A history-lover’s guide to the market panic over AI

Past technologies offer clues to what comes next

原文：

Andrew Odlyzko, a professor of mathematics at the University of

Minnesota, has a side hustle: he has become one of the world’s foremost

experts on the history of speculative bubbles. Part of his time is spent at the

Bank of England, where he photographs pages from thousands of

handwritten ledgers which he later scours for clues about earlier episodes of

excess. He hopes that generative artificial intelligence (AI) will one day take

the drudgery out of the task. It is not lost on him that the latest speculative

mania revolves around the technology itself.

明尼苏达大学的数学教授Andrew Odlyzko还有一个副业:他已经成为世界上研究投机泡沫历史的最重要的专家之一。他的一部分时间是在英格兰银行度过的，在那里他拍摄了成千上万的手写分类账，后来他从这些分类账中寻找早期过度行为的线索。他希望有一天，生成式人工智能(AI)将把这一苦差事从这项任务中解脱出来。他没有忘记，最近的投机狂热围绕着技术本身。

学习：

side hustle：副业

speculative：投机的

ledgers：美 [ˈlɛdʒərz] 分类账；（ledger的复数）

scour：（彻底地）搜寻；搜查；翻找

scour for clues：搜寻线索

drudgery：美 [ˈdrʌdʒəri] 苦工；单调乏味的工作；辛苦无趣的劳动

mania：美 [ˈmeɪniə] 狂热；癖好；疯狂；极端热情

revolves：围绕；（revolve的第三人称单数）

原文：

In recent days the standard-bearers of generative AI, including Nvidia, a

chipmaker, and tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft, have plummeted

in value. That has left sceptics, who had warned of a bubble in the

technology, feeling terribly clever. Many pointed to two earlier periods of

frenzied over-investment: the railway manias of the 19th century and the

telecommunications bubble of the late 1990s. In both cases, the capital

expenditures were similar to the huge amounts that big-tech firms are

promising to spend on the data centres at the heart of the AI revolution.

最近几天，生成式人工智能的旗手，包括芯片制造商Nvidia，以及亚马逊和微软等科技巨头，价值直线下降。这让曾警告该技术存在泡沫的怀疑论者感到非常聪明。许多人指出了前两个时期疯狂的过度投资:19世纪的铁路狂热和20世纪90年代末的电信泡沫。在这两种情况下，资本支出都类似于大型科技公司承诺在人工智能革命核心数据中心投入的巨额资金。

学习：

standard-bearer：旗手；领袖；领导者

原文：

Professor Odlyzko is an authority on both episodes. His research on the

railway manias of 19th-century Britain is widely cited. Before becoming an

academic, he worked at Bell Labs, a famed research outfit, where he was

one of the first to question the fallacy that internet usage was doubling every

100 days. Yet he dismisses the idea that railways or the internet are useful

guides to thinking about generative AI. They start from different positions, he

says. Both railway and telecoms firms knew early on how profit could be

generated: the first by taking traffic from other forms of transport; the

second by eclipsing other forms of communication and entertainment. It was

estimates of the size of the potential bonanza that proved hallucinatory.

Generative AI is different. Its disruptive potential is clear, but as yet no one

knows what its main uses will be, or how it will make money. Professor

Odlyzko sees better parallels with the telegraph and electricity booms of

19th-century America. “Engines that Move Markets”, by Alasdair Nairn, is a

history of investment bubbles and a useful primer on both episodes. Sadly, it

will not reassure today’s investors.

Odlyzko教授是这两次投资热的权威。他对19世纪英国铁路狂热的研究被广泛引用。在成为一名学者之前，他在著名的研究机构贝尔实验室工作，在那里他是最早质疑互联网使用每100天翻一番这一谬论的人之一。然而，他否认铁路或互联网是思考生成式人工智能的有用指南。他说，他们从不同的位置开始。铁路和电信公司很早就知道利润是如何产生的:第一种是通过从其他运输方式获取流量；第二个是使其他形式的交流和娱乐黯然失色。对潜在财富规模的估计被证明是幻觉。生成型AI就不一样了。它的颠覆性潜力是显而易见的，但是还没有人知道它的主要用途是什么，或者它将如何赚钱。Odlyzko教授认为这与19世纪美国的电报和电力繁荣有更好的相似之处。阿拉斯代尔·奈恩的《推动市场的引擎》是一部投资泡沫史，也是这两个时期的有用入门书。遗憾的是，这不会让今天的投资者放心。

学习：

academic：学者；大学教师；高等院校教师；

famed：出名的；闻名的；著名的

research outfit：研究机构

fallacy：美 [ˈfæləsi] 谬误；谬论；

bonanza：美 [bəˈnænzə] 富饶；兴盛；发财（或成功）的机遇；繁荣；生意兴隆；财富

primer：初级读本；识字课本

reassure：使放心；使…安心；安慰

原文：

Deployment of the telegraph provides a rough facsimile of how the tech

giants approach generative AI. At the beginning, telegraphs mostly helped

make trains run more smoothly. Railway barons such as Cornelius

Vanderbilt built telegraph networks alongside their existing tracks, much as

today’s tech giants have weaved generative AI into their existing cloud

offerings. Stand-alone telegraph companies had a difficult time at first. In

the mid-19th century massive investments were accompanied by fierce price

wars, as companies sought to protect their fiefs. The pay-off came only after

the civil war, when commercial use of the telegraph soared and companies

such as Western Union became profitmaking machines.

电报的部署粗略地再现了科技巨头如何接近生成式人工智能。起初，电报主要帮助火车运行得更平稳。像科尼利尔斯·范德比尔特这样的铁路巨头在他们现有的轨道上建立了电报网络，就像今天的科技巨头将生成式人工智能编织到他们现有的云产品中一样。独立的电报公司起初日子不好过。在19世纪中期，大规模投资伴随着激烈的价格战，因为公司寻求保护他们的领地。这种回报是在南北战争后才出现的，当时电报的商业用途激增，像西联这样的公司成了盈利机器。

学习：

facsimile： 美 [fækˈsɪməli] 复制品；仿制品；复印件 注意发音

barons：美 [ˈbærənz] 男爵；巨头；（baron的复数）

fief：英 [fiːf] 活动范围；领域

原文：

The early history of electric lighting looks more pertinent to Nvidia. Like

generative AI, it aroused popular excitement early on; for centuries, people

had wanted a cheaper and cleaner alternative to burning candles or oil for

light. Like Nvidia’s AI chips, known as graphics-processing units (GPUs), one

technology took an early lead. That was arc lighting, which Charles Brush,

an American entrepreneur, helped pioneer. He established the Anglo

American Brush Electric Light Corp, whose shares soared when it licensed

its technology to companies that Brush had helped finance. The gush of

profits made it seem inevitable that the business would prosper. Naysayers

were derided as unimaginative.

电灯的早期历史看起来与Nvidia更相关。像生成式人工智能一样，它很早就引起了大众的兴奋；几个世纪以来，人们一直想要一种更便宜、更清洁的替代方式来代替燃烧蜡烛或石油来照明。像英伟达的人工智能芯片，被称为图形处理单元(GPU)，一项技术取得了早期领先。这就是弧光灯，美国企业家查尔斯·布拉什帮助开创了这一技术。他建立了英美布拉什电灯公司，当该公司将其技术授权给布拉什帮助融资的公司时，其股价飙升。大量的利润使得生意兴隆似乎是不可避免的。反对者被嘲笑为缺乏想象力。

学习：

pertinent：美 [ˈpɜːrtnənt] 相关的；切题的；

aroused：唤醒；（arouse的过去式和过去分词）

gush：喷出；喷涌；迸发；爆发

naysayers：美 ['neɪ.seɪərs] 老是唱反调的人；拒绝者；否定者

原文：

Neither story ended well. Just as it had reached commercial success, Western

Union’s telegraph was gazumped by Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone,

which many of the best minds of the time had dismissed. The company’s

profitability declined from then on. As for electricity, it eventually became

clear that arc lighting was too expensive to make business sense, and the

“Brush bubble” burst. Thomas Edison proved the superiority of incandescent

lighting. His company eventually became General Electric, a beacon of

American enterprise throughout the 20th century. It is too early to say

whether Nvidia’s Jensen Huang will go down in history as a Brush or an

Edison.

两个故事都没有好结局。就在西联电报公司取得商业成功的时候，它被亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔的电话挤垮了，当时许多最有头脑的人都对此不屑一顾。公司的盈利能力从此下降。至于电力，人们最终清楚地认识到，弧光灯太贵，不具备商业意义，于是“Brush泡沫”破灭了。托马斯·爱迪生证明了白炽灯照明的优越性。他的公司最终成为通用电气公司，是整个20世纪美国企业的灯塔。现在说英伟达的黄仁勋会作为Brush还是爱迪生载入史册还为时过早。

学习：

gazump：美 [ɡəˈzəmp] 抢先一步（导致他人失去机会或优势）;报出更高价格并购得；

在这里，“gazump” 是指在交易过程中被别人抢先一步，导致自己失去机会或优势。具体来说，Western Union 的电报业务被亚历山大·格雷厄姆·贝尔的电话抢了风头，导致其商业成功被取代，利润从此下降。

详细解释：

• Gazump: 抢先一步（导致他人失去机会或优势）

例句： 英文: The startup’s innovative app was gazumped by a bigger company that launched a similar product first. 中文: 这家初创公司的创新应用程序被一家更大的公司抢先一步推出了类似的产品，从而失去了机会。

通过这段话，作者描述了 Western Union 的电报业务被电话取代的过程，同时也对电气照明技术的发展进行了讨论，并提到 Nvidia 的 Jensen Huang 是否能像爱迪生那样取得历史性的成功还尚未可知。

incandescent：美 [ˌɪnkənˈdɛs(ə)nt] 白热的；白炽的；炽热发光的；

incandescent lighting：白炽灯照明

beacon：信号灯；信标；灯塔；

go down in history：载入史册

原文：

Professor Odlyzko makes two additional points. First, many of the previous

investment booms were backed by government spending. This time the

generative-AI capital outlays come from big-tech firms that are, as he puts it,

“insanely rich”. There is little danger of their coffers running dry. That said,

his second point is that if demand for generative-AI products fails to

materialise soon, the tech giants might start to reduce their spending on

Nvidia’s GPUs. The risk for the chipmaker is not only from receiving fewer

orders. The tech firms could also dump surplus GPUs on the second-hand

market, further depressing prices. Nvidia’s share price could crater, he says.

Odlyzko教授提出了另外两点。首先，以前的许多投资热潮都是由政府支出支撑的。这一次，人工智能的资本支出来自大型科技公司，用他的话说，这些公司“异常富有”。他们的金库几乎没有枯竭的危险。也就是说，他的第二点是，如果对生成式人工智能产品的需求不能很快实现，科技巨头可能会开始减少在英伟达GPU上的支出。芯片制造商面临的风险不仅仅是订单减少。科技公司也可以在二手市场上倾销过剩的GPU，进一步压低价格。他说，英伟达的股价可能会暴跌。

学习：

outlays：花费；费用；（outlay的复数）

materialize：变成现实

Materialize: 实现，变为现实。例如：If the plans materialize, the new stadium will be built by next year. 如果计划实现，新体育场将在明年建成。

second-hand market：二手市场

depressing prices：压低价格

crater：美 [ˈkreɪtər] 暴跌

Crater: 暴跌，大幅下降。例如：The stock market cratered after the economic crisis hit. 经济危机袭来后，股市暴跌。

dump：大量抛售

Dump: 倾销，大量抛售。例如：The company decided to dump its excess inventory at a discount. 公司决定以折扣价倾销其过剩库存。

The only certainty is surprise

原文：

Let’s be humble. As Roy Amara, an American futurist, said, “We tend to

overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate

the effect in the long run.” No one knows for sure what generative AI’s “killer

app” will be. Professor Odlyzko notes that few expected passenger trains to

be more important than freight during the railway boom. They were.

Likewise email became the surprise success of the early internet era.

让我们谦虚一点。正如美国未来学家罗伊·阿马拉所说，“我们往往高估一项技术的短期效果，而低估其长期效果。”没有人确切知道生成式人工智能的“杀手级应用”会是什么。Odlyzko教授指出，在铁路繁荣时期，很少有人认为客运列车会比货运列车更重要。他们是。同样，电子邮件在早期互联网时代取得了惊人的成功。

原文：

One more lesson from history is that booms and busts are often accompanied

by wider economic uncertainty and changes in the cost of capital. That

appears to be true in the current turmoil. With luck, all the latest sell-off will

do is skim froth off the top of an overhyped market. Still, investors should

brace for more volatility as this promising but nascent technology gathers

steam. ■

历史的另一个教训是，繁荣和萧条往往伴随着更广泛的经济不确定性和资本成本的变化。在当前的动荡中，这似乎是真的。幸运的话，最近的抛售只会撇去被夸大的市场的泡沫。尽管如此，随着这一前景看好但仍处于萌芽阶段的技术加速发展，投资者应该做好应对更多波动的准备。■

学习：
skim：撇去（表面的浮沫）

froth：泡沫；泡沫状物质；

nascent： 美 [ˈnæsnt] 新生的；初生的；发展中的；刚开始的；

gather steam：获得动力，技术逐渐成熟

在这里，“gather steam” 是指逐渐获得动力、增加影响力或变得更加活跃。在这个语境中，它指的是生成型人工智能这种有前景但尚处于初期阶段的技术逐渐发展和成熟。

详细解释：

• Gather steam: 获得动力，逐渐兴起。例如：The new initiative is starting to gather steam as more people get involved. 随着更多人的参与，这项新计划开始逐渐兴起。

在这段话中，作者建议投资者准备应对更多的波动，因为生成型人工智能技术在不断发展过程中可能会带来更多的市场变化。

后记

2024年8月14日14点50分于上海。