2018年3月15日 星期四

How Much Magic Can ‘Harry Potter’ Make? 「哈利波特」魔法無邊?


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2018/03/23 第207期 訂閱/退訂看歷史報份
 
 
編輯小語 How Much Magic Can 'Harry Potter' Make? 「哈利波特」魔法無邊?
Good News: AI Is Getting Cheaper. That's Bad News, Too. 人工智慧降價 是好消息也是壞消息
編輯小語
 
How Much Magic Can 'Harry Potter' Make? 「哈利波特」魔法無邊?
文/Roslyn Sulcas
譯/王麗娟

Joanne Kathleen Rowling looked slightly tense. She had just completed a television segment, alongside her collaborators on "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," the eighth — and the only theatrical — installment in her celebrated wizarding saga, which begins previews on March 16 at the Lyric Theater on Broadway. Now she had another interview to do.

Rowling is famously private. And crazily famous. Her Harry Potter novels have sold over 450 million copies since the first was published in 1997, spawning an empire that now encompasses movies, the spinoff "Fantastic Beasts" films, Harry Potter Wizarding World theme parks, and detective novels (written under a pseudonym) that have been made into a television series.

喬安.凱瑟琳.羅琳看來略顯緊張。她和「哈利波特與被詛咒的孩子」的合作夥伴,剛剛結束了電視訪問。此刻她又要接受另一個採訪。該舞台劇是她著名的巫師傳奇的第八部,也是唯一一部劇場作品,3月16日開始在百老匯吟唱劇場展開預演。

羅琳女士出了名的不喜歡曝光。而她也出名到爆。她的哈利波特系列小說自1997年首部發行以來,已在全球銷售逾4億5000萬冊,且已發展成為一個帝國,如今涵蓋電影、外傳「野獸」電影、哈利波特魔法世界主題公園,以及被製作成電視連續劇的偵探小說(以化名書寫)。

Like much else she touches, her first theatrical venture has been a smash. It earned rave reviews and sold-out houses in London, going on to win in a record-breaking nine categories at last year's Olivier Awards, the British equivalent of the Tonys.

And yet Rowling, who started out as a struggling single mother, writing her first Harry Potter novel in Edinburgh cafes, seemed — despite an armor of smart wrap dress and high heels — determined to take absolutely nothing for granted.

就像她碰觸到的許多其他東西一樣,她的第一個舞台劇嘗試也一砲而紅。在倫敦贏得如潮好評,門票銷售一空,接著並在去年有英國東尼獎之稱的(勞倫斯)奧利佛獎,創紀錄拿下9項大獎。

當初只是位經濟拮据單親媽媽,在愛丁堡的咖啡館完成她的第一本哈利波特小說的羅琳女士,儘管披掛整齊,足登高跟鞋,身穿漂亮的V領束腰連身裙,但她仍決心全力以赴,絕不將任何事情視為理所當然。

"We see this as a new challenge," she said, looking at John Tiffany, the show's cheerful director, and Jack Thorne, its tall and gangly writer, who were seated with her backstage at the Palace Theater in the West End here. "Broadway is a scary place."

Broadway is a scary place, with new productions — even those based on beloved titles — routinely failing to live up to their producers' hopes and dreams. And "Cursed Child" confronts challenges in New York that it didn't face when it opened here in July 2016 amid more mystery, excitement and anticipation than attends most presidential elections. (And what felt like just about as much media coverage.)

她說:「我們認為這是一個新的挑戰。」說時望向這部舞台劇興高采烈的導演約翰.蒂芬尼和高瘦的作家傑克.索恩,兩人和她一起坐在倫敦西區此間皇宮劇院的後台。「百老匯是個可怕的地方。」

百老匯確是個可怕的地方,一些新的製作,即使是以深受喜愛作品為基礎的產品,往往仍無法符合製作人的期望和夢想。「被詛咒的孩子」在紐約面對的,是該劇2016年7月在此間搬上舞台時並未曾遭遇的挑戰, 當時伴隨該劇的神秘感、興奮感和期待都高於大多數總統選舉。 (感覺獲得的媒體報導也一樣多)。

Secrecy about the story line, collectively developed by Rowling, Thorne and Tiffany, fed a growing obsession with what the play would reveal about Harry and Company, and a #keepthesecret campaign encouraged a clublike camaraderie among the preview audiences.

But now that script has been published, reviews have been written and tweets have been tweeted, the plot — a coming-of-age trajectory for Harry's second son, Albus — is out there. (According to Scholastic, the Potter publisher, the book version of "Cursed Child" has sold over 5 million copies in the United States.)

Unlike most family-oriented Broadway offerings, "Cursed Child" is a play, not a musical, and it will compete in the spring with Disney's musical adaptation of the animated blockbuster "Frozen."

羅琳女士,索恩和蒂芬尼對聯手打造的故事情節保密到家,讓人們越來越關注這部戲會透露有關哈利和夥伴們的什麼事,而一場#保密活動,也在預覽觀眾中鼓舞了一種類似粉絲團的友誼。

不過,如今腳本已公諸於世,評論也已出爐,推文也已被發送,至於情節,哈利的二兒子阿不斯的成熟軌跡,已攤開在那裡。 (根據哈利波特出版商學者出版集團,「被詛咒的孩子」的印刷版已在美國銷售逾500萬本。)

與大多數以家庭為導向的百老匯產品不同,「被詛咒的孩子」是一部舞台劇,不是音樂劇,它將在春季與迪士尼動畫巨片「冰雪奇緣」改編的音樂劇一較高下。

 
Good News: AI Is Getting Cheaper. That's Bad News, Too. 人工智慧降價 是好消息也是壞消息
文/Cade Metz
譯/陳韻涵

A Silicon Valley startup recently unveiled a drone that can set a course entirely on its own. A smartphone app allows the user to tell the drone to follow someone. Once the drone starts tracking, its subject will find it remarkably hard to shake.

The drone is meant to be a fun gadget. But it is not unreasonable to find this automated bloodhound a little unnerving.

矽谷一家新創公司最近推出一款可以自主設定路線的無人機。使用者可利用智慧手機應用程式命令無人機去跟蹤某人。一旦無人機開始跟蹤,被跟蹤對象將很難擺脫。

這款無人機設計初衷是作為有趣的小機具,但若說這隻自動獵犬讓人覺得有點不安,卻也並不為過。

A group of artificial intelligence researchers and policymakers last month released a report that described how rapidly evolving and increasingly affordable AI technologies could be used for malicious purposes.

The tracking drone helps explain their concerns. Made by a company called Skydio, the drone costs $2,499. It was made with technological building blocks available to anyone: ordinary cameras, open-source software and low-cost computer chips.

一群人工智慧的研究和決策人員上個月發布了一份報告,把進展神速且價格日益親民的人工智慧可能被用來作惡的情況,做了一番描述。

Skydio製造的這款售價2499美元(約合台幣7萬3688元)的無人機,即可用以說明他們的憂慮。這款無人機以任何人皆能取得的技術元件組成:一般的相機,開放原始碼軟體和低價電腦晶片。

In time, putting these pieces together will become increasingly easy and inexpensive.

"This stuff is getting more available in every sense," said one of Skydio's founders, Adam Bry. These same technologies are bringing a new level of autonomy to cars, warehouse robots, security cameras and a wide range of internet services.

隨著時日推移,拼湊這些元件也會變得越來越容易,也越便宜。

Skydio創辦人之一布萊說:「這種東西在各方面都變得更容易取得。」這些科技正把汽車、倉庫機器人、保全攝影機和多種網路服務帶向自動化的新層次。

But at times, new AI systems also exhibit strange and unexpected behavior because the way they learn from large amounts of data is not entirely understood. That makes them vulnerable to manipulation; today's computer-vision algorithms, for example, can be fooled into seeing things that are not there.

In such a scenario, miscreants could circumvent security cameras or compromise a driverless car.

然而有些時候,新的人工智慧系統也展現了奇怪和預料之外的行為,因為對於它們如何從大量數據學習,我們尚未完全了解。這使它們容昜受到擺布;以今日的電腦視覺演算法為例,它就會受到矇騙而看見實際上不存在的物體。

這種情況下,歹徒可能躲過保全攝影機偵測,或讓無人駕駛車出問題。

Researchers are also developing AI systems that can find and exploit security holes in all sorts of other systems, said Paul Scharre, an author of the report. These systems can be used for both defense and offense.

Automated techniques will make it easier to carry out attacks that now require extensive human labor, including "spear phishing," which involves gathering and exploiting personal data of victims. In coming years, the report said, machines will be more adept at collecting and deploying this data on their own.

AI systems are also increasingly adept at generating believable audio and video on their own. This will make it easier for bad actors to spread misinformation online, the report said.

報告作者之一沙爾雷說,研究人員同時也在研發可在各種其他系統中找到安全漏洞並加以利用的人工智慧系統,這些系統進可攻,退可守。

有了自動化技術,執行目前需動用大量人力的攻擊行動會變得更為容易,包括需要收集並利用對方個人數據資訊的「魚叉式網路釣魚」。報告指出,未來各種機器對於自主收集並運用數據資料會更為熟練。

人工智慧系統對於自動產生可信的音頻訊號與影像也日益熟練。報告指出,這將讓心懷不軌的使用者更容易在網路散播不實訊息。

 

說文解字看新聞

人工智慧(Artificial Intelligence,簡稱AI)是電腦科技的子領域,強調智慧機器能像人類般運作與回應,包括語音辨識、學習、計畫和解決問題;旨在創造智慧機器的人工智慧,已成科技產業重要的一環。

與人工智慧相關的研究相當技術性且專業化,人工智慧的重要議題包括設計電腦使其具有獲取知識、推理、解決問題、感知、學習、規畫和能夠操控及移動物體的能力。其中,知識工程(knowledge engineering)是人工智慧相關研究的核心,機器惟有在存取許多與世界相關的豐富資訊時,才能像人類動作和回應。

機器學習(machine learning)則是人工智慧的關鍵領域;機器學習簡單來說,就是從大數據中歸納出有用的規則與模式。機器學習主要分為監督式學習、非監督式學習、半監督學習和增強式學習。監督式學習需要人工輸入訓練範本(base),再讓機器預測結果;非監督式學習毋須人工輸入範本;半監督學習則僅提供少數資料的答案,讓機器判別誤差並尋找答案。增強式學習以人腦的思考模式,讓機器根據當前的狀況選擇執行動作並獲得反饋,甚至依據所執行的動作創造新的環境狀態。

 
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