英国新闻听力 对智能机器人和基因编辑技术的思考

My eye was caught yesterday by a photo of a charming Chinese lady known to her friends as Yangyang. She has long hair, a fetching smile, Sarah Palin glasses, and a calm and gracious manner. Not only does she speak faultless Mandarin¹ but she’s also fluent in Japanese and can tell you to have a nice day in a dozen other languages. But she is undeniably creepy. You see, Yangyang, unveiled two days ago in Beijing, is a robot, and not a character in a science fiction film. Yangyang is real.

Perhaps I’m oversensitive to such things. You see an ancestor of mine, Rabbi Judah Loewe, the famous rabbi of Prague in the sixteenth century, is credited, at least in legend, with inventing the first robot, known as the Golem. Made of clay and brought to life by mystical incantation, he was a human-looking and -moving robot, created to defend the Jews of Prague from antisemitic attacks. The one limit Rabbi Loewe imposed was that he had to be switched off on the Sabbath. One Friday, the rabbi forgot to switch him off, and the Golem went on a rampage until the rabbi was able to remove the mystical name that gave it life, at which point it fell to pieces.

Now I’m not supposing for one moment that Yangyang is going to go on a rampage, but I do think a line is being blurred², especially when you put this story together with another one that came out of China less than two weeks ago, that researchers in Guangzhou have, for the first time, used gene³ editing techniques on human embryos⁴, that could change the very course of human evolution.

At what point will humans and machines merge⁵, with robots becoming human and humans designed like robots? Yuval Harari ends his recent book Sapiens with just this possibility. “We may fast be approaching a new singularity,” he says, “when all the concepts that give meaning to our world – me, you, men, women, love, hate – will become irrelevant⁶.” Those who are not spooked by this question, he adds, probably haven’t given it enough thought.

The time has come, I believe, for a serious global conversation about what makes us human, or in the language of the Bible, in the image and likeness⁷ of God himself. Let us not lose our humanity in a fit of absentmindedness, just because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

昨天一名美丽的中国女性的照片吸引了我，她的朋友们叫她洋洋，她一袭长发，有着迷人的笑容，戴着萨拉·佩林眼镜，仪态冷静优雅。她不仅能说着一口无可挑剔的汉语，还能讲流利的日语，还能用其他十几种语言向你问好。但毫无疑问她有点可怕，这个两天前在北京露面的洋洋是个机器人，而不是科幻影片里的人物，洋洋是真实存在的。

可能我对这类事物太过敏感了，我的祖先拉比拉比·洛伊是16世纪著名的布拉格拉比，传说中称赞他发明了第一个名叫勾勒姆的机器人。这个机器人是拉比·洛伊用泥土制成，然后用神秘的咒语使之具备生命，这个机器人有着人的外表，能够走动，创造他出来是为了保护布拉格的犹太人免受反犹主义的袭击。洛伊拉比给机器人施加的限制是必须在安息日将他关闭，一个周五，拉比忘记关闭了机器人，于是勾勒姆就四处搞破坏，直到拉比将赋予他生命的神秘名字取走，这时机器人变成了碎片。

我现在并不是在猜想有一天洋洋也会搞破坏，但我想有一条界限会变模糊，尤其是当你把这个故事和两周年出现在中国的一件事联系起来，当时广州的研究者首次在人类胚胎上使用基因编辑技术，这可能会改变人类演化的进程。

在哪一点上人类会和机器相融合，让机器人变成人类，人类设计得像机器人呢？尤瓦尔·哈拉瑞在新书《智人》的末尾写到了这种可能，他说，“我们可能很快会到达一个奇点，这时给予我们这个世界意义的所有概念—我、你、男人、女人、爱、恨—都会变得无关紧要。”他说，那些不为这一问题所惊吓的人，可能未曾深入思考过这个问题。

我认为现在需要就我们何以为人进行一场严肃的全球讨论，或者是在圣经的语言里，在神的形象和相似性里寻找。让我们不要在心不在焉中失去人性，虽然现在看起来这是个好主意。

1 Mandarin   

n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的

参考例句：

• Just over one billion people speak Mandarin as their native tongue.大约有十亿以上的人口以华语为母语。
• Mandarin will be the new official language of the European Union.普通话会变成欧盟新的官方语言。

2 blurred   

v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离

参考例句：

• She suffered from dizziness and blurred vision. 她饱受头晕目眩之苦。
• Their lazy, blurred voices fell pleasantly on his ears. 他们那种慢吞吞、含糊不清的声音在他听起来却很悦耳。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 gene   

n.遗传因子，基因

参考例句：

• A single gene may have many effects.单一基因可能具有很多种效应。
• The targeting of gene therapy has been paid close attention.其中基因治疗的靶向性是值得密切关注的问题之一。

4 embryos   

n.晶胚；胚，胚胎( embryo的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Somatic cells of angiosperms enter a regenerative phase and behave like embryos. 被子植物体细胞进入一个生殖阶段，而且其行为象胚。 来自辞典例句
• Evolution can explain why human embryos look like gilled fishes. 进化论能够解释为什么人类的胚胎看起来象除去了内脏的鱼一样。 来自辞典例句

5 merge   

v.(使)结合，(使)合并，(使)合为一体

参考例句：

• I can merge my two small businesses into a large one.我可以将我的两家小商店合并为一家大商行。
• The directors have decided to merge the two small firms together.董事们已决定把这两家小商号归并起来。

6 irrelevant   

adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的

参考例句：

• That is completely irrelevant to the subject under discussion.这跟讨论的主题完全不相关。
• A question about arithmetic is irrelevant in a music lesson.在音乐课上，一个数学的问题是风马牛不相及的。

7 likeness   

n.相像，相似（之处）

参考例句：

• I think the painter has produced a very true likeness.我认为这位画家画得非常逼真。
• She treasured the painted likeness of her son.她珍藏她儿子的画像。