dream gone wrong.

一年多前的一個周五，那天出的主要問題是，我在視頻通話中突然被解雇了，然后我們剛掛斷電話，董事會就發布了一篇關于此事的博客文章。當時我在拉斯維加斯的一個酒店房間里。那種感覺，幾乎難以言表，就像是一場噩夢。

Getting fired in public with no warning kicked off a really crazy few hours, and a pretty crazy few days. The “fog of war” was the strangest part. None of us were able to get satisfactory answers about what had happened, or why.

在毫無預警的情況下當眾被解雇，引發了極其瘋狂的幾個小時，以及相當瘋狂的幾天。最奇怪的是那種 “戰爭迷霧” 般的混亂狀態。我們誰都沒能得到關于所發生之事及其原因的滿意答案。

The whole event was, in my opinion, a big failure of governance by well-meaning people, myself included. Looking back, I certainly wish I had done things differently, and I’d like to believe I’m a better, more thoughtful leader today than I was a year ago.

在我看來，整件事是包括我自己在內的善意之人在治理上的一次重大失敗。回首往事，我當然希望自己當初能以不同的方式行事，而且我愿意相信，如今的我比一年前是一個更優秀、更深思熟慮的領導者。

I also learned the importance of a board with diverse viewpoints and broad experience in managing a complex set of challenges. Good governance requires a lot of trust and credibility. I appreciate the way so many people worked together to build a stronger system of governance for OpenAI that enables us to pursue our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits all of humanity.

我也明白了，在應對一系列復雜挑戰時，一個擁有多元觀點和廣泛經驗的董事會是多么重要。良好的治理需要大量的信任和公信力。我很感激有這么多人齊心協力，為 OpenAI 建立起了一個更強大的治理體系，使我們能夠追求確保通用人工智能造福全人類的使命。

My biggest takeaway is how much I have to be thankful for and how many people I owe gratitude towards: to everyone who works at OpenAI and has chosen to spend their time and effort going after this dream, to friends who helped us get through the crisis moments, to our partners and customers who supported us and entrusted us to enable their success, and to the people in my life who showed me how much they cared.

我最大的收獲是，我有太多要感恩的人和事：感謝在 OpenAI 工作、選擇花費時間和精力追逐這個夢想的每一個人，感謝在危機時刻幫助我們挺過去的朋友們，感謝支持我們、信任我們并托付我們助力其成功的合作伙伴和客戶，以及感謝我生命中那些向我表達關心的人。

We all got back to the work in a more cohesive and positive way and I’m very proud of our focus since then. We have done what is easily some of our best research ever. We grew from about 100 million weekly active users to more than 300 million. Most of all, we have continued to put technology out into the world that people genuinely seem to love and that solves real problems.

我們都以更加團結和積極的方式重新投入工作，從那以后，我為我們的專注感到非常自豪。我們做出了一些堪稱有史以來最出色的研究成果。我們的周活躍用戶從大約 1 億增長到了 3 億多。最重要的是，我們一直在向世界推出人們真心喜愛且能解決實際問題的技術。

Nine years ago, we really had no idea what we were eventually going to become; even now, we only sort of know. AI development has taken many twists and turns and we expect more in the future.

九年前，我們真的不知道自己最終會變成什么樣；即使現在，我們也只是略知一二。人工智能的發展歷經諸多波折，我們預計未來還會有更多。

Some of the twists have been joyful; some have been hard. It’s been fun watching a steady stream of research miracles occur, and a lot of naysayers have become true believers. We’ve also seen some colleagues split off and become competitors. Teams tend to turn over as they scale, and OpenAI scales really fast. I think some of this is unavoidable—startups usually see a lot of turnover at each new major level of scale, and at OpenAI numbers go up by orders of magnitude every few months. The last two years have been like a decade at a normal company. When any company grows and evolves so fast, interests naturally diverge. And when any company in an important industry is in the lead, lots of people attack it for all sorts of reasons, especially when they are trying to compete with it.

有些波折令人欣喜，有些則很艱難。看著一連串的研究奇跡不斷涌現，很有意思，許多唱反調的人也變成了真正的信徒。我們也看到一些同事離開，成為了競爭對手。隨著公司規模擴大，團隊往往會發生人員更替，而 OpenAI 的規模擴張速度極快。我認為有些情況是不可避免的 —— 初創公司通常在每次規模邁上新臺階時都會出現大量人員流動，而在 OpenAI，每隔幾個月，人員數量就會呈數量級增長。過去的兩年，對于一家普通公司來說，相當于十年。當任何一家公司發展和演變如此之快時，利益分歧自然就會出現。而且，當任何一家處于重要行業領先地位的公司，會因為各種各樣的原因遭到很多人的攻擊，尤其是當他們試圖與其競爭時。

Our vision won’t change; our tactics will continue to evolve. For example, when we started we had no idea we would have to build a product company; we thought we were just going to do great research. We also had no idea we would need such a crazy amount of capital. There are new things we have to go build now that we didn’t understand a few years ago, and there will be new things in the future we can barely imagine now.

我們的愿景不會改變；我們的策略將繼續演變。例如，一開始我們沒想到要建立一家產品公司；我們原以為只是要做偉大的研究。我們也沒想到需要如此巨額的資金。現在有一些幾年前我們不了解的新事物需要我們去構建，未來還會有一些我們現在幾乎無法想象的新事物。

We are proud of our track-record on research and deployment so far, and are committed to continuing to advance our thinking on safety and benefits sharing. We continue to believe that the best way to make an AI system safe is by iteratively and gradually releasing it into the world, giving society time to adapt and co-evolve with the technology, learning from experience, and continuing to make the technology safer. We believe in the importance of being world leaders on safety and alignment research, and in guiding that research with feedback from real world applications.

到目前為止，我們為自己在研究和部署方面的業績感到驕傲，并致力于繼續推進我們在安全和利益共享方面的思考。我們仍然相信，讓人工智能系統安全的最佳方法是迭代式地、逐步地將其推向世界，給社會時間來適應并與這項技術共同進化，從經驗中學習，并繼續讓這項技術變得更安全。我們相信，在安全與對齊研究方面成為世界領導者的重要性，并利用來自現實世界應用的反饋來指導這項研究。

We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it. We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies. We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great, broadly-distributed outcomes.

我們現在有信心，按照傳統理解，我們知道如何構建通用人工智能（AGI）。我們相信，在 2025 年，我們可能會看到首批人工智能智能體 “加入勞動力市場”，并切實改變公司的產出。我們仍然相信，迭代式地將出色的工具交到人們手中，會帶來偉大的、廣泛分布的成果。

We are beginning to turn our aim beyond that, to superintelligence in the true sense of the word. We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future. With superintelligence, we can do anything else. Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity.

我們開始將目標轉向更遠大的方向，追求真正意義上的超級智能。我們熱愛現有的產品，但我們是為了輝煌的未來而努力。有了超級智能，我們將無所不能。超級智能工具可以極大地加速科學發現和創新，遠遠超出我們僅憑自身所能做到的，進而極大地增加富足與繁榮。

This sounds like science fiction right now, and somewhat crazy to even talk about it. That’s alright—we’ve been there before and we’re OK with being there again. We’re pretty confident that in the next few years, everyone will see what we see, and that the need to act with great care, while still maximizing broad benefit and empowerment, is so important. Given the possibilities of our work, OpenAI cannot be a normal company.

這在目前聽起來像是科幻小說，甚至談論起來都有點瘋狂。沒關系 —— 我們以前也經歷過這種情況，再次面對也沒問題。我們相當有信心，在接下來的幾年里，每個人都會看到我們所看到的，并且認識到在謹慎行事的同時，仍要最大限度地實現廣泛的利益和賦能，是多么重要。鑒于我們工作的可能性，OpenAI 不可能是一家普通的公司。

How lucky and humbling it is to be able to play a role in this work.

能夠在這項工作中發揮作用，是多么幸運和令人謙卑啊。

(Thanks to Josh Tyrangiel for sort of prompting this. I wish we had had a lot more time.)

（感謝Josh Tyrangiel促使我寫下這篇反思，真希望我們能有更多時間。）

（上述英文內容的中文翻譯由人工智能助手豆包產出）