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共有 20 篇文章

谁在破坏 FB、谁又在拯救它、李开复的新书以及一周全球主流杂志导读 Weekly Spot 002

这期「Weekly Spot」,你将看到以下精彩内容:

  1. 桑德伯格是如何一手「破坏」Facebook 的?
  2. 扎克伯格还能修理好 Facebook 么?
  3. Google 人工智能的三件小事;
  4. 李开复的新书:
  5. 全球主流杂志导读;

观点和故事

(1)桑德伯格「破坏」Facebook

Facebook 本周遇到前所未有的质疑,《纽约时报》采访了 50 多位 FB 员工或前员工以及大量政府官员,展现了 FB 面对外部压力而做出的一系列看似正确却不负责任的决定

差不多两年前,在美国大选后,扎克伯格被问及 FB 是否影响了美国大选,扎克伯格说出了这么一番话

“I do think there is a certain profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason someone could have voted the way they did is they saw some fake news,” Zuckerberg said. “If you believe that, then I don’t think you have internalized the message the Trump supporters are trying to send in this election.”

这番话可以一次次拿出来证明扎克伯格当时的「无知」,但也是 Facebook 内部混乱管理的反应。《纽约时报》这篇调查长文指出,扎克伯格和桑德伯格完全低估了此次危机的影响。但由于桑德伯格在公司内部负责政治议题,因此本文也是围绕桑德伯格的一系列决策过程,比如她如何「最小化俄罗斯在 FB 的影响」:

If Facebook implicated Russia further, Mr. Kaplan said, Republicans would accuse the company of siding with Democrats. And if Facebook pulled down the Russians’ fake pages, regular Facebook users might also react with outrage at having been deceived: His own mother-in-law, Mr. Kaplan said, had followed a Facebook page created by Russian trolls.

Ms. Sandberg sided with Mr. Kaplan, recalled four people involved. Mr. Zuckerberg — who spent much of 2017 on a national “listening tour,” feeding cows in Wisconsin and eating dinner with Somali refugees in Minnesota — did not participate in the conversations about the public paper. When it was published that April, the word “Russia” never appeared.

Ms. Sandberg’s subordinates took a similar approach in Washington, where the Senate had begun pursuing its own investigation, led by Richard Burr, the North Carolina Republican, and Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat. Throughout the spring and summer of 2017, Facebook officials repeatedly played down Senate investigators’ concerns about the company, while publicly claiming there had been no Russian effort of any significance on Facebook.

再比如国会听证会前,Facebook 的游说者们曾多次暗示政府,希望 Google 也派出一位与桑德伯格同等级别的高层参加:

In the committee room the next day was an empty chair behind a placard labeled “Google.” Facebook had lobbied for the hearing to include a Google emissary of similar rank to Ms. Sandberg. The company won a partial victory when Mr. Burr announced that Larry Page, a Google co-founder, had been invited, along with Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive.

Mr. Dorsey showed up. Mr. Page did not.

As the hearing unfolded, senators excoriated Google for its absence, earning a wave of negative news coverage for Facebook’s rival.

《纽约时报》这篇文章还有一个潜在的可怕推理,当扎克伯格继续追寻人工智能拯救公司时,桑德伯格目前的一系列决策,到底是为了 Facebook 还是为了自己的个人品牌?尤其是桑德伯格未来可能会进入华盛顿圈子的背景里,Facebook 还有明天吗?


(2)扎克伯格能拯救公司吗?

9 月份的时候,《纽约客》有一篇扎克伯格的长文,作者为知名记者欧逸文,这篇文章涵盖的内容非常多,扎克伯格的家庭到他创立 FB 的经历以及 FB 发展过程中多个重要节点,你会发现扎克伯格形象,并非如 CNN 所言的「没有情商的工程师」,也不是电影《社交网络》里的那个野心勃勃的创业者。

但他却有着技术从业者或者硅谷人的傲慢,Facebook 2012 年开始推出在线直播产品 Live,但不久以后就出现了问题:

……the service let users flag videos as inappropriate, but it didn’t give them a way to indicate where in a broadcast the problem appeared. As a result, Facebook Live videos of people committing suicide, or engaged in criminal activity, started circulating before reviewers had time to race through, find the issues, and take the videos down. A few months after the service launched, a Chicago man named Antonio Perkins was fatally shot on Facebook Live and the video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

从产品设计的角度来看,Live 的初衷是提供一个以视频展示自己动态的新窗口,一如 Uber、滴滴对于所谓「共享出行」的推崇,但新技术与新理念却不得不和社会现实产生冲突,当 Facebook 面临上述问题时,并没有真正意识到问题的严重性,欧逸文写道:

The incident might have served as a warning to slow down, but, instead, the next day, Bosworth sent around a remarkable internal memo justifying some of Facebook’s “ugly” physical and social effects as the trade-offs necessary for growth: “Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good.”

美国大选中假新闻、缅甸种族冲突里的仇恨信息,扎克伯格的态度一如他在 2016 年的判断。他认为他的平台提供了足够丰富的新闻,无论真假;他同时也认为,他的用户可以像他一样分辨真假新闻。悲哀的是,或许也是这样的自信,让菲律宾、缅甸等地用户付出了生命的代价。

当扎克伯格承诺用技术改善缅甸地区的信息传播审核后,欧逸文特意找到当地商人证实,其结果并不尽如人意。直到被再次追问,扎克伯格给出的这个解决方案,或许是他最失望的,毕竟,在这里,他所追捧的人工智能,毫无用武之地:

Across the board, the solution to this is we need to move from what is fundamentally a reactive model to a model where we are using technical systems to flag things to a much larger number of people who speak all the native languages around the world and who can just capture much more of the content.

周五,Facebook 官方以及桑德伯格团队,已经就《纽约时报》的文章做出了一些回应,感兴趣的朋友可以点击这里阅读官方回应,桑德伯格的回应在这里。

这场涉及到技术、外交、政治乃至社会的博弈,没有所谓的胜者,唯一能做的,就是让损失降低到最低。


(3)Google AI 的三件「小事」

「目前的人工智能是非常愚蠢的,」这句话出自 Google Cloud AI 部门负责人 Andrew Moore,这个表态并非是否定人工智能,而是要更好地推进人工智能研究。

本周,Google 发布了 Android 输入法 Gboard 新版本里,加入了人工智能自动推荐 GIF 功能。据了解,该功能可以的 AI 算法都是基于本地运行,不仅速度快,而且能够降低用户对于隐私的担忧。

与此同时,Pixel 相机夜视模式评测。Google 上月展示了 Pixel 3 的夜视模式今天正式向所有 Pixel 手机相机开放,这是一个非常有趣的尝试,我曾在之前的会员通讯里做过详细讨论。针对这次更新,The Verge 有详细的评测

这两个产品都有一个共同的特点,基于终端的人工智能。通过将专属的硬件(比如 Pixel 手机里的图像芯片)以及适合手机的人工智能模型算法,Google 展现了一系列基于手机的人工智能能力,对手机行业发展有一定的示范意义。

目前所了解到的消息,下一年高通、三星的手机处理器都将加入独立的神经网络处理器(处理单元),这也意味着明年的智能手机的「智能」,会呈现出更多的可能性。

而且在《连线》杂志的一篇文章里,Google 也展示了自己的硬件设计野心

You might have not heard of Ross – but it’s this soft-spoken, grey-haired woman who would later add the mint-green power button to the Pixel smartphone. It’s Ross who turned your Google speakers into river pebbles. It’s Ross who signs off any other Google hardware product before it hits the shelves. Can she turn the search giant into a mighty hardware design leader – and even nudge people to like Google Glass?

“I do not think design is the only part they [Google] are rethinking,” says Carolina Milanesi, a smartphone analyst. “It is about the experience. While these devices must be visually appealing, it is really about what they do, not how they look that matters.”

Still, up until two years ago, Google didn’t really have hardware ambitions. Its Nexus line of handsets was not designed in-house; it was simply intended to showcase Android. But with Android’s position in the market now unassailable, there is intense competition between manufacturers to create the best Android phone – and Google doesn’t really need Nexus to showcase Android’s features any longer. So what changed?

本周,Google AI 的最后一条消息就是 Google Cloud AI 研发主管以及 Google AI 中国研发负责人李佳已经离开 Google。

电影和图书

李开复的《 AI·未来》

李开复下半年很忙,从他的新书《AI·未来》出版以来,不断在中、美、欧的会议上露面,还接受了一系列美国主流媒体的采访,俨然成为沟通中美人工智能产业发展的桥梁。

但坦率来说,这本书算不上人工智能领域的读物,虽然我相信这些文字都是李开复所写,但这本书更像是一个投资人眼里的中国科技行业素描。

在这样一个观察角度里,李开复列举中国创业的优势、中国创业者的特点,也就是他所说的「另类互联网」。而本书唯一值得探讨的一个点是在全书的第五章,作者提出了人工智能发展的四波浪潮:

目前,人工智能革命分为四波浪潮:互联网智能化(Internet AI)、商业智能化(business AI)、实体世界智能化(perception AI)、自主智能化(autonomous AI)。

每一波浪潮都将以不同方式利用人工智能的力量,颠覆不同产业,让人工智能更深层次地融入我们的生活。

前两波浪潮——互联网智能化及商业智能化——已经出现在了我们身边,互联网公司能以算法取代保险精算师、股票交易经理和医生助理。现在,感知人工智能正在把现实世界数字化,机器开始学习辨识我们的脸孔,识别我们身边的物体与语音,理解我们的需求,搞懂我们身边的世界。第三波浪潮将彻底改变我们和世界之间的互动体验以及模糊数字世界和现实世界之间的分界。随着自动驾驶汽车的上路、无人机的飞天,智能机器人接管工厂,第四波浪潮——自主人工智能将进一步改变农业、交通、连锁餐饮等众多领域。

简而言之,人工智能的影响,是一个由表及里、由浅到深、由消费者到产业的渗透,读到这里,这本书就可以结束阅读了。

封面秀

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11 月号的《大西洋月刊》封面很呆萌,但讨论的话题却很严肃。智能音箱已经不再是一台个人设备,而是具有了家庭属性,一如过往的电视机,当这台家庭「公共」设备越来越多,并理所当然地与家人互动之后,很多家庭关系都在重构,这篇[封面文章](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/alexa-how-will-you-change-us/570844/)并不是为了找寻答案,而是为了让大家更好地思考。同时,这期杂志里还有其他几篇值得读的长文,比如讨论 YouTube(视频网站)对于孩子的影响,标题也很有趣「Raised by Youtube」,还有一篇介绍五角大楼如何进行士兵大脑研究的文章。

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这期《彭博商业周刊》推荐一篇关于 Google 再次入华的文章,文章整体回顾了此次事件的一些主要事件,虽然没有得到 Google 高层的发言,但是还是有很多来自前员工和现员工的反馈,推荐一读。

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这周《经济学人》封面的命题非常宏大,所谓「资本主义新革命」,强调的是政府应该放开对经济的管控,更多让市场发挥作用。这个命题最终用 7 篇小文章来做了深层次的解读,其中也有对科技公司的讨论,某种意义上说,这些科技巨头既是市场的受益者也是市场的破坏者。

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这期《纽约客》里有一篇讨论 AI 时代图像是否还能反应真实的文章,我也在[上周](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/in-the-age-of-ai-is-seeing-still-believing)的 Weekly Spot 里做过推荐。

iPad Pro 评测与设计讨论、富人孩子如何使用屏幕设备以及全球主流杂志封面解读 #Weekly Spot 001

本期 Weekly Spot,你会看到如下推荐:

  • 围绕 iPad Pro 评测的讨论:到底什么 iPad Pro 的定位是什么?
  • Ive 谈 iPad Pro 的设计理念;
  • AI 时代里的所谓「眼见为实」;
  • 东西方两家公司谈人脸识别的道德观;
  • 穷人的孩子与富人的孩子,他们使用屏幕的方式各有不同;
  • 为什么电影《Crazy Rich Asians》在豆瓣评分如此之低?
  • 本周《经济学人》、《纽约客》、《彭博商业周刊》封面解读;

观点与故事

本周,iPad Pro 正式发售。周一晚间,全球范围内的评测视频陆续解禁上线,The Verge 的评测引发众多讨论。 a16z 合伙人 Steven Sinofsky 也在 Twitter 上发表了一番思考,很多观点值得琢磨,如果你关注 iPad Pro 的定位,不妨来看看他的观点

而在接受英国《独立报》采访时,苹果首席设计官 Ive 谈了很多对于 iPad Pro 的设计思考,其中他认为好的产品设计应该会让用户不假思索地使用,比如新 iPad Pro 的设计,取消了 Home 键,你也可以不用考虑横屏还是竖屏,FaceID 也可以解决关于解锁的问题,他的这番话也同样令人印象深刻:

"If you are making changes that are in the service of making something better, then you don’t need to convince people to fall in love with it again. Our sense of habit and familiarity with something is so developed, there is always that initial reaction that is more of a comment on something being different rather than necessarily better or worse. In my experience, if we try very hard to make material improvements, people quickly recognise those and make the sort of connection they had before with the product.”

此次 iPad Pro 搭载的 A12X 处理器被认为有史以来最强大的移动处理器,ArsTechnica 这篇文章全面介绍了 A12X 的性能优势,并且还透过苹果两位高层 Anand Shimpi 与 Phil Schiller,来展示苹果对于自主芯片的思考

“Fundamentally, the reason we built the chip, is in service to the product’s vision and its ambition,” Shimpi said. “At the end of the day we want to make sure that whatever vision we have set out for the thing, if it requires custom silicon, that we’re there to deliver. For a given form factor, for a given industrial design in this thermal envelope, no one should be able to build a better, more performant chip.”
……
There are a couple of additional possible reasons Apple may be pushing this hard that Schiller didn’t mention. First, Apple has made augmented reality a major focus in recent iOS releases, in its development APIs, and in its iPhone and iPad hardware—including the silicon. As we noted in our coverage of ARKit 2, Apple’s investment there is not just about current use cases on iPhones, but racing to a future tipping point where AR may become ubiquitous.

If the company can avoid resting on its laurels and focus on building the world’s most powerful consumer AR platform before competitors, it may go into that possible future in a strong position. That will require ongoing, aggressive work on its custom silicon, among other things.

AI 时代,影像的真实性早已不再。《纽约客》这篇文章,详细讨论了 AI 给图像领域带来的变革,当图像造假、视频造假的成本越来越低,这个社会长期以来所形成的「眼见为实」的认知也遭遇巨大挑战。

而在这个 AI 时代,东西方公司对于人脸识别的道德观思考也有非常大的差别,依图公司作为国内人脸识别领先的创业公司,其东南亚、港澳地区技术总监 Scott Ong 认为:

How individual data could be used depends on an agreement in society……

同样是针对人脸识别的道德问题,亚马逊公司本周在内部举行了一场沟通会,包括创始人贝佐斯、AWS 老大 Andy Jassy 悉数到场,BuzzFeed 获得了这场会议的会议记录,并援引一位匿名亚马逊员工的邮件表示,亚马逊员工对于高层的的表态非常不满意,他们无法相信高层的说法。

科技产品对于教育的改变已经无法阻挡,但《纽约时报》的记者发现,面对科技产品,富人和穷人正在发生分化,这篇报道让我想起专栏作者 Nick Bilton 对于乔布斯的描述,他说乔布斯是一个「Low-tech Parent」,2014 年的时候,Nick Bilton 在《纽约时报》回忆一段与与乔布斯的对话:

“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. Jobs, trying to change the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves. “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”

Nick 曾这样想象乔布斯的的家庭环境:

I had imagined the Jobs’s household was like a nerd’s paradise: that the walls were giant touch screens, the dining table was made from tiles of iPads and that iPods were handed out to guests like chocolates on a pillow.

但乔布斯给出的答案则是:「not even close」。来自乔布斯传记传记艾萨克森的「证词」也进一步证实了乔布斯的话:

Every evening Steve made a point of having dinner at the big long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things. No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted at all to devices.”

事实上,对于互联网或者屏幕的取舍,始终存在一种鸿沟,某种意义上也是一种「特权」。《连线》前主编克里斯·安德森如是说道:

The digital divide was about access to technology, and now that everyone has access, the new digital divide is limiting access to technology……

这句话值得每个做家长的人深思。

图书和电影

这周看了一部期待很久的电影《Crazy Rich Asians》(中文译为《摘金奇缘》),这是一部继《喜福会》后又一部全员卡司为亚裔出演的好莱坞电影,这部电影改编自凯文·关的同名畅销小说。电影 8 月份在北美上映,一路好评不断,目前 IMDB 的评分为 7.4。

但在豆瓣评分上,只有区区的 6.6,而且还是大陆没有上映的情况下,随着本月底登陆国内院线,这部电影的评分可能还会更低。

究其原因,除了剧情的吐槽,很大层面原因在于,国人对于祖辈来自中国、黄皮肤、能说一定国语的人的认知始终脱离不了所谓「华侨」的概念,并拼命在这些人身上找认同感,这更像是长期以来被洗脑后的傲慢与偏见。

封面秀

我目前订阅的报纸杂志(电子版)包括《纽约时报》、《华尔街日报》、《经济学人》、《纽约客》、《彭博商业周刊》以及《连线》杂志。下面来看看这周有哪些值得关注的封面吧。

《经济学人》

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周六出版的《经济学人》封面关注的是美国中期大选。社论部分里,有一篇文章关注了中国对游戏行业的监管,但重点是分析在线游戏的商业模式。

而在商业栏目,《经济学人》用了一个非常有趣的标题「WeFlat」来定义腾讯 20 岁所经历的这一切,主要讨论了腾讯面临的游戏监管压力,与利润下降同时产生的危险,可能还有如何应对阿里巴巴的挑战,比如云计算。

《彭博商业周刊》

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这周《彭博商业周刊》杂志主要谈全球经济增长的新力量,比如印度、尼日利亚、土耳其等。

其中「科技」栏目有李开复的一篇专访,话题是「中美 AI 」,一问一答中规中矩。

《连线》

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《连线》杂志是月刊,11 月的封面是乔治·贝佐斯的太空计划,文章作者 Steven Levy 详细介绍了贝佐斯如何一步步实现自己的太空梦想,如果你对贝佐斯有兴趣,这篇封面文章非常值得一读,点击这里阅读。

《纽约客》

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这周的《纽约客》,封面蛮有趣的,没有发现好看的文章。