A handful of the most powerful US tech companies have promised to bring more control and openness to the development of artificial intelligence, in an attempt to stem growing worries about a technology seen as destroying jobs, increasing income inequality and even threatening the future of humanity.

几家最具影响力的美国高科技企业已经承诺，要令人工智能(AI)技术的开发更加可控和透明，试图借此遏制人们对该技术日益增加的担忧。人们担心，人工智能技术会导致工作岗位流失，加剧收入不平等，甚至威胁到人类的未来。

The plans by the companies, including Google, Microsoft and Facebook, amounted to what one member of the group said was the first time an industry had ever banded together to shape the impact of a technology that had such a broad effect on the future of humanity.

实施这一计划的公司包括谷歌(Google)、微软(Microsoft)和Facebook。该组织一名成员表示，这一计划等于是一个行业首次联合起来，约束一种广泛影响人类未来的技术。

AI is on the cusp of transforming society and the consequences of this have to be studied in the open, said Yann LeCun, head of AI at Facebook and one of the pioneers of deep learning, the technique that has propelled recent breakthroughs in the field.

Facebook人工智能主管扬•莱库(Yann LeCun)表示：人工智能即将改变整个社会，必须公开研究这种改变的后果。

It will transform the way we connect with each other, the way we get information, medicine, transport, the way cities are organised.

这种技术将改变我们彼此联络的方式，改变我们获取信息、获得药品、开展交通运输的方式，改变城市的组织结构。

The companies, which also include Amazon and IBM, announced a non-profit, called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, to carry out the work.

这些企业还包括了亚马逊(Amazon)和IBM。它们宣布成立一个名为人工智能造福人类和社会合作组织(Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society)的非盈利机构，以开展这项工作。

It will conduct research into ethical questions about how AI affects society at large, and develop ways to make the new technology more transparent and understandable.

该组织将对有关人工智能具体如何影响社会的伦理问题开展研究，并找到提高这种新技术透明度、降低其理解难度的办法。

However, the biggest impetus behind the initiative has been the growing public and government worries about how such a powerful new technology will affect many aspects of life.

该倡议背后的最大动机，源于公众和政府对这种威力巨大的技术将如何影响生活方方面面越来越担心。

Eric Horvitz, an AI researcher at Microsoft, said the technology was at an inflection point, and that challenges were becoming clear.

微软人工智能研究人员埃里克•霍维茨(Eric Horvitz)表示，该技术是个转折点，相关挑战正浮出水面。

These include the hidden biases in algorithms that make implicit assumptions after being trained with specific sets of data; questions about the safety and trustworthiness of systems that often take decisions for reasons even their own programmers cannot understand; and ethical judgments that are embedded in systems to influence how they interact with humans in given situations.

这些挑战包括：程序中的隐形偏见，即用特定数据集训练后，程序会带上隐含假定前提；一些系统往往会以其开发人员也不能理解的逻辑做出决策，这些系统的安全性和可信任程度问题；如何设计人工智能系统中嵌入的伦理判断，这些伦理判断会在特定场合影响系统与人类的互动。

The Microsoft researcher said the group had looked back through the history of science, to the introduction of sweeping new technologies such as electricity and human flight, and not found any precedents for the industry-wide effort.

这位微软研究人员表示，该组织回顾了科学史，考察了电气技术和航空技术等当时全新技术的引入，没有发现这种全行业努力的先例。

He also denied that there was an explicit attempt in the notion of self-regulation to repel government intrusion in the field.

他还否认该领域存在名为自律、实为抵制政府侵犯的明确企图。

Instead, he said the industry research should be welcomed by governments, which often find it hard to understand the impact of such technologies.

相反，他表示政府会欢迎这一全行业开展的研究，因为政府往往很难理解此类技术的影响。