演讲MP3+双语文稿:合成生物将如何毁灭人类——是时候正视这个威胁了
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【Rob Reid】合成生物将如何毁灭人类——是时候正视这个威胁了
【演讲人】Rob Reid
【演讲主题】《合成生物将如何毁灭人类——是时候正视这个威胁了》
翻译者：psjmz mz校对者：Yolanda Zhang
00:04
So, there's about seven and a half billion of us.The World Health Organization tells us that 300 million of us are depressed,and about 800,000 people take their lives every year.A tiny subset of them choose a profoundly nihilistic route,which is they die in the act of killing as many people as possible.These are some famous recent examples.And here's a less famous one. It happened about nine weeks ago.If you don't remember it,it's because there's a lot of this going on. just last year counted 323 mass shootingsin my home country, the United States.Not all of those shooters were suicidal,not all of them were maximizing their death tolls,but many, many were.
现在地球上大约有75亿人口。世界卫生组织告诉我们这其中有3000万人身患抑郁症，每年大约有80万人选择结束自己的生命。他们中的一小部分选择了一种深刻的虚无主义路线，那就是他们选择通过杀死尽可能多的人的方式死去。这里有一些最近比较著名的例子。同时也有一个不那么出名的。这件事发生在大约九个星期前。如果你不记得了，是因为有太多这样的事情在发生。维基百科仅去年就统计了323起大规模枪击事件，发生在我的故乡，美国。并不是所有的那些枪击犯都想自杀，并不是所有人都在最大化死亡人数，但是很多、很多人是。
00:49
An important question becomes: What limits do these people have?Take the Vegas shooter.He slaughtered 58 people.Did he stop there because he'd had enough?No, and we know this because he shot and injured another 422 peoplewho he surely would have preferred to kill.We have no reason to think he would have stopped at 4,200.In fact, with somebody this nihilistic, he may well have gladly killed us all.We don't know.What we do know is this:when suicidal murderers really go all in,technology is the force multiplier.
一个重要的问题变成了：这些人有上限吗？以拉斯维加斯枪击案为例。他屠杀了58人。他在那里停下来是因为他杀够了吗？不是的，我们知道这一点是因为他击伤了另外422人，而这些人他肯定更愿意选择杀死他们。我们没有理由去认为他可能会在4200人时停下来。事实上，对某些虚无主义的人来说，他可能会非常乐意把我们都杀了。我们不知道。我们知道的是：当自杀式凶手真的全部都要杀人时，技术则是力量倍增器。
01:26
Here's an example.Several years back, there was a rash of 10 mass school attacks in Chinacarried out with things like knives and hammers and cleavers,because guns are really hard to get there.By macabre coincidence, this last attack occurredjust hours before the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.But that one American attack killed roughly the same number of victimsas the 10 Chinese attacks combined.So we can fairly say, knife: terrible; gun: way worse.And airplane: massively worse,as pilot Andreas Lubitz showed when he forced 149 peopleto join him in his suicide,smashing a plane into the French Alps.
这里有一个例子。回到几年前，中国发生了十起不顾后果的校园攻击，这些攻击使用的是像刀、铁锤和劈刀等工具，因为在中国枪是很难获取的。可怕的巧合是，这最后一次袭击发生的时间正好是康涅狄格州纽镇大屠杀的几个小时前。但是那一次美国式袭击受害人数量大约是十次中国袭击的总和。所以我们可以说，刀：可怕；枪：更糟糕。飞机：相当糟糕，飞行员Andreas Lubitz展示过他强迫149个人加入他的自杀行为，将飞机撞上了法国阿尔卑斯山脉。
02:11
And there are other examples of this.And I'm afraid there are far more deadly weapons in our near future than airplanes,ones not made of metal.So let's consider the apocalyptic dynamics that will ensueif suicidal mass murder hitches a ride on a rapidly advancing fieldthat for the most part holds boundless promise for society.Somewhere out there in the world, there's a tiny group of peoplewho would attempt, however ineptly,to kill us all if they could just figure out how.The Vegas shooter may or may not have been one of them,but with seven and a half billion of us,this is a nonzero population.There's plenty of suicidal nihilists out there.We've already seen that.There's people with severe mood disorders that they can't even control.There are people who have just suffered deranging traumas, etc. etc.As for the corollary group,its size was simply zero forever until the Cold War,when suddenly, the leaders of two global alliancesattained the ability to blow up the world.
这有一些其它这样的例子。我很担心在不久的未来将会有比飞机更加致命的武器出现，没有一个是金属制造。所以我们可以认为如果大规模自杀式谋杀搭上了社会快速发展的便车，那么世界末日的动力将随之而来，而这个领域在很大程度上能为社会带来无限的希望。在这个世界上的某个地方，有那么一小部分人，如果他们知道方法，会尝试把我们都杀光。拉斯维加斯的枪手可能是，也可能不是这其中的一员，但是我们有75亿的人口，这是个非零的总体。这世界上有很多自杀虚无主义者。我们已经见到过了。同样也有很多人有着他们自己也无法控制的严重的情绪障碍。也有人经受着精神错乱的创伤，等等。至于推论群体，它的规模在冷战之前一直是零。突然之间，两个全球性联盟的领导人获得了炸毁世界的能力。
03:18
The number of people with actual doomsday buttonshas stayed fairly stable since then.But I'm afraid it's about to grow,and not just to three.This is going off the charts.I mean, it's going to look like a tech business plan.
从那之后，实际拥有世界末日按钮的人数一直保持着稳定。但是恐怕这个数字将会增长，而且并不止三个，已经多到图表快要装不下了。我的意思是，它看起来像一个技术企业计划。
03:32
（Laughter）
03:36
And the reason is,we're in the era of exponential technologies,which routinely take eternal impossibilitiesand make them the actual superpowers of one or two living geniusesand -- this is the big part --then diffuse those powers to more or less everybody.
而原因则是，我们处在技术爆炸的时代，常规来说就是将永恒的不可能变成一两个现有天才的实实在在的超能力，并且——这是很重要的一部分——然后这些能力多多少少会扩散到每一个人。
03:56
Now, here's a benign example.If you wanted to play checkers with a computer in 1952,you literally had to be that guy,then commandeer one of the world's 19 copies of that computer,then used your Nobel-adjacent brain to teach it checkers.That was the bar.Today, you just need to know someone who knows someone who owns a telephone,because computing is an exponential technology.
这里有一个很好的例子。如果你想在1952年用电脑玩跳棋，你必须得是那个家伙，然后霸占世界上19台电脑的其中一台，用你媲美诺贝尔奖的大脑教它下跳棋。那就是当时的门槛。今天你只需要认识一个知道谁有电话的人，因为计算机是指数级增长的技术。
04:25
So is synthetic biology,which I'll now refer to as "synbio."And in 2011, a couple of researchers did something every bit as ingeniousand unprecedented as the checkers trickwith H5N1 flu.This is a strain that kills up to 60 percent of the people it infects,more than Ebola.But it is so uncontagiousthat it's killed fewer than 50 people since 2015.So these researchers edited H5N1's genomeand made it every bit as deadly, but also wildly contagious.The news arm of one of the world's top two scientific journalssaid if this thing got out, it would likely cause a pandemicwith perhaps millions of deaths.And Dr. Paul Keim saidhe could not think of an organism as scary as this,which is the last thing I personally want to hearfrom the Chairman of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity.And by the way, Dr. Keim also said this -合成生物学也是如此，今天我会称之为"synbio"。2011年，一群研究者用H5N1病毒做了件就像跳棋一样非常巧妙和史无前例的事情。H5N1这种病毒能杀死60%的感染者，致死率超过埃博拉病毒。但它的传染性很弱，自2015年以来只造成了不到50人死亡。于是这些研究者编辑了H5N1的基因并使其更致命，但也具有更广泛的传染性。世界两大科学期刊之一的新闻部门表示，如果这个东西被泄露出去，很可能会大面积传染，导致数百万人的死亡。Paul Keim博士说，他想不出还有什么生物体这么可怕，这是我个人最不想从国家生物安全科学咨询委员会主席那里听到的。顺便说一句，Keim博士还提到：
05:29
["I don't think anthrax is scary at all compared to this."]
【“跟这些相比， 我不认为炭疽热可怕。】
05:32
And he's also one of these.
他还是这群人中的一员：
05:34
[Anthrax expert] （Laughter）
他还是这群人中的一员：
05:35
Now, the good news about the 2011 biohackis that the people who did it didn't mean us any harm.They're virologists.They believed they were advancing science.The bad news is that technology does not freeze in place,and over the next few decades,their feat will become trivially easy.In fact, it's already way easier, because as we learned yesterday morning,just two years after they did their work,the CRISPR system was harnessed for genome editing.This was a radical breakthroughthat makes gene editing massively easier --so easy that CRISPR is now taught in high schools.And this stuff is moving quicker than computing.That slow, stodgy white line up there?That's Moore's law.That shows us how quickly computing is getting cheaper.That steep, crazy-fun green line,that shows us how quickly genetic sequencing is getting cheaper.Now, gene editing and synthesis and sequencing,they're different disciplines, but they're tightly related.And they're all moving in these headlong rates.And the keys to the kingdom are these tiny, tiny data files.That is an excerpt of H5N1's genome.The whole thing can fit on just a few pages.And yeah, don't worry, you can Google this as soon as you get home.It's all over the internet, right?And the part that made it contagiouscould well fit on a single Post-it note.And once a genius makes a data file,any idiot can copy it,distribute it worldwideor print it.And I don't just mean print it on this,but soon enough, on this.
好消息是2011年的生物黑客对我们并无恶意。他们是病毒学家。他们相信他们在推动科技发展。坏消息是科技不会冻结在一个地方，在接下来的几十年里，他们的壮举将会变得非常简单。事实上，现在已经非常容易了，因为我们昨天早上了解到，仅在他们利用CRISPR系统进行基因组编辑的两年后。就有巨大的突破使得基因编辑变得非常容易——简单到以至于高中就开始教授CRISPR了。这个东西发展的速度比计算机还快。那条缓慢的，笨重的白色线条是摩尔定律。这展示了计算机是如何变便宜的。那条陡峭有趣的绿线，则展示了基因测序如何变得越来越便宜。基因编辑，合成和测序，它们是不同的学科，但又紧密关联，都在快速发展。通向王国的钥匙是这些很小很小的数据文件。这是H5N1基因代码的片段。只需要几张纸就能装下全部的信息。不要担心，你回到家后就可以谷歌搜索它了。它在网上全都可以找到。而使它具有传染性的部分字母用一张便利贴就能写下。一旦一个天才生成了一个数据文件，任何白痴都能复制它，在全球分发或打印出来。我说的不是这样的打印，而是不久之后，像这样。
07:17
So let's imagine a scenario.Let's say it's 2026, to pick an arbitrary year,and a brilliant virologist, hoping to advance scienceand better understand pandemics,designs a new bug.It's as contagious as chicken pox,it's as deadly as Ebola,and it incubates for months and months before causing an outbreak,so the whole world can be infected before the first sign of trouble.Then, her university gets hacked.And of course, this is not science fiction.In fact, just one recent US indictmentdocuments the hacking of over 300 universities.So that file with the bug's genome on it spreads to the internet's dark corners.And once a file is out there, it never comes back --just ask anybody who runs a movie studio or a music label.So now maybe in 2026,it would take a true genius like our virologistto make the actual living critter,but 15 years later,it may just take a DNA printer you can find at any high school.And if not?Give it a couple of decades.
让我们想象一个场景。比如说在2026年，任意选择一年，一个天才的病毒学家，抱着推动科学进步的希望也为了更好的理解流行病，设计了一个新的臭虫。它和水痘一样具有传染性，它和埃博拉一样致命，并且会在病毒爆发前潜伏好几个月，所以整个世界在问题征兆出现之前都被感染了。然后，她的大学实验室被黑了。当然，这并非科幻故事。事实上，仅最近一份美国起诉书就记录了对300多所大学的黑客攻击。于是包含那个臭虫基因的文件被传播到互联网的黑暗角落。并且一旦文件散播出去了，它就再也回不来了——只需去问问做过电影和唱片公司的人。所以可能是在2026年，只有像我们的病毒学家这样的天才才能制造出活生生的生物，但15年之后，也许一台你能在任何一所高中找到的DNA打印机就能做到。假如还没有？那就再给几十年的时间。
08:26
So, a quick aside:Remember this slide here?Turn your attention to these two words.If somebody tries this and is only 0.1 percent effective,eight million people die.That's 2,500 9/11s.Civilization would survive,but it would be permanently disfigured.So this means we need to be concerned about anybodywho has the faintest shot on goal,not just geniuses.So today, there's a tiny handful of geniuseswho probably could make a doomsday bugthat's .1-percent effective and maybe even a little bit more.They tend to be stable and successful and so not part of this group.So I guess I'm sorta kinda barely OK-ish with that.But what about after technology improvesand diffusesand thousands of life science grad students are enabled?Are every single one of them going to be perfectly stable?Or how about a few years after that,where every stress-ridden premed is fully enabled?At some point in that time frame,these circles are going to intersect,because we're now starting to talk about hundreds of thousands of peoplethroughout the world.And they recently included that guy who dressed up like the Jokerand shot 12 people to death at a Batman premiere.That was a neuroscience PhD studentwith an NIH grant.
顺便提一下：记得这张幻灯片吗？把你的注意力放在这两个词上。如果有人这样做，并且只有0.1%奏效了，800万人会死亡。那是911事件的2500倍。文明可能会幸存下来，但它将永久毁容。所以这意味着我们需要关注任何一个能够直达目标的人，而不仅仅是天才。所以今天，只有一小撮的天才能够制造末日害虫，还是0.1%的效率或者更高。他们倾向于稳定和成功，所以不属于这个群体。所以我会勉强感觉还好。但在技术进步，和扩散之后，并且成千上万的生命科学院的学生也参与其中了呢？他们每一个人都情绪稳定吗？或者再过几年后，每一个压力重重的预科医学生也武装上了呢？在那个时间段的某个时间点，这些圆就会相交，因为现在我们谈论的是全世界成千上万的人。最近还包括了那个穿得像小丑，在蝙蝠侠首映式上射杀12人的人。他还是个获得了国家卫生研究院资助的神经科学博士生。
09:57
OK, plot twist:I think we can actually survive this one if we start focusing on it now.And I say this, having spent countless hoursinterviewing global leaders in synbioand also researching their work for science podcasts I create.I have come to fear their work, in case I haven't gotten that out there yet –
好了，情节曲折：我认为我们如果现在就开始关注这个问题，实际上可以挺过这次危机。我这样说，是基于花了无数的时间采访全球合成生物领域的领袖，同时也为我制作的科学播客研究他们的工作。我开始害怕他们的工作了，我可能还没有表达出这个意思——
10:19
（Laughter）
10:20
but more than that, to revere its potential.This stuff will cure cancer, heal our environmentand stop our cruel treatment of other creatures.So how do we get all this without, you know, annihilating ourselves?
但更重要的是，要重视他们的潜力。这些东西将可以治疗癌症，恢复我们的环境，并停止我们对其他生物的残忍对待。那么我们如何在不毁灭自己的情况下实现？
10:36
First thing: like it or not, synbio is here,so let's embrace the technology.If we do a tech ban,that would only hand the wheel to bad actors.Unlike nuclear programs,biology can be practiced invisibly.Massive Soviet cheating on bioweapons treatiesmade that very clear, as does every illegal drug lab in the world.
首先，不管喜欢与否，合成生物已经出现了，那么让我们拥抱这个科技。如果我们做科技封锁，只能把方向盘送给坏人。跟核项目不同，生物学可以在不可见的情况下进行。苏联在生物武器条约上的大规模欺骗，以及世界上所有的非法药物实验室，都清楚地表明了这一点。
11:00
Secondly, enlist the experts.Let's sign them up and make more of them.For every million and one bioengineers we have,at least a million of them are going to be on our side.I mean, Al Capone would be on our side in this one.The bar to being a good guy is just so low.And massive numerical advantages do matter,even when a single bad guy can inflict grievous harm,because among many other things,they allow us to exploit the hell out of this:we have years and hopefully decades to prepare and prevent.The first person to try something awful -- and there will be somebody --may not even be born yet.
第二，赢得专家。让我们把他们召集起来。对于100万零1个生物工程师，至少有100万人要站在我们这边。艾尔·卡彭会站在我们这边。成为好人的门槛是如此之低。数量上的巨大优势确实很重要，即便当一个坏人也能造成巨大的伤害时，因为在其他很多事情中，他们让我们利用这一切：我们有几年甚至几十年的时间来准备和预防。有第一个人尝试糟糕的事情——就会有另一个人——现在可能还没有出生。
11:39
Next, this needs to be an effort that spans society,and all of you need to be a part of it,because we cannot ask a tiny group of expertsto be responsible for both containing and exploiting synthetic biology,because we already tried that with the financial system,and our stewards became massively corruptedas they figured out how they could cut corners,inflict massive, massive risks on the rest of usand privatize the gains,becoming repulsively wealthywhile they stuck us with the $22 trillion bill.
接下来，这需要跨社会的努力，你们所有人都应该参与进来，因为我们不能要求一小群专家对合成生物学的开发和利用负责，毕竟我们已经在金融系统中试过了，我们的管家会变得非常腐败，一旦他们知道如何偷工减料，给我们其他人带来巨大的风险，并获取私利，他们会在变得极端富有的同时，给我们留下22万亿美元的债务。
12:14
And more recently –
还有最近——
12:16
（Applause）
12:18
Are you the ones who have gotten the thank-you letters?I'm still waiting for mine.I just figured they were too busy to be grateful.
你们谁收到了感谢信了吗？我还在等我的。我想他们一定太忙而忘记感谢了。
12:25
And much more recently,online privacy started looming as a huge issue,and we basically outsourced it.And once again:privatized gains, socialized losses.Is anybody else sick of this pattern?
最近，在线隐私开始成为一个大问题，我们基本上是把它外包出去。并且再一次：私人得益，社会受损。有人讨厌这种模式吗？
12:39
（Applause）
12:44
So we need a more inclusive way to safeguard our prosperity,our privacyand soon, our lives.So how do we do all of this?
所以我们需要更包容的方法来保护我们的繁荣，我们的隐私，并且很快，我们的生命。那么我们该怎么做呢？
12:56
Well, when bodies fight pathogens,they use ingenious immune systems,which are very complex and multilayered.Why don't we build one of these for the whole damn ecosystem?There's a year of TED Talks that could be given on this first critical layer.So these are just a couple of many great ideas that are out there.
当身体对抗病原体时，它们使用巧妙的免疫系统，免疫系统相当复杂，层次丰富。我们为什么不为整个该死的生态系统构建一个？仅仅讨论第一个关键层面就足以举办整整一年的TED演讲。所以这些只是一些很好的想法。
13:13
Some R and D musclecould take the very primitive pathogen sensors that we currently haveand put them on a very steep price performance curvethat would quickly become ingeniousand networkedand gradually as widespread as smoke detectors and even smartphones.On a very related note:vaccines have all kinds of problemswhen it comes to manufacturing and distribution,and once they're made, they can't adapt to new threats or mutations.We need an agile biomanufacturing baseextending into every single pharmacy and maybe even our homes.Printer technology for vaccines and medicines is within reachif we prioritize it.
一些研发人员可以利用我们目前拥有的非常原始的病原体传感器，将它们置于一个非常陡峭的价格性能曲线上，这个曲线很快就会变得巧妙而网络化，并像烟雾探测器，甚至智能手机那样逐渐普及。一个非常相关的事项：疫苗在生产和销售方面存在各种问题，一旦生产了，它们就不能适应新的威胁或突变。我们需要一个灵活的生物制造基地，延伸到每一个药店，甚至我们的家庭。如果我们以此为先，疫苗和药物打印技术就会变得触手可及。
13:56
Next, mental health.Many people who commit suicidal mass murdersuffer from crippling, treatment-resistant depression or PTSD.We need noble researchers like Rick Doblin working on this,but we also need the selfish jerks who are way more numerousto appreciate the fact that acute suffering will soon endanger all of us,not just those afflicted.Those jerks will then join us and Al Caponein fighting this condition.Third, each and every one of us can be and should be a white blood cellin this immune system.Suicidal mass murderers can be despicable, yes,but they're also terribly broken and sad people,and those of us who aren't need to do what we canto make sure nobody goes unloved.
下一个，心理健康。很多有自杀式谋杀行为的人怀有严重的难以治疗的抑郁症或创伤后应激障碍。我们需要像里克·多布林这样的高尚研究者来研究这个问题，但我们也需要让更多自私的傻瓜认识到，剧烈的痛苦将很快危及我们所有人，不仅只是那些遭受过的人。那些傻瓜会加入我们和艾尔·卡彭的战斗来对抗这种状态。第三，我们每个人能够且应该成为这个免疫系统的白细胞。自杀式大规模谋杀是可鄙的，但他们也是陷入绝望无法自拔的人，他们是那种不需要尽我们所能去确保没有人爱的人。
14:48
（Applause）
14:53
Next, we need to make fighting these dangerscore to the discipline of synthetic biology.There are companies out there that at least claimthey let their engineers spend 20 percent of their timedoing whatever they want.What if those who hire bioengineersand become themgive 20 percent of their time to building defenses for the common good?Not a bad idea, right?
下一点，我们需要把对抗这些危险置于合成生物的中心。外面有些公司至少声称他们让他们的工程师花20%的时间做任何想做的事情。如果这些雇佣生物工程师并成为工程师的人把他们20%的时间用在为共同利益进行防御上会怎样？不是个糟糕的主意吧？
15:17
（Applause）
15:18
Then, finally: this won't be any fun.But we need to let our minds go to some very, very dark places,and thank you for letting me take you there this evening.We survived the Cold Warbecause every one of us understood and respected the danger,in part, because we had spent decadestelling ourselves terrifying ghost storieswith names like "Dr. Strangelove"and "War Games."This is no time to remain calm.This is one of those rare times when it's incredibly productiveto freak the hell out –
最后：这可不好玩。我们需要把智慧放到非常，非常黑暗的地方，谢谢大家倾听我的介绍。我们挺过了冷战，因为我们每个人都理解和重视危险，部分是因为我们花了几十年时间为自己讲述可怕的鬼故事，诸如“奇爱博士”和“战争游戏”。现在不是保持冷静的时候。这是一个难得的时刻，把自己吓坏是非常有效的——
15:51
（Laughter）
15:54
to come up with some ghost storiesand use our fear as fuel to fight this danger.
去想一些鬼故事，并使用我们的恐惧作为能量来对抗这个危险。
16:02
Because, all these terrible scenarios I've painted --they are not destiny.They're optional.The danger is still kind of distant.And that means it will only befall usif we allow it to.
因为，我所描述的所有恐怖场景——它们不是宿命。它们是可选的。我们离危险仍然有些距离。这意味着只有我们允许，它才会降临到我们身上。
16:20
Let's not.
别让它发生。
16:21
Thank you very much for listening.
谢谢大家的倾听。
16:23
（Applause）
（鼓掌）
