聪明性感的机器人会取代人类吗

ARE women necessary?

有必要有女人吗？

Not with Ava around.

有了爱娃(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.

即使头上没有头发，腿上没有血肉，爱娃也有足够的诱惑力、足够狡猾，可以成为经典黑色电影(film noir)里的机器毒妇。

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

尽管她只是一个塑料和网布包裹的机器，关在玻璃房间里，但是她却能手到擒来地引诱男人。

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.”

爱娃是《机械姬》(Ex Machina)里诱人的女主角，或者说是末世的女性大反派。这部高水准的科幻惊悚片里的情景发生在不远的未来，编剧和导演都是亚历克斯·加兰(Alex Garland)，2002年的僵尸大片《惊变28天》(28 Days Later)也是由这个44岁的英国人编剧的。

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.

《机械姬》到底是女性主义寓言，还是仇视女性的噩梦，影评人莫衷一是。就像昆汀·塔伦蒂诺(Quentin Tarantino)对待暴力的方式一样，加兰也有些“两头都占”：他对男性偏执于取悦男性的女体机器人做了一番充满嘲讽意味的思索，同时又对很多取悦男人的女体机器人进行了炫耀。

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.

瑞典演员和舞者艾丽西亚·维坎德(Alicia Vikander)细腻地饰演了爱娃的角色。《银翼杀手》(Blade Runner)里的一些女性复制人被形容为“用来愉悦的基本模型”，但爱娃远远超出了这个程度，她的诡计远远比《王牌大贱谍》(Austin Powers)里那些胸部变成武器的“女机器人”(fembot)要厉害。

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

创造她的科学怪人名叫内森(Nathan)，是一个史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)式的粗暴人物，由迷人的奥斯卡·伊萨克(Oscar Isaac)饰演。

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

“造出一个东西，她却恨你，是不是感觉很奇怪？”爱娃冷冰冰地问内森。

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.

内森让公司里一个稚嫩的程序员凯勒布(Caleb)飞到他在阿拉斯加的藏身处，来测试这个玲珑有致的人工智能机器人，会不会比人类书呆子更聪明。很快，剧情就告诉我们，凯勒布沿袭着黑色电影的经典套路，成为了痴恋的傻瓜，他会与这个硅胶做成的危险女人度过一段惊心动魄的时光。内森用魔鬼一般的口吻透露，爱娃体内有一个用于性行为的“开口”，“密集地装了很多传感器”，他还承认，爱娃的容貌是根据凯勒布在网上看过的色情电影设计的。

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.”

加兰表示，给机器人加上性范畴有些“棘手”，因为这会引出一个问题：性是不是意识的一部分？而且他还形容，爱娃的女性特质纯粹是外在的。不过，考虑到她的容貌，以及在电影中展现出的魅力，他对我说，如果用“它”来指代爱娃，会感觉是一种“怪异的错误”。

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.

的确，他承认对自己的作品“有一些喜爱”。我问他，我们是不是应该认为内森与爱娃发生过性关系——内森与他的机器人美女居住在同一个玻璃房子里——加兰的否定回答来得有点太快了。

Does that notion make him jealous?

这个念头会让他嫉妒吗？

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

“或许吧，”他承认。“这样说也不是不合理。”

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.”

在被问到他会不会想要一个性爱机器人时，已婚且有两个孩子的加兰回答：“我能想象自己爱上一个有感知力、有魅力的机器人吗？那肯定可以。但我想要一个复杂版本的振动棒吗？不，不想。有些人或许会想，但我不会就此评价别人。”

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.

我问他，这部电影会不会加剧一些女性的恐惧，她们担心男人更着迷的是手机上的色情明星，而不是怀里的姑娘。

“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.”

“那些我们渴望得到但认为我们得不到的东西，我们现在可以按照自己的想法原原本本塑造出来，”他说。“这样的事谁能阻挡得了呢，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.

《机械姬》上映之际，有关机器人技术飞跃的消息正纷至沓来，其中有会挑选股票的投资银行机器人，还有可以执行监视或刺杀任务的蜘蛛形机器人的设计方案。

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.

一些有远见的人物——史蒂芬·霍金(Stephen Hawking)、埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)、史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克(Steve Wozniak)——曾警告我们，人类会被机器人取代，它们很快将具备重新设计自己的智力，进而以惊人的速度变得越来越聪明。

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

“我们会不会成为家养的宠物呢？”沃兹尼亚克忧心忡忡地对《澳大利亚金融评论报》(Australian Financial Review)说。

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.

加兰不为所动，因为在他看来机器人取得优势地位是不可逆转的趋势。他建议我们不要把机器人当作竞争对手，而是当成我们的后代——或者如机器人专家汉斯·莫拉维克(Hans Moravec)所说，是我们的“头脑子女”(mind children)，他认为机器人会成为一个独立的物种。

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?

加兰无所不谈，包括说到政府项目如果由人工智能来控制，会运转得更顺畅。他能否想象出一个甚至比我们现在这位更光鲜，更缺少情感的人工智能总统呢？

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

“可能会有人工智能总统；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.

爱娃的程序是根据凯勒布的色情偏好编写的，我对加兰说这可真是个吓人的情况，尤其是考虑到世界上有那么多朱利安·阿桑奇(Julian Assange)这样的人，迫不及待地想把我们最私密的交流泄露出去。他说，比起产生意识的机器人，他更害怕偷偷摸摸的人类，内森那种整天称兄道弟的说话腔调，隐喻了试图引诱我们将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.’ ”

“就好比你有个让你艳羡不已的潮人朋友，这些公司就是这么包装自己的，”他说。“他们是你的伙伴，哥们。‘咱们去这个夜店吧；咱们出去玩。’这种熟络的感觉吸引了你的注意力，让你意识不到他们正在翻你的通讯录，把里面的一切都记录下来。时不时从你钱包里抽出一张钞票，说‘没事儿吧，哥们’。”

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

谈话最后我问加兰，率先终结人类的会是僵尸还是机器人。

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

“都不是，”他说。“是我们。我们可以把这事办得妥妥的，不需要什么僵尸或机器人的帮助。”