通往机器人时代的世界竞赛

Surging investment in artificial intelligence is giving the US an early advantage in the race to dominate a new era of robotics, according to investors and experts in an industry that is set to become one of the most strategically important.

人工智能领域的投资者和专家称，该领域的投资飙升让美国在主宰机器人新时代的竞争中抢占先机，该领域即将成为最具战略重要性的行业之一。

Recent advances in AI, particularly in a technique known as deep learning, have shifted robotics from its core industrial market into areas such as self-driving cars, fuelling debate over the benefits and threats posed by the rise of the robots.

最近人工智能领域的进步（尤其是在所谓深度学习的技术上），让机器人从核心的工业市场转向自动驾驶汽车等领域，这激起了有关机器人崛起所带来的好处和威胁的辩论。

As the technology extends its reach beyond factory production lines, the US and China are poised to take the lead from Japan and Germany, which dominate traditional industrial robotics.

随着这种技术扩大到工厂生产线以外，美国和中国将从主宰传统工业机器人的日本和德国手中夺走领军地位。

Investment in the sector in the US more than doubled to $587m last year, according to CB Insights, a venture capital research firm. That is helping drive global growth of 17 per cent a year, according to research group IDC, whichprojects the robot market will almost double from $71bn to $135bn by 2019.

根据风投研究机构CB Insights的数据，去年，美国在人工智能领域的投资增加逾一倍，至5.87亿美元。据研究机构IDC的数据，这帮助推动全球投资每年增长17%，该机构预测，到2019年，机器人市场的规模将从710亿美元增加近一倍，达到1350亿美元。

“The most interesting things are in Silicon Valley or the US,” said Dmitry Grishin, a Russian internet entrepreneur and investor who has raised a $100m fund to invest in robot and other hardware start-ups. As low-cost robots move into more consumer and business uses, such as drones, China’s hardware manufacturing expertise will also make it a more significant player, he added.

俄罗斯互联网创业者和投资人德米特里•格里申(Dmitry Grishin)表示：“最有趣的事情发生在硅谷或美国其他地方。”他筹集了一支1亿美元的基金，用于投资机器人和其他创业型硬件企业。他补充称，随着低成本机器人转向更多消费和商业用途（例如无人机），中国在硬件制造方面的专长将令其成为一个更重要的参与者。

Beijing’s booming demand for automation as it tries to claw its way up the manufacturing value chain has also fuelled efforts to build a local robot sector. However, most industry executives say it will take years for China to match technology from companies in Japan and other established manufacturers.

此外，随着中国努力攀爬制造业价值链，中国对自动化日益旺盛的需求一直推动其努力打造本土机器人行业。然而，多数行业高管表示，中国要赶上日本公司以及其他老牌制造商的技术还需要数年之久。

The threat from new AI and cloud technologies has prompted a scramble among established players not to get left behind. Japan’s Fanuc, the world’s largest maker of industrial robots, has announced plans to start connecting its 400,000 installed machines by the end of this year, to collect data about their operations and improve their performance.

来自新的人工智能和云技术的威胁，促使老牌参与者纷纷行动起来以免落后。全球最大工业机器人制造商日本发那科(Fanuc)宣布计划，将在今年底之前开始将其40万台已安装机器联网，以收集操作数据并改善机器性能。

Japan’s manufacturing lead over the US should sustain its edge in industrial robots, said Junichi Hasegawa, chief strategy officer at Preferred Networks, a Japanese deep learning company that counts Fanuc — whose machines are all painted bright yellow — among its investors. “We can’t fight with information stored on the cloud, but the yellow robots are everywhere in the world and they gather data. If you ask whether Google can do the same, the answer is no,” he said.

日本深度学习公司Preferred Networks首席运营官长谷川顺一(Junichi Hasegawa)表示，日本在制造业相对于美国的领先地位，应该会支撑其在工业机器人领域占据优势。该公司的投资者包括发那科（发那科生产的机器人都被涂成亮黄色）。他表示：“我们竞争不过存储在云上的信息，但黄色机器人遍布全世界，他们会收集数据。如果你问谷歌(Google)是否也能这么做，答案是否定的。”

While US internet companies such as Google and Facebook have led the investment in deep learning, Silicon Valley has seen a wider start-up boom in AI and robotics. A collapse in the price of components, thanks to smartphone growth, has made it cheaper to launch robot companies, investors say.

谷歌和Facebook等美国互联网公司一直引领深度学习领域的投资，而硅谷则出现了人工智能和机器人领域的更广泛创业潮。投资者表示，得益于智能手机的增长，零配件价格大幅下跌，这降低了创建机器人公司的成本。

So-called “intelligent” robots play to US strengths through new technologies and software culture, they added.

他们补充称，通过新技术和软件文化，所谓的“智能”机器人发挥了美国的优势。

“At its core, these companies need to be machine vision companies, that get better as they get more data,” said Chris Dixon, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley investment firm.

硅谷投资公司Andreessen Horowitz合伙人克里斯•狄克逊(Chris Dixon)表示：“从本质来看，这些公司需要成为机器视觉(MV)公司，获取的数据越多，表现就越出色。”

The new entrepreneurs rushing into the field are different from the hardware engineers who historically dominated the field, he added: “They don’t like to use the word robotics — they think of [it] as an electrical engineering mindset, versus … autonomy and AI.”

涌入该领域的新的创业者与以往一直主宰该领域的硬件工程师不同，他补充称：“他们不喜欢使用‘机器人’这个词，他们认为……相对于自动化和人工智能，（它）是一种电子工程思维。”

The new technologies changing robotics are “available today” and advanced enough to have a disruptive impact across other industries, said Steve Jurvetson, an investor in Tesla Motors and SpaceX, companies led by Elon Musk.

投资了埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)旗下的特斯拉汽车(Tesla Motors)和SpaceX两家公司的史蒂夫•尤尔韦特松(Steve Jurvetson)表示，改变机器人的新技术“现在已就绪”，而且相当先进，足以对其他行业产生颠覆性影响。