又是一天，AI又创造了一个令人瞠目结舌的壮举。就在上个月，OpenAI宣布攻克了七大千禧年大奖难题之一，这是克莱数学研究所于2000年提出的一组复杂未解难题。紧接着是Google DeepMind的新成果AlphaGenome Atlas，它预测了人类基因组中所有90亿种可能的单字母变化的生物学效应。
Another day, another jaw-dropping feat by AI. Just last month, OpenAI announced that it had solved one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems, a set of complex unanswered questions proposed by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. Then there was Google DeepMind’s new AlphaGenome Atlas, which predicted the biological effects of all 9 billion possible single-letter changes in the human genome.
这些壮举令人惊叹。自2022年ChatGPT发布以来，每一代AI前沿模型所取得的无数里程碑和成就同样令人惊叹。但当我们惊叹于机器时，人类却被挤到了一边。在承认AI惊人能力的同时，我们不应忽视人类创造的敬畏感所具有的不可替代的价值。
These feats are awe-inspiring. As are the countless number of milestones and accomplishments each successive AI frontier model has racked up since ChatGPT was launched in 2022. But as we marvel at the machines, what gets crowded out are the humans. While acknowledging the amazing capacity of AI, we shouldn’t lose sight of the irreplaceable value of human-generated awe.
伯克利心理学教授达彻·凯尔特纳研究敬畏体验对我们身心健康的影响。他将敬畏描述为“置身于某种宏大事物面前、超越你当下对世界理解的感觉”。
Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at Berkeley, studies the impact that experiences of awe have on our physical and mental health. He describes awe as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.”
AI的胜利当然符合这一定义。但凯尔特纳的一项研究——调查了26个国家的2600个敬畏故事——得出了一个极具启示性的发现。“是什么最常让世界各地的人们感到敬畏？”他写道。“大自然？精神实践？聆听音乐？事实上，是他人的勇气、善良、力量或克服困难。”凯尔特纳说，这一发现让他的团队大吃一惊——他们原本预期大自然和精神层面会名列前茅。
The triumphs of AI certainly qualify. But one of Keltner’s studies, which looked at 2,600 stories of awe across 26 countries, had a very revealing finding. “What most commonly led people around the world to feel awe?” he writes. “Nature? Spiritual practice? Listening to music? In fact, it was other people’s courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming.”The finding, Keltner says, caught his team off guard—they were expecting nature and spirituality to come out on top.
凯尔特纳称之为“道德之美”，并将其定义为“见证他人的善良、勇气、力量或无私”。研究中激发敬畏的道德之美，95%源于见证人们为他人采取的行动。
Keltner called it “moral beauty,” which he defined as “witnessing the kindness, courage, strength, or selflessness of other people.”Of the moral beauty that inspired awe in the study, 95% came from witnessing actions that people took on behalf of others.
凯尔特纳将“道德之美”列为他提出的“生活中的八大奇迹”之首，这些奇迹正是我们日常产生敬畏之情的源泉。其他几项则分别是集体行动、自然、音乐、视觉设计、灵性与宗教、宏大理念，以及生与死。科技虽能在诸多方面发挥作用，但这些奇迹的形成主要还是源于人类自身及其相互间的联结。
Keltner listed moral beauty as the first of his “eight wonders of life” that are everyday sources of awe. The others are collective movement, nature, music, visual design, spirituality and religion, big ideas, and life and death. Technology can play a part in many of those, but they’re mostly deeply shaped by humans and human connection.
敬畏之情带来的诸多益处其实都带有浓厚的人性色彩。凯尔特纳援引研究指出，敬畏能够抑制大脑中与过度自我中心、自我批判及焦虑相关的区域活动。这种影响既具有个体层面的意义，也能产生集体层面的效应。他在书中写道：“在产生敬畏之情的时刻，我们会从‘只能掌控自身命运且需与他人竞争’的心态，转变为‘自己是某个共同体的一员，与他人共享本质特质、相互依存并携手合作’的认知。”
Many of the benefits of awe have a deeply human element. Keltner cites research showing that awe quiets the regions of the brain associated with excessive ego, self-criticism and anxiety. And this can have an expansive and collective impact. “In moments of awe,” Keltner writes in , “we shift from the sense that we are solely in charge of our own fate and striving against others to feeling we are part of a community, sharing essential qualities, interdependent and collaborating.”
然而，当像人工智能这样的新技术动摇了我们对于真实社群的感知时，情况又会如何呢？事实上，人类容易被机器吸引的现象早在人工智能出现之前便已存在，只要有了机器，这种现象便随之而来。哈佛历史学家佩里·米勒首创了“技术崇高感”这一术语，他指出，到19世纪初，“技术的宏伟壮丽”已与“头顶的星空”及“内心的道德法则”共同构成了美国特有的“崇高感三重象征”。
But what happens when a new technology, like AI, disrupts our sense of authentic community? To be sure, the ease with which our heads can be turned by machines long predates AI and has been with us as long as machines have. The term "technological sublime" was coined by the Harvard historian Perry Miller, who found that by the early nineteenth century "technological majesty" had joined "the starry heavens above and the moral law within to form a peculiarly American trinity of the Sublime.”
1994年，历史学家大卫·奈伊探讨了自动化工厂、早期运河系统以及人类登月等成就所激发的敬畏之情对国家认同的影响。奈伊指出，由科技引发的敬畏感往往会排挤掉其中的人性因素。在描述从新建摩天大楼上俯瞰时的震撼体验时，他写道：“这种体验让观察者脱离了与他人的联结感。”站在那样的高度俯视，下方的人群便成了“失去人性特征的普通昆虫”。
In 1994, historian David Nye’s explored the impact that awe inspired by achievements like automated factories, the first canal systems, and the moon landing had on national identity. Nye notes how tech-inspired awe crowded out the human element. Writing about the awe-inspiring view from the new skyscrapers, he observed that it "divorced the observer from the sense of connection with others." From that height, the people below became "mere insects whose humanity had disappeared.”
当然，我们每个人都深有体会：通过手机与整个世界相连所带来的敬畏感，同时也可能让我们与身边的人变得疏远。
And of course, all of us know how the awe of being connected to the entire world through our phones can simultaneously disconnect us from those around us.
近一个世纪前，阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦在加州理工学院对学生们发表演讲——这些学生日后无疑会创造出令人惊叹的科技成果。他叮嘱道：“对人类自身及其命运的关怀，应当始终是所有技术努力的核心目标……唯有如此，我们智慧的结晶才能成为人类的福祉而非祸害。在埋头于各种图表与方程式时，也绝不可忘记这一点。”诚然，我们会对机器的强大能力心生敬畏；然而在日常生活中，无论是大自然的壮丽还是人类道德层面的美好，同样能带给我们无尽的敬畏之情。
Nearly a century ago, Albert Einstein was addressing the students of Caltech—many of whom would no doubt go on to create awe-inspiring technology themselves—and gave them this charge: “Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors... in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.”So sure, we will be awed by what the machines can do. But there is also so much awe to be had in our everyday lives, both in nature and in the moral beauty of humans.
正如凯尔特纳所言，体验敬畏之情“并不需要金钱，也无需燃烧化石燃料”，更不需要任何虚拟代币！
As Keltner notes, experiencing awe “doesn’t require money or the burning of fossil fuels.”Or tokens!
他写道：“由于我们的大脑与身体天生就具备对敬畏之情的需求，只要稍加留意、心生好奇，便能轻易感受到敬畏。无论出身如何，我们都能找到属于自己的、能带来敬畏体验的方式。”
“Because we have a basic need for awe wired into our brains and bodies,” he writes, “finding awe is easy if we just take a moment and wonder. All of us, no matter what our background, can find our own meaningful path to awe.