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科技界似乎对这家公司的技术产品趋之若鹜。其盈利能力令人瞩目。《WIRED》深入探讨了 Nvidia 的首席执行官，黄仁勋的独到见解。Nvidia CEO 黄仁勋正在推动 AI 革命 与黄仁勋的一场对话，仿佛需要预先打上警示标签。这位 Nvidia CEO 对 AI 的未来满怀激情，经过将近一个半小时的深入交流，我被深深地说服，相信未来定将是一片神经网络构建的乐土。我仿佛已经看到了一切：机器人的新时代、医学上的重大突破、自动驾驶汽车、能够记住对话的聊天机器人。而位于圣克拉拉的 Nvidia 公司园区的建筑，每一处我目光所及之地，都是三角形嵌套着三角形，这一设计帮助 Nvidia 打下了财富的基础。难怪我会如此沉迷，完全被黄仁勋的视角所吸引。 黄仁勋无疑是当下乃至未来一段时间内的关键人物。各大科技公司对 Nvidia 提供的超级计算 GPU 购之不竭。今天的 Nvidia 已非昔日之影，它曾是为 X 世代的视频游戏显卡供货商，通过高效渲染海量三角形，让图像生动起来。而今，Nvidia 的硬件引领我们走进了一个新时代，在这个时代中，我们与计算机对话，它们回应我们，而且，根据你谈话的技术人士所言，最终可能还会超越我们。 在我们的见面中，现年 61 岁的黄仁勋身穿他标志性的皮夹克，脚蹬一双极简风格的黑色运动鞋。他告诉我，他讨厌周一的早晨，因为他周日要工作一整天，到了正式工作周的开始就已经累了。但你绝对看不出他的疲惫。两天后，我参加了一个健康护理投资研讨会，场内聚满了生物技术的极客和西装革履的人士，但黄仁勋在台上依旧活力四射。 “这并非我惯常交流的圈子。生物学家和科学家们，他们总显得那么严肃，”黄仁勋手持麦克风，引得台下一片笑声。“我们谈论创造、改善和加速，而你们讲的是靶向和抑制。”他渐渐过渡到他的建议：“如果你打算在硅片上进行药物设计和发现，你很可能需要处理大量数据。如果你在人工智能计算上遇到困难，嘿，不妨给我们发封邮件。” 黄的策略始终是让 Nvidia 站在每一次重大科技浪潮的前线。2012 年，一群研究人员发布了名为 AlexNet 的革命性图像识别系统，该系统采用 GPU（而非传统的 CPU）来执行其代码，从而开启了深度学习的新纪元。面对这一趋势，黄迅速指示公司全力进军 AI 领域。2017 年，谷歌推出了一种名为 Transformer（即 ChatGPT 中的“T...

经济学人： To keep its competitive edge the Ivy League will have to change 为了保持竞争优势，常春藤盟校必须做出改变 Mar 4th 2024|CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 2024 年 3 月 4 日马萨诸塞州剑桥 THE STRUGGLE over America’s elite universities—who controls them and how they are run—continues to rage, with lasting consequences for them and the country. Harvard faces a congressional investigation into antisemitism; Columbia has just been hit with a new lawsuit alleging “endemic” hostility towards Jews. Top colleges are under mounting pressure to reintroduce rigorous test-based admissions policies, after years of backsliding on meritocracy. And it is likely that the cosy tax breaks these gilded institutions enjoy will soon attract greater scrutiny. Behind these struggles lies a big question. Can American universities, flabby with cash and blighted by groupthink, keep their competitive edge? 关于美国精英大学的斗争——谁控制着它们以及它们如何运营——继续激烈进行，给它们和国家带来了持久的影响。哈佛大学面临国会针对反犹太主义的调查；哥伦比亚刚刚遭遇一项新诉讼，指控对犹太人存在 “普遍” 敌意。经过多年的精英教育倒退，顶尖大学面临着越来越大的压力，需要重新引入严格的应试招生政策。...

经济学人： Feb 28th 2024 2024 年 2 月 28 日 IF YOU’RE A chocoholic you may have noticed that your habit has lately become dearer. The price of cocoa began creeping up in the second half of 2022. Since then it has doubled, reaching an all-time high in January 2024 (see chart 1). That steep rise spells trouble for the chocolate business and sweet-toothed consumers alike. Hershey and Mondelez International, the owner of Cadbury, passed on these costs to shoppers last year. Hershey’s year-on-year profits fell by 11.5% during the fourth quarter. The company recently announced that it would cut 5% of its workforce. Barry Callebaut, the world’s biggest chocolate-maker, said that it would lay off 2,500 people, 19% of its workforce. 如果您是一名巧克力狂，您可能会注意到您的习惯最近变得更加昂贵。可可价格从 2022 年下半年开始攀升。此后价格翻了一番，并于 2024 年 1 月达到历史新高（见图 1）。这种急剧上涨给巧克力行业和爱吃甜食的消费者带来了麻烦。去年，好时和吉百利的所有者亿滋国际将这些成本转嫁给了消费者。好时第四季度利润同比下降 11.5%。该公司最近宣布将裁员 5%。全球最大的巧克力制造商百乐嘉利宝 (Barry Callebaut) 表示，将裁员 2,500 人，占其员工总数的 19%。 Climate patterns are partly to blam...

经济学人： No other firm has benefited from the boom in artificial intelligence (ai) as much as Nvidia. Since January 2023 the chipmaker’s share price has surged by almost 450%. With the total value of its shares approaching $2trn, Nvidia is now America’s third-most valuable firm, behind Microsoft and Apple. Its revenues for the most recent quarter were $22bn, up from $6bn in the same period last year. Most analysts expect that Nvidia, which controls more than 95% of the market for specialist ai chips, will continue to grow at a blistering pace for the foreseeable future. What makes its chips so special? 没有其他公司像英伟达一样从人工智能 (ai) 的繁荣中受益。自 2023 年 1 月以来，这家芯片制造商的股价已飙升近 450%。 Nvidia 的股票总价值接近 2 万美元，目前是美国第三大市值公司，仅次于微软和苹果。最近一个季度的收入为 220 亿美元，高于去年同期的 60 亿美元。大多数分析师预计，控制着 95% 以上专业人工智能芯片市场的英伟达将在可预见的未来继续以惊人的速度增长。是什么让它的芯片如此特别？ Nvidia’s ai chips, also known as graphics processor units (gpus) or “accelerators”, were initially designed for video games. They use parallel processing, breaking each computation in...

经济学人： In 1991 eight volunteers sealed themselves into a huge greenhouse in the desert near Tucson, Arizona. They were part of an experiment seeking to discover whether a carefully curated selection of plants and animals could develop into a self-sustaining ecosystem: a “Biosphere 2” independent of “Biosphere 1”, aka the outside world. 1991年，八名志愿者将自己封闭在亚利桑那州图森附近沙漠中的一个巨大温室里。他们参与了一项实验，旨在探索精心挑选的植物和动物是否可以发展成为一个自我维持的生态系统：独立于“生物圈 1”（即外部世界）的“生物圈 2”。 In terms of proving grand ecological truths the Biosphere 2 experiments were something of a bust. As an illustration of what can happen when somewhat fringe-y science meets extreme wealth they were fascinating. There were fierce fallings-out on both sides of the glass. In 1994 Ed Bass, an oil dynast who had paid for the facility, threw out the management team and handed the reins to Steve Bannon, later a key adviser to Donald Trump. At the same time, though, there was what some took to be a breakthrough in the science of human ageing. 就证明宏大的生态真理而言，...

 经济学人： E verywhere you  look, stockmarkets are breaking records. American equities, as measured by the  S & P  500 index, hit their first all-time high in more than two years in January, surged above 5,000 points in February and roared well above that level on February 22nd when Nvidia, a maker of hardware essential for artificial intelligence ( AI ), released spectacular results. The same day, Europe’s  STOXX  600 set its own record. Even before Nvidia’s results had been announced, Japan’s Nikkei 225 had surpassed its previous best, set in 1989. Little surprise, then, that a widely watched global stockmarket index recently hit an all-time high, too (see chart 1). 放眼望去，股市都在打破纪录。以标准普尔 500 指数衡量的美国股市 1 月份创下两年多来的首次历史新高，2 月份飙升至 5,000 点以上，2 月 22 日，当人工智能（ai），发布惊人成果。同一天，欧洲斯托克斯 600 指数创下了自己的纪录。甚至在 Nvidia 的业绩公布之前，日本日经 225 指数就已经超越了 1989 年创下的历史最高纪录。因此，备受关注的全球股市指数最近也创下历史新高也就不足为奇了（见图 1）。 image: The Economist   图片来源：《经济学家》 This is quite a turna...