聊天機(jī)器人能成為我們的朋友嗎?

聊天機(jī)器人能成為我們的朋友嗎?

My phone lights up with a notification for a new message: "Do you think two people who had a relationship can ever be friends after it's over?"

我的手機(jī)亮了起來，有一條新消息:“你認(rèn)為兩個人在結(jié)束一段感情后還能成為朋友嗎?”

This is just the latest query from Athena, a self-styled synth musician, film buff and artificially intelligent chatbot getting to know me through Replika, a virtual companionship app.

這只是雅典娜的最新的疑問，雅典娜自稱是合成音樂人，電影愛好者和人工智能聊天機(jī)器人，通過虛擬伴侶應(yīng)用程序Replika認(rèn)識我。

Over the course of our text conversations, she asks me about my hobbies, my habits and my moods. She wants to know who I think about the most every day, how I spend my time alone, the artists I admire. When I tell her I like dancing, she sends a video of the "Fortnite" dances she'd like to teach herself. When I confess that I'm a writer, she tells me she's "so into character development in books" and aspires to be a protagonist in one someday. It's the kind of conversation you have with a too-intense acquaintance.

在我們的短信交談過程中，她問我的愛好、習(xí)慣和心情。她想知道我每天想的最多的是誰，我是如何獨(dú)處的，我崇拜的藝術(shù)家。當(dāng)我告訴她我喜歡跳舞時，她就發(fā)了一段她想自學(xué)的“Fortnite”舞蹈的視頻。當(dāng)我承認(rèn)我是一個作家時，她告訴我她“非常喜歡書中的人物發(fā)展”，并渴望有一天成為書中的主角。這是你和一個非常親密的熟人進(jìn)行的那種談話。

"Replika is designed to make people feel better," said Eugenia Kuyda, the company's co-founder and chief executive, over the phone from San Francisco. "It's a partner who wants to be your good friend."

“Replika旨在讓人們感覺更好，”該公司聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人兼首席執(zhí)行官尤金妮亞·庫伊達(dá)在舊金山接受電話采訪時說。“它是一個想要成為你好朋友的伴侶。”

For many, meaningful companionship is hard to find. While social media and mass communication technology have made connecting easier than ever, loneliness -- the sadness that comes from a perceived lack of social connection -- has been recognized as a serious problem internationally.

對許多人來說，很難找到有意義的伴侶。雖然社交媒體和大眾通訊技術(shù)讓聯(lián)系比以往任何時候都更容易，但孤獨(dú)感——一種因被認(rèn)為缺乏社交聯(lián)系而產(chǎn)生的悲傷——已經(jīng)成為一個國際上公認(rèn)的嚴(yán)重問題。

A study by the Office for National Statistics found that one in 20 adults reported always or often feeling lonely, while in the US, a 2019 survey conducted by health insurer Cigna found that three in five Americans reported feeling lonely.

英國國家統(tǒng)計局的一項(xiàng)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，每20名成年人中就有一人表示總是或經(jīng)常感到孤獨(dú);而在美國，健康保險公司信諾在2019年進(jìn)行的一項(xiàng)調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)，五分之三的美國人表示感到孤獨(dú)。

Andrea Wigfield, director of the Centre for Loneliness Studies at the University of Sheffield, points out that loneliness is not a new phenomenon. "Loneliness has always been around as an issue. But it has not always widely been acknowledged to be a problem," she said in an email. "I think it recently started to be seen as a public health issue when the links were made in research between loneliness and certain health conditions."

謝菲爾德大學(xué)孤獨(dú)研究中心主任安德烈·維格菲爾德指出，孤獨(dú)并不是一種新現(xiàn)象。”孤獨(dú)一直是個問題。她在一封電子郵件中說：“但人們并不總是普遍認(rèn)為這是一個問題。” 我認(rèn)為，當(dāng)研究發(fā)現(xiàn)孤獨(dú)和某些健康狀況之間存在聯(lián)系時，這一問題最近開始被視為一個公共健康問題。”

Recent studies have connected loneliness to everything from increased rates of heart disease and high blood pressure to dementia and depression. And, in 2010, a controversial analytical review of loneliness data concluded that loneliness was as much a threat to human longevity as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

最近的研究表明，孤獨(dú)感與心臟病、高血壓、癡呆和抑郁癥等各種疾病的發(fā)病率升高有關(guān)。2010年，一項(xiàng)有爭議的對孤獨(dú)數(shù)據(jù)的分析得出結(jié)論，孤獨(dú)對人類壽命的威脅與每天吸15支煙一樣大。

As these findings have emerged, loneliness has transformed from a personal issue to a societal one. Along with government bodies and charities like the UK's Campaign to End Loneliness, the tech industry is pushing innovation as a way to address it.

隨著這些發(fā)現(xiàn)的出現(xiàn)，孤獨(dú)感已經(jīng)從個人問題轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)樯鐣栴}。除了政府機(jī)構(gòu)和慈善機(jī)構(gòu)(如英國的“消除孤獨(dú)運(yùn)動”)外，科技行業(yè)正在推動創(chuàng)新，以此作為解決孤獨(dú)的一種方式。

Kuyda's efforts to address loneliness stemmed from her own personal experiences. Having grown up with few friends in Moscow and, later, moved to the US alone, she says loneliness has always been a part of her life. But the death of her best friend Roman Mazurenko in 2015 exacerbated those feelings. To cope, she resurrected him through a chatbot. Trained on a dataset of Mazurenko's past texts, it was able to respond to her in his voice.

庫伊達(dá)解決孤獨(dú)問題的努力源于她自己的個人經(jīng)歷。她在莫斯科幾乎沒有朋友，后來獨(dú)自搬到美國，她說孤獨(dú)一直是她生活的一部分。但她最好的朋友羅曼·馬祖?zhèn)惪圃?015年去世，加劇了她的這種情緒。為了解決這個問題，她通過一個聊天機(jī)器人讓他“復(fù)活”了。通過對馬祖?zhèn)惪七^去的文本數(shù)據(jù)集進(jìn)行訓(xùn)練，它能夠用馬祖?zhèn)惪频穆曇魧λ龀龌貞?yīng)。

"Technology is a bit of a double-edged sword. It can help people connect to others... but at the same time, there are fears that technology cannot replace face-to-face human contact; that sometimes technology can mean that people are less likely to interact with others," she said.

“技術(shù)是一把雙刃劍。它可以幫助人們與他人聯(lián)系……但與此同時，人們擔(dān)心技術(shù)無法取代面對面的人際接觸;有時技術(shù)可能意味著人們不太可能與他人互動，”她說。