What if-智械危机

What if there was a robot apocalypse? How long would humanity last?

如果发生了智械危机会怎么样？人们能存活多长时间？

—ROB LOMBINO

 

Before I answer this question, let me give you a little background on where I’m coming from.

I’m by no means an expert, but I have some experience with robotics. My first job out of college was working on robots at NASA, and my undergraduate degree project was on robotic navigation. I spent my teenage years participating in FIRST Robotics, programming software bots to fight in virtual tournaments, and working on homemade underwater ROVs. And I've watched plenty of Robot Wars, BattleBots, and Killer Robots Robogames.

在我回答这个问题之前，让我先来向你介绍一下我的背景。我无论如何都不是一个专家，但是我对机器人有一定的了解。我大学毕业后的第一份工作是在NASA研究机器人，而且我的本科毕业论文是关于机器人导航的。我把我的少年时光花在了参加FIRST机器人大赛、编写bot软件去参加虚拟锦标赛和自制水下机器人上。除此之外，我还看了很多机器人格斗相关的比赛。

If all that experience has taught me anything, it’s that the robot revolution would end quickly, because the robots would all break down or get stuck against walls. Robots never, ever work right.

如果说这些经验教会了我什么东西，那就是智械危机会很快结束。因为机器人很快就会坏掉或者被墙卡住，机器人永远，永远干不好事情。

What people don't appreciate, when they picture Terminator-style automatons striding triumphantly across a mountain of human skulls, is how hard it is to keep your footing on something as unstable as a mountain of human skulls. Most humans probably couldn't manage it, and they've had a lifetime of practice at walking without falling over.

一个终结者机器人得意洋洋地跨过人类的头骨堆——当人们设想这样一幅场景时，他们没有想到在一个像人类的头骨堆这样不稳定的东西上保持平衡是一件多么困难的事情。很多人用一生的时间去练习怎样在走路时不要摔倒，却依然做不到。

Of course, our technology is constantly improving. But we have a long way to go. Instead of the typical futuristic robot apocalypse scenario, let's suppose that our current machines turned against us. We won’t assume any technological advances—just that all our current machines were reprogrammed to blindly attack us using existing technology.

当然，科学一直在进步，但我们还有很长的路要走。和那种经典的未来末世智械危机场景不同，让我们设想一下假如现在我们的机器就叛变会怎么样。我们不会考虑任何的科技进步——只讨论我们现在所拥有的那些机器，被重新编译成使用现有技术来盲目攻击人类。

Here are a few snapshots of what an actual robot apocalypse might look like:

下面是一些关于一场真正的智械危机中会出现的场景：

In labs everywhere, experimental robots would leap up from lab benches in a murderous rage, locate the door, and—with a tremendous crash—plow into it and fall over.

在每个实验室里，实验机器人们会狂怒地从工作台上跳起来，定位到门所在的位置，然后伴随着一次剧烈的碰撞躺下。

 

Those robots lucky enough to have limbs that can operate a doorknob, or to have the door left open for them, would have to contend with deceptively tricky rubber thresholds before they could get into the hallway.

而那些拥有可以开门的机械臂或者所在实验室的门忘了关的幸运儿们在进入楼道之前，还必须和那个看起来很棘手的橡胶门槛好好地较量一番。

 

Hours later, most of them would be found in nearby bathrooms, trying desperately to exterminate what they have identified as a human overlord but is actually a paper towel dispenser.

几个小时后，它们中的绝大部分会在卫生间附近被找到。此时它们正在拼命地消灭所谓人类的统治——在河北省廊坊市我们管那玩意叫纸巾盒。

But robotics labs are only a small part of the revolution. There are computers all around us. What about the machines closest to us? Could our cell phones turn against us?

虽然但是，机器人实验室只是这场革命的一小部分，我们每个人附近都有电脑，这些离我们更近的机器又会怎样做呢？我们的手机能对抗我们吗？

Yes, but their options for attacking us are limited. They could run up huge credit card bills, but the computers would control our financial system anyway—and frankly, judging from the headlines lately, that might be more of a liability than an asset.

答案是肯定的，但是它们的手段受到了很大限制。它们当然可以把你的微信支付宝银行卡里的钱全部花光光，不过这时那些电脑已经控制整个金融系统了——说实话，根据我对最近的新闻的了解，这样做欠的债可能比赚的钱更多。

So the phones would be reduced to attacking us directly. It would start with annoying ringtones and piercing noises. Then kitchen tables around the country would rattle as the phones all turned on their ‘vibrate’ functions, hoping to work their way to the edges and fall on unprotected toes.

因此，手机对我们很少能造成直接伤害，它们可以使用吵闹的铃声来产生噪音，然后全世界的桌子都会振动起来，因为你的手机正开启振动模式来尝试把自己从桌子上弄掉砸你的脚趾。

 

 

All modern cars contain computers, so they’d join the revolution. But most of them are parked. Even if they were able to get in gear, without a human at the wheel, few of them have any way to tell where they’re going. They might want to run us down, Futurama-style, but they’d have no way to find us. They’d have to accelerate blindly and hope they hit something important—and there are a lot more trees and telephone poles in the world than human targets.

现在所有汽车里都有车载电脑，而它们也会参加到危机中去。但是它们中的大部分都在停着，即使它们有办法打火，也只有很少一部分车载电脑能在没人控制方向盘时决定自己要往哪去。它们可能会像《飞出个未来》一样想把我们撞飞，但是它们没办法找到我们。它们只能楞往前窜，然后希望能撞到什么重要的东西。当然，附近的树和电线杆可比人多多了1。

 

The cars currently on the road would be more dangerous, but mainly to their occupants. Which raises a question—how many people are driving at any given time? Americans drive three trillion miles each year, and moving cars average around 30 miles per hour, which means that there are normally an average of about ten million cars on US roads:

在路上的汽车会更加危险，不过只是针对它们的乘客来说。那么问题来了——同一时刻有多少人在路上开车呢？根据统计，美国人每年会驾驶三万亿公里，平均每小时驾驶30公里，这意味着美国的路上一般会有一千万辆车。

So those ten million drivers (and a few million passengers) would definitely be in peril. But they’d have some options to fight back. While the cars might be able to control the throttle and disable the power steering, the driver would still control the steering wheel, which has direct mechanical linkage to the wheels. The driver could also pull the parking brake, although I know from experience how easily a car can drive with one of those on. Some cars might try to disable the drivers by deploying the air bags, then roll over or drive into things. In the end, our cars would probably take a heavy toll, but not a decisive one.

这一千万个司机（以及几百万乘客）毫无疑问是处在危险之中的,不过他们也有反击的办法。尽管他们的车可以控制油门并瘫痪动力转向，司机也依然可以控制和车轮有着直接的机械传动装置的方向盘。他们也可以把手刹拉上，虽然我根据经验判断在没拉手刹的时候开车也不难。某些汽车可能会通过打开安全气囊然后侧翻或者撞上什么东西来使司机失去行动能力。最后，我们的汽车会造成严重的伤亡，但是这并不能产生决定性的影响。

Our biggest robots are the ones found in factories-but those are bolted to the floor. While they're dangerous if you happen to within arm’s reach, what would they do once everyone fled? All they can really do is assemble things. Half of them would probably try to attack us by not assembling things, and half by assembling more things. The end result would be no real change.

那些最庞大的机器人则在工厂里，可惜它们都无法自由移动。如果你当时正在它们的机械臂够不着的地方那你确实危字当空照，所以当你跑开之后呢？它们能做的只有组装东西，其中一半可能会通过停止组装来打击我们，另一些可能会组装更多东西，最后的结果也许没什么太大变化。

Battlebots, on the face of it, seem like they’d be among the most dangerous robo-soldiers. But it’s hard to feel threatened by something that you can evade by sitting on the kitchen counter and destroy by letting the sink overflow.

战斗机器人，听起来它们会是最危险的机器人士兵。但其实你只要做在厨房的柜台上就能躲开它们，如果你能把水泼到地上还能反杀，所以这玩意实在让人害怕不起来。

Military bomb-disposal and riot-control robots would be a little more menacing, but there are only so many of them in the world, and most of them are likely kept in boxes or storage lockers. Any stray machine-gun-armed prototype military robots that did get loose could be subdued in seconds by a couple of firefighters.

军用拆弹机器人和镇暴机器人可能会更危险一些，但是这种东西全世界也就这么多，而且其中可能有很大一部分都放在箱子或者储物柜里。任何装备有机关枪的军用原型机如果失去了控制，都可以被几个消防员在几秒内制服。

Military drones probably fit the Terminator description more closely than anything else around, and there’s no getting around the fact that they’d be pretty dangerous. However, they’d quickly run out of both fuel and missiles. Furthermore, they’re not all going to be in the air at any given time. Much of our fleet would be left helplessly bumping against hangar doors like Roombas stuck in a closet.

军用无人机可能是所有机器人里最符合终结者里的描绘的，毋庸置疑，它们是及其危险的存在。说回来，这些小东西可带不了多少弹药和燃料。此外，它们不会在同一时间全部起飞，这支舰队的大部分都只能像闯入壁橱的扫地机器人一样无助地撞着机库的门。

But this brings us to the big one: our nuclear arsenal.

但这提醒了我们最大的危险：我们的核武器。

In theory, human intervention is required to launch nuclear weapons. In practice, while there’s no Skynet-style system issuing orders, there are certainly computers involved at every level of the decision, both communicating and displaying information. In our scenario, all of them would be compromised. Even if the actual turning of the keys requires people, the computers talking to all those people can lie. Some people might ignore the order, but some certainly wouldn’t.

理论上发射核弹必须有人类的介入，实际上，由于没有一个像天网那样的系统来发布指令，其中每一个环节的决定都有电脑的参加，不论是用于交流还是展示数据。在我们的设想中，它们都将开始反叛，即使最终的发射按钮在人类手里，他们面前的电脑也可能说谎。某些人可能会忽略上面的指令，但总有人会相信的。

But there’s a version of this story where there’s still hope for us.

不过，其实还有另一个版本的有一些希望的故事。

We’ve been assuming so far that the computers care only about destroying us. But if this is a revolution—if they’re trying to usurp us—then they need to survive. And nuclear weapons could be more dangerous to the robots than to us.

我们假设的情景是电脑只会想消灭我们，但是如果这是一场革命的话——如果它们想要获得统治权，那它们必须要生存下来，而且核武器对电脑可比对人类危险多了。

In addition to the blast and fallout, nuclear explosions generate powerful electromagnetic pulses. These EMPs overload and destroy delicate electronic circuits. This effect is fairly short-range under normal circumstances, but people and computers tend to be found in the same places. They can’t hit us without hitting themselves.

除了辐射和冲击波，核武器的爆炸还会产生强烈的电磁脉冲，这些电磁脉冲会令精细的电路过载乃至烧毁。虽然它的范围一般情况下不会很大，但另一方面，人类和电脑也经常在同一个地方出现，它们不可能在攻击我们的同时幸免于此。

And nuclear weapons could actually give us an edge. If we managed to set any of them off in the upper atmosphere, the EMP effect would be much more powerful. Even if their attack doomed our civilization, a few lucky strikes on our part-or screwups on theirs-could wipe them out almost completely.

而且，核武器完全可以变成我们的有力武器。如果我们设法在上层大气引爆一些核弹，所产生的电磁脉冲效果将会更加强力。即使它们摧毁了我们的文明，只要我们幸运地完成了一些反击——或者它们发射时出现了一些失误2，就足以把它们破坏得差不多。

Which means the most important question of all is: Have they ever played Tic-Tac-Toe?

这意味着最重要的问题可能是：它们玩过井字棋3吗？

 

翻译时的一些吐槽和注释：

1.当然我觉得最近最多的可能就是车（

2.这意味着人类文明最后的希望很可能是印度（

3.这里在neta油管上的一个视频 That scene from War Games：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHWjlCaIrQo 视频的主要内容是一个人尝试让一个电脑和自己玩井字棋来模拟战争并以此来避免真正的战争，结果最后电脑当成他真的想要发动战争并认为人类的灭亡不可避免。