聰明性感的機器人會取代人類嗎

ARE women necessary?

有必要有女人嗎？

Not with Ava around.

有了愛娃(Ava)就不用了。

Even without hair on her head or flesh on her legs, Ava has enough allure and cunning to become a classic film noir robot vixen.

即使頭上沒有頭髮，腿上沒有血肉，愛娃也有足夠的誘惑力、足夠狡猾，可以成爲經典黑色電影(film noir)裏的機器毒婦。

Despite being a plastic and mesh gizmo locked in a glass cell, she can enmesh men with frightening ease.

儘管她只是一個塑料和網布包裹的機器，關在玻璃房間裏，但是她卻能手到擒來地引誘男人。

Ava is the appealing heroine, or apocalyptic villainess, of “Ex Machina,” a stylish sci-fi thriller set in the near future, written and directed by Alex Garland, a 44-year-old Brit who wrote the 2002 zombie hit “28 Days Later.”

愛娃是《機械姬》(Ex Machina)裏誘人的女主角，或者說是末世的女性大反派。這部高水準的科幻驚悚片裏的情景發生在不遠的未來，編劇和導演都是亞歷克斯·加蘭(Alex Garland)，2002年的殭屍大片《驚變28天》(28 Days Later)也是由這個44歲的英國人編劇的。

Critics are divided over whether “Ex Machina” is a feminist fable or misogynistic nightmare. Like Quentin Tarantino with violence, Garland has it both ways: He offers a mocking meditation on the male obsession with man-pleasing female sex robots while showing off an array of man-pleasing female sex robots.

《機械姬》到底是女性主義寓言，還是仇視女性的噩夢，影評人莫衷一是。就像昆汀·塔倫蒂諾(Quentin Tarantino)對待暴力的方式一樣，加蘭也有些“兩頭都佔”：他對男性偏執於取悅男性的女體機器人做了一番充滿嘲諷意味的思索，同時又對很多取悅男人的女體機器人進行了炫耀。

Ava, played with a delicate edge by the Swedish actress and dancer Alicia Vikander, is far more than a “basic pleasure model,” as some female replicants in “Blade Runner” are known. She has wiles that are a lot more potent than the weaponized breasts of Austin Powers’s fembots.

瑞典演員和舞者艾麗西亞·維坎德(Alicia Vikander)細膩地飾演了愛娃的角色。《銀翼殺手》(Blade Runner)裏的一些女性複製人被形容爲“用來愉悅的基本模型”，但愛娃遠遠超出了這個程度，她的詭計遠遠比《王牌大賤諜》(Austin Powers)裏那些胸部變成武器的“女機器人”(fembot)要厲害。

Her Dr. Frankenstein is an abrasive Steve Jobs-type named Nathan, played by a hypnotic Oscar Isaac.

創造她的科學怪人名叫內森(Nathan)，是一個史蒂夫·喬布斯(Steve Jobs)式的粗暴人物，由迷人的奧斯卡·伊薩克(Oscar Isaac)飾演。

“Is it strange to have made something that hates you?” Ava icily asks Nathan.

“造出一個東西，她卻恨你，是不是感覺很奇怪？”愛娃冷冰冰地問內森。

Nathan has a peach-fuzz coder in his firm, Caleb, fly to his hideaway in Alaska to test whether the curvy artificial-intelligence machine can outwit a nerdy human. It quickly becomes clear that Caleb, in the great film noir tradition of love-struck saps, is going to have a tough time with this silicon femme fatale. Nathan devilishly confides that Ava has a sexual “opening with a concentration of sensors” and admits that he modeled her appearance on Caleb’s online porn history.

內森讓公司裏一個稚嫩的程序員凱勒布(Caleb)飛到他在阿拉斯加的藏身處，來測試這個玲瓏有致的人工智能機器人，會不會比人類書呆子更聰明。很快，劇情就告訴我們，凱勒布沿襲着黑色電影的經典套路，成爲了癡戀的傻瓜，他會與這個硅膠做成的危險女人度過一段驚心動魄的時光。內森用魔鬼一般的口吻透露，愛娃體內有一個用於性行爲的“開口”，“密集地裝了很多傳感器”，他還承認，愛娃的容貌是根據凱勒布在網上看過的色情電影設計的。

Garland has said that it’s “tricky” to assign gender to robots because it raises questions about whether sexuality is a component of consciousness, and he has called Ava’s femininity purely external. But, given how much her looks and charms drive the movie, he told me that it feels “oddly wrong” to call Ava “it.”

加蘭表示，給機器人加上性範疇有些“棘手”，因爲這會引出一個問題：性是不是意識的一部分？而且他還形容，愛娃的女性特質純粹是外在的。不過，考慮到她的容貌，以及在電影中展現出的魅力，他對我說，如果用“它”來指代愛娃，會感覺是一種“怪異的錯誤”。

Indeed, he confesses to having “a sort of crush” on his creation, and answers “No” a bit too quickly when I ask whether we should assume that Nathan, who lives alone in his glass house with his android Galateas, has had sex with Ava.

的確，他承認對自己的作品“有一些喜愛”。我問他，我們是不是應該認爲內森與愛娃發生過性關係——內森與他的機器人美女居住在同一個玻璃房子裏——加蘭的否定回答來得有點太快了。

Does that notion make him jealous?

這個念頭會讓他嫉妒嗎？

“Maybe,” he concedes. “That’s not an unreasonable thing to say.”

“或許吧，”他承認。“這樣說也不是不合理。”

Asked if he would want a sex robot, the married father of two replies: “Could I imagine falling in love with a robot that was sentient and attractive to me? Well, sure, I could. But do I want a complicated version of a vibrator? No, I don’t. Some people might. I’m not judgmental about it.”

在被問到他會不會想要一個性愛機器人時，已婚且有兩個孩子的加蘭回答：“我能想象自己愛上一個有感知力、有魅力的機器人嗎？那肯定可以。但我想要一個複雜版本的振動棒嗎？不，不想。有些人或許會想，但我不會就此評價別人。”

I ask if the movie will enhance the fear of some women that guys are more into the porn stars on their phones than the girls on their arms.

我問他，這部電影會不會加劇一些女性的恐懼，她們擔心男人更着迷的是手機上的色情明星，而不是懷裏的姑娘。

“The thing we desire and think we can’t have we can now shape exactly to the specification of how we want it,” he says. “There’s something incredibly scary about how unstoppable it feels.”

“那些我們渴望得到但認爲我們得不到的東西，我們現在可以按照自己的想法原原本本塑造出來，”他說。“這樣的事誰能阻擋得了呢，想想都毛骨悚然。”

“Ex Machina” arrives in theaters amid a raft of stories about the swift advance in robotics, with everything from investment-banker bots that make stock picks to blueprints for spider-shaped bots that can potentially spy or assassinate.

《機械姬》上映之際，有關機器人技術飛躍的消息正紛至沓來，其中有會挑選股票的投資銀行機器人，還有可以執行監視或刺殺任務的蜘蛛形機器人的設計方案。

Some visionaries — Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak — warn that humans will be superseded by robots, who will soon be smart enough to redesign themselves to become exponentially smarter.

一些有遠見的人物——史蒂芬·霍金(Stephen Hawking)、埃隆·馬斯克(Elon Musk)、史蒂夫·沃茲尼亞克(Steve Wozniak)——曾警告我們，人類會被機器人取代，它們很快將具備重新設計自己的智力，進而以驚人的速度變得越來越聰明。

“Will we be the family pets?” Wozniak fretted to The Australian Financial Review.

“我們會不會成爲家養的寵物呢？”沃茲尼亞克憂心忡忡地對《澳大利亞金融評論報》(Australian Financial Review)說。

Garland is not alarmed because he views robot superiority as inevitable. He suggests that we view androids not as our competitors but as our progeny — or “mind children,” as robotics expert Hans Moravec, who believes they will be their own species, calls them.

加蘭不爲所動，因爲在他看來機器人取得優勢地位是不可逆轉的趨勢。他建議我們不要把機器人當作競爭對手，而是當成我們的後代——或者如機器人專家漢斯·莫拉維克(Hans Moravec)所說，是我們的“頭腦子女”(mind children)，他認爲機器人會成爲一個獨立的物種。

Garland talks about all the things, including government programs, that would run more smoothly with an A.I. in charge. Can he can envision an A.I. president, even more sleek and less emotive than the one we have now?

加蘭無所不談，包括說到政府項目如果由人工智能來控制，會運轉得更順暢。他能否想象出一個甚至比我們現在這位更光鮮，更缺少情感的人工智能總統呢？

“There could be an A.I. president; there could,” he replies.

“可能會有人工智能總統；可能的，”他答道。

Talking about Ava being programmed to Caleb’s porn preferences, I tell Garland that this is a scary scene, given all the Julian Assanges of the world who are eager to spill our most private exchanges. He says he’s more worried about surreptitious humans than sentient robots and noted that Nathan’s “dude-bro” speak is a metaphor for how tech companies lure us into divulging our lives.

愛娃的程序是根據凱勒布的色情偏好編寫的，我對加蘭說這可真是個嚇人的情況，尤其是考慮到世界上有那麼多朱利安·阿桑奇(Julian Assange)這樣的人，迫不及待地想把我們最私密的交流泄露出去。他說，比起產生意識的機器人，他更害怕偷偷摸摸的人類，內森那種整天稱兄道弟的說話腔調，隱喻了試圖引誘我們將私人生活曝露在外的科技公司。

“It’s like your hipster best friend that you aspire to, which is often how these companies market themselves,” he says. “They’re your mate, your buddy. ‘Now let’s go to this club; let’s hang out.’ And a sense that the familiarity of that is just pulling your attention away from the fact that they’re going through your address book and recording everything in there. And every now and then, pulling a dollar bill out of your wallet and going, ‘Dude, hey.’ ”

“就好比你有個讓你豔羨不已的潮人朋友，這些公司就是這麼包裝自己的，”他說。“他們是你的夥伴，哥們。‘咱們去這個夜店吧；咱們出去玩。’這種熟絡的感覺吸引了你的注意力，讓你意識不到他們正在翻你的通訊錄，把裏面的一切都記錄下來。時不時從你錢包裏抽出一張鈔票，說‘沒事兒吧，哥們’。”

As we part, I ask Garland what will end humanity first, zombies or robots?

談話最後我問加蘭，率先終結人類的會是殭屍還是機器人。

“Neither,” he says. “We will. We’re going to manage that perfectly without any help from zombies or robots.”

“都不是，”他說。“是我們。我們可以把這事辦得妥妥的，不需要什麼殭屍或機器人的幫助。”