法律将是科技颠覆的下一个目标

When the investor Marc Andreessen wrote in 2011 that “software is eating the world,” his point was a contentious one. He argued that the boundary between technology companies and the rest of industry was becoming blurred, and that the “information economy” would supplant the physical economy in ways that were not entirely obvious.

2011年，投资者马克•安德烈森(Marc Andreessen)写道，“软件正在吞噬这个世界”，这种观点在当时备受争议。他认为，科技公司与其他行业之间的界限正变得模糊，“信息经济”将以不完全明显的方式取代实体经济。

Six years later, software’s dominance is a fact of life. What it has yet to eat, however, is the law. If almost every sector of society has been exposed to the headwinds of the digital revolution, governments and the legal profession have not. But that is about to change.

6年后，软件的统治地位成为现实。然而，它尚未吞噬的是法律。如果说几乎所有社会领域都受到数字革命的不利影响，政府和律师行业没有。但这种情况即将发生变化。

The rise of complex software systems has led to new legal challenges. Take, for example, the artificial intelligence systems used in self-driving cars. Last year, the US Department of Transportation wrote to Google stating that the government would “interpret ‘driver’ in the context of Google’s described motor-vehicle design” as referring to the car’s artificial intelligence.

复杂软件系统的崛起带来了新的法律挑战。就拿自动驾驶汽车中使用的人工智能系统来说，去年，美国运输部(US Department of Transportation)致信谷歌(Google)，声称“就谷歌描述的机动车设计而言”，政府将“把司机解读为”指车上的人工智能。

So what does this mean for the future of law? It means that regulations traditionally meant to govern the way that humans interact are adapting to a world that has been eaten by software, as Mr Andreessen predicted. And this is about much more than self-driving cars. Complex algorithms are used in mortgage and credit decisions, in the criminal justice and immigration systems and in the realm of national security, to name just a few areas.

那么这对于法律的未来有着什么意义呢?这意味着传统上旨在管理人类互动方式的监管规定，正在应这个被软件吞噬的世界而改变，正如安德森所预测的那样。这远不仅仅关乎自动驾驶汽车。复杂算法用于抵押贷款和信贷决策，刑事司法和移民体系以及国家安全等诸多领域。

The outcome of this shift is unlikely to be more lawyers writing more memos. Rather, new laws will start to become more like software — embedded within applications as computer code. As technology evolves, interpreting the law itself will become more like programming software.

这种转变的结果不太可能会让更多律师撰写更多备忘录。新的法律将开始变得更像软件那样，像计算机代码那样嵌入应用中。随着技术的发展，解读法律本身将变得更像是软件编程。

But there is more to this shift than technology alone. The fact is that law is both deeply opaque and unevenly accessible.

但除了技术，这种变化还有更多的意义。事实是，法律严重模糊，其使用也不平均。

The legal advice required to understand both what our governments are doing, and what our rights are, is only accessible to a select few. Studies suggest, for example, that an estimated 80 per cent of the legal needs of the poor in the US go unmet. To the average citizen, the inner workings of government have become more impenetrable over time.

要理解我们的政府正在做什么以及我们的权利是什么所需要的法律建议，只有少数人才能获取。例如，研究显示，在美国，据估计穷人的法律需求有80%没有得到满足。对于普通公民而言，随着时间的流逝，政府的内部运作也变得更加难以理解。

Granted, laws have been murky to average citizens for as long as governments have been around. But the level of disenchantment with institutions and the experts who run them is placing new pressures on governments to change their ways. The relationship between citizens and professionals — from lawyers to bureaucrats to climatologists — has become tinged with scepticism and suspicion. This mistrust is driven by the sense that society is stacked against those at the bottom — that knowledge is power, but that power costs money only a few can afford.

不错，自政府存在以来，法律对于普通公民而言就一直是难以理解的。但对体制以及管理体制的专家的失望正给政府施加新的压力，迫使政府转变方式。公民与专业人士(从律师到官员到气候学家)之间的关系笼罩在怀疑中。这种不信任受到下列看法的推动：社会建立在压迫底层民众的基础之上——知识是力量，但这力量要花钱，只有少数人才负担得起。

The hazards of this disillusionment are already driving governments to embrace a software-based approach to interpreting the law. In 2013, for example, the Obama administration recognised the importance of these dynamics, signing an executive order specifically designed to make federal laws machine-readable to ease the burden on accessing the law.

这种失望可能出现，已在推动政府接受用基于软件的方法来解读法律。例如，2013年，奥巴马政府意识到了这些因素的重要性，签署了一项行政命令，专门旨在让联邦法律变为机器可读，以降低使用法律的难度。

While this effort has yet to bear much fruit, the underlying need has only become more pressing.

这种努力尚未结出累累硕果，但根本的需求变得更为紧迫。

Technological change and the need for increasing accessibility are going to create new opportunities in the field of law. A software-driven approach will enable new technologies to remain compliant with the law and enable easier access to legal information. Soon, understanding our basic legal rights will be as easy engaging in a conversation with Siri, Apple’s digital assistant.

技术变革与让更多人能够使用法律的要求，正在法律界创造新的机会。由软件驱动的方法将让新技术得以遵守法律，并能够让人们更容易获取法律信息。很快，理解我们的基本法律权利将像我们与苹果的数字助理Siri聊天一样容易。

Are there dangers to a software-based approach to law? Yes. By making law easier to access, we will also be making legal practice itself more technical, and more inaccessible in other ways. And there is always the threat to cyber security as software takes on more important roles. But such is the inexorable advance of the digital revolution, which has left its mark on nearly every area of society. Our governments are next.

通过基于软件的途径运用法律是否存在危险?是的。通过让法律变得更容易使用，我们还将让法律工作变得更具技术性，同时在其他方面变得更不易触及。随着软件承担更重要的角色，网络安全总是会面临威胁。但数字革命不可阻挡的发展就是这样，这场革命在几乎所有社会领域都留下了印记。我们的政府是下一个。