你正在阅读来自《星球金钱》指标栏目的通讯。每周一次，我们为你精选商业、金融、经济领域的精彩故事与见解，以及它们为何重要。每周五发送。
You're reading a newsletter from The Indicator from Planet Money. Once a week, we curate our favorite stories and insights on business, finance, economics and why they matter. here to every Friday.
赢得经济学诺贝尔奖后，你的第一件事会是什么？买一辆科迈罗？向童年时欺负过你的人炫耀？对于联合得主迈克尔·伍德福德来说，他的第一件事是……监考一场考试。哥伦比亚大学教授迈克尔·伍德福德得知自己与罗伯特·霍尔共同获得经济学诺贝尔奖的当天，回到他那门名为“认知机制与经济行为”的课堂，主持了一场考试。他走进教室时，受到了欢呼和掌声的欢迎。他举起双臂，胜利地挥舞。即将推出：Character.ai正在经历破产。我们可以从这家AI初创公司的衰落中学到什么？
After you win the economics Nobel, what would your first act be? Buy a Corvette? Gloat to your childhood bully? For co-winner Michael Woodford, his first act was … proctor an exam. The DAY that Columbia professor Michael Woodford found out that he and Robert Hall won the economics Nobel, he returned to his class with the pithy title "Cognitive Mechanisms and Economic Behavior" to administer an exam. He was welcomed to the classroom with cheers and applause. He held up his arms in triumph. Coming up: Character.ai is going through bankruptcy. What can we learn from the AI startup's decline?
特朗普总统为何想从俄罗斯进口柴油燃料 我们正在关注的新闻 当AI初创公司被吞并时，留下了什么？
Why President Trump wants to import diesel fuel from Russia News We're Watching When AI startups get vacuumed up, what's left behind?
需要知道：Character.ai是一家让你能与“伙伴”对话的公司——一个由AI驱动的虚构角色、历史人物，或是你决定创建的任何角色。它在ChatGPT推出前不久面世，部分因在TikTok上被广泛采用而迅速走红。其峰值月活跃用户达到2800万。
What to know: Character.ai is a company that allows you to speak with a "companion" — an AI-powered fictional character, historical figure, or whatever you decide to build. It came out just before ChatGPT and quickly went viral in part thanks to its adoption on TikTok. It hit 28 million monthly active users at its peak.
Character.ai拥有大量用户参与度、庞大的客户群和大量人才……谷歌在2024年迅速以27亿美元将其“收入囊中”。但谷歌并未收购该公司并将其吸收！不，这种传统的“顺带收购”模式需要各种法律和监管批准。相反，他们挖走了创始人（以及团队中的其他大腕），并购买了该技术的非独占许可，将公司本身留在了身后。这被称为“反向顺带收购”，过去两年中AI初创公司至少发生过六次。本周，Character.ai正在申请第11章破产保护。
Character.ai had a lot of engagement, a big customer base, lots of talent … and Google promptly picked 'em up for $2.7 billion back in 2024. But Google didn't buy the company and absorb it! No, that traditional "acquihire" model would require all sorts of legal and regulatory approvals. Instead, they hired away the founders (and other big hitters on the team) and bought the nonexclusive license to the technology, leaving the company itself behind. That's called a "reverse acquihire," and it's happened at least six times in the past two years with AI startups. Now this week, Character.ai is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
为何此事值得关注：“逆向收购”往往不会让被收购公司处于最佳发展状态。与谷歌达成协议后，Character.ai不得不调整商业模式——不再投入巨额资金用于大语言模型的训练，转而专注于开发人工智能角色。公司创始人也相继离开。虽然这家规模缩水后的公司账面上仍有27亿美元资金，但管理层仍急于融资，因为他们难以实现用户群体的商业化变现。
Why it matters: A "reverse acquihire" doesn't leave a company in the greatest position. After the Google deal, Character.ai had to change its business model away from the quite costly LLM training and toward developing AI characters. Its founders were gone. Sure, the shrunken company had $2.7 billion in the bank, but leadership was still looking to raise money as they struggled to monetize their user base.
那么，这种“逆向收购”究竟是问题的根源，还是更大隐患的表象呢？事实上，Character.ai当时正面临大量诉讼，被指控对未成年人造成伤害；同时迪士尼也对其提起了版权侵权诉讼。如今，这家曾经前景光明的公司仅剩残躯，而迪士尼则以2000万美元的价格收购了其部分业务，对此显得十分满意。此次从俄罗斯进口柴油的协议会影响油价吗？
So is the "reverse acquihire" what caused the pain? Or was it a symptom of a larger issue? Character.ai faced a mountain of litigation over alleged harm to minors plus copyright concerns from Disney. So what's left behind? A once very promising company, which Disney is very excited to pick over for parts of it for $20 million. Will this Russian diesel deal affect price?
事件背景：为在中期选举前降低燃油价格，特朗普总统上周签署协议，允许从俄罗斯进口柴油。两周前，我们在通讯中曾提到，禁止柴油出口或许有助于压低价格，但这一举措并未实施。一周前，我们又报道了特朗普签署行政命令、暂缓征收柴油税的消息。如今，这一新协议又出台了！
What's going on: President Trump signed a deal last week to get diesel from Russia in an effort to lower fuel prices ahead of the midterms. Two weeks ago, we talked in the newsletter about the potential of a diesel export ban to lower prices. It didn't happen. One week ago, we talked again about Trump issuing an executive order to defer a tax from diesel. Now, this! It's safe to say people were surprised by the move, given Trump signed a Russian sanctions law just last month that looked to tamp down on their energy revenues.
可以肯定，人们对这一举措感到惊讶，因为特朗普上个月刚签署了一项俄罗斯制裁法，旨在削减其能源收入。超出惊讶之外，一跨党派参议员团体公开呼吁总统撤销这项交易。他们说，这笔交易让普京拥有推动其战争机器的资金，并“使俄罗斯能够继续对乌克兰平民发动残酷袭击”。
Beyond surprise, a bipartisan group of senators is openly calling for the president to rescind the deal. They said it gives Putin the funds to power his war machine and "enables Russia to continue its brutal attacks on Ukrainian civilians."
这会有什么效果吗？同一跨党派参议员团体表示，这笔交易对美国人而言“几乎没有或根本没有缓解”。高盛估计，俄罗斯石油的释放将使批发价格每桶受影响1至2美元。一桶柴油的价格约为200美元。所以，1至2美元的影响？独立能源分析师尼尔·阿特金森说：“坦率地说，[这]是个四舍五入的误差。对全球柴油市场没有根本性影响。”
Will this do anything? The same bipartisan group of senators said this deal will mean "limited to no relief to Americans." Goldman Sachs estimated the release of Russian oil would affect wholesale prices by $1 to $2 per barrel. The price of a barrel of diesel is around $200. So a $1 to $2 impact? Neil Atkinson, an independent energy analyst, says, "Frankly, [it's] a rounding error. It makes no fundamental difference to the global diesel market."
不过，对阿特金森来说更奇怪的事是……俄罗斯其实并没有真正出口柴油。其炼油厂已受损，实际上一直在进口柴油以弥补短缺。“这些俄罗斯柴油桶将从哪里来，运往美国或全球其他市场，有点神秘，”阿特金森说。
What's weirder to Atkinson, though … Russia hasn't really been exporting diesel. Its refineries have been damaged, and it's literally been importing diesel to make up for shortfalls. " So where these barrels of Russian diesel are going to come from to go either to the United States or elsewhere in the global market is a bit of a mystery," said Atkinson.
今日指标 那个不存在的诺贝尔奖 如果你还没听过：记者格雷格·罗萨尔斯基在文章开头描述了迈克尔·伍德福德和罗伯特·霍尔究竟因何获得经济学诺贝尔奖。他们通过将微观经济学原理引入约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的传统模型，帮助塑造了所谓的新凯恩斯主义经济学。但随后，格雷格解释说，诺贝尔奖最初并不包括经济学奖项。
Today's Indicator The Nobel Prize that wasn't If you HAVEN'T listened: Reporter Greg Rosalsky opens the piece describing WHAT exactly Michael Woodford and Robert Hall won the economics Nobel for. They helped shape what's known as NEW Keynesian economics by bringing microeconomic principles to the traditional models of John Maynard Keynes. BUT THEN, Greg goes on to explain that the Nobel Prize did not initially include an economics award.
不，情况改变于世界上最古老的中央银行——瑞典央行——希望以盛大方式庆祝其300周年纪念。他们决定资助一项新的经济学奖项。这是一个引人入胜的故事，你可以在下方收听。
No, that changed when the Swedish Central Bank, the oldest central bank in the world, wanted to celebrate its 300th anniversary with a bang. They would fund a new award for economics. It's a fascinating story which you can listen to below.
如果您已经收听了：约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的一个主要哲学是，政府可以通过增加支出来对抗衰退，并通过控制支出来应对通胀。在最初的草稿中，这一内容未能进入最终节目，格雷格提到滞胀是这一概念的核心难题。具体来说，上世纪70年代，在阿拉伯石油禁运期间，美国面临高失业率和高通胀率的双重打击，导致了滞胀。
If you HAVE listened: A leading philosophy of John Maynard Keynes is that governments could fight recessions by boosting spending, and deal with inflation by holding spending back. In the initial draft that didn't make it into the final episode, Greg touched on how STAGFLATION was a central thorn in the side of this concept. Specifically, back in the 1970s, during the Arab oil embargo, the U.S. dealt with the one-two punch of high unemployment and high inflation, bringing about stagflation.
这挑战了凯恩斯主义的观点，即当大量人失业且支出减少时，通胀会下降。因为在那个时候，失业率和通胀率同时上升。这不是很好吗？格雷格·罗萨尔斯基撰写《行星金钱》通讯……您可以在这里看到。本周余下时间 共和党的支出优势在中期选举中会起作用吗？
It challenged the Keynesian idea that when lots of people are out of work and spending less, inflation comes down. Because at that point, unemployment and inflation rose together. Isn't that nice? Greg Rosalsky writes Planet Money's newsletter … you can catch that here. Rest of the week Will the Republican spending advantage matter in the midterms?
在我们的闲暇时间 制片人库珀·卡茨·麦金姆正在阅读《AGI编年史》 哦天啊，这是我一段时间以来读过的最引人入胜的非虚构书籍。凯文·罗斯，即将推出的NPR播客《机器之神》的联合主持人，曾是《纽约时报》的《硬核》节目主持人，他追踪了一小群正在竞相将AI变为商业现实的人物。这远非一个清晰明了的故事。
In Our Spare Time Producer Cooper Katz McKim is reading The AGI Chronicles Man oh man, this is the page-turniest nonfiction book I've read in a while. Kevin Roose, co-host of the upcoming NPR podcast Machine Gods, formerly The New York Times' Hard Fork, tracks the handful of characters racing to make AI a commercial reality. It is far from a clear-cut story.
没有一个人提出了这个想法并付诸实践……今天AI的存在归功于众多论文、众多个人发现以及大量的痴迷。我之前没有意识到，在2020年前AI已经取得了多大的进展，也没有意识到许多行业领袖对甚至创建AI本身就感到担忧（看你，阿莫代伊），因为他们害怕创造出一个超越人类控制的超级智能。这本书充满八卦味，又言之有物……我会推荐。
There's no one character who came up with the idea and executed it … the existence of AI today comes down to many papers, many individual discoveries, and a whole lot of obsession. I didn't realize how much progress had been made in AI prior to 2020 and how concerned many industry leaders were about even creating AI (looking at you, Amodei) for fear of creating a super-intelligence that moves outside of human control. It's gossip-y, it's matter of fact … I would recommend.