摘要：当AI重塑世界格局，我们却在惊人地浪费最宝贵的资源：顶尖人才。为何天才的回报呈指数级增长，全球范围内却有无数潜力被埋没？《经济学人》深度文章指出，这场关乎国运的“天才战争”中，美国的政策正步入歧途，而中国等国迎来赶超契机。本文犀利剖析了精英红利与制度瓶颈，揭示

有趣灵魂说

译文为原创，仅供个人学习使用

The Economist ｜Leaders

经济学人｜ 社论

How to spot a genius

如何识别天才

The desperate search for superstar Talent

对超级明星人才的迫切追寻

Too much potential goes to waste

太多潜力被浪费了

这是一个关于财富挥霍和巨大、不必要的人力潜力浪费的故事。 经济成功的关键在于创新，而创新的关键则在于少数最具天赋者的才华、创造力和驱动力。 然而，即便各国政府纷纷斥资于提振经济的计划，包括芯片制造工厂和稀土矿，智力资源却未受到应有的重视。这种浪费正日益严重。

只需看看对顶尖智力的白热化竞争市场，你就能理解商业和经济成功如何日益由个人而非公司驱动。在争夺人工智能主导地位的竞赛中，美国的科技巨头们正在组建精锐数据科学家的小型团队。在华尔街，一场对顶尖人才的争夺战正在进行，对冲基金正以巨额资金挖走明星交易员。科学突破往往是一小部分精英的成果：顶尖的1%的研究人员产生了超过五分之一的论文引用。在中国，从西方学成归来的科学家被奉为民族英雄。

超级明星获得的回报正在增长。最好的外科医生和音乐会钢琴家长期以来一直享有最高的酬劳和富人的赞助。然而今天，明星效应被放大了。一些20多岁的程序员能拿到七位数、八位数甚至九位数的薪水。自2017年以来，Spotify上年收入超过1000万美元的艺术家数量的增长速度，是年收入超过10万美元艺术家数量增长速度的三倍。律师费过去常常是共享的；如今，大笔的金钱越来越流向顶尖律所的高收入者，他们的表现远超二流律所的合伙人。

这在一定程度上反映了美国金融市场的繁荣：资金充裕的公司有能力在人才上投入更多。但更深层次的变化正在发生。巨大的计算资源极大地提升了最精明的对冲基金大脑设计和执行交易的能力，帮助他们将才华转化为更巨大的利润。超低成本的数字分发为个体创作者创造了更大的市场。而在AI竞赛中获胜的潜在回报规模之大，使得即使是最奢侈的个人薪资也显得微不足道。

随着AI从探索阶段走向应用阶段，类似效应可能会波及经济的其他领域。对投资者和企业家的研究表明，这项技术将扩大顶尖表现者的优势，他们可以利用AI做得更好。AI智能体可能取代运营当今公司所需的多层业务流程人员，使得聪明人能够更容易地用更少的精英团队创办公司。

这对天赋异禀且运气亨通的超级明星来说是一大福音。但对其他所有人而言，这也是一个至关重要的财富来源。 世界正在快速老龄化。如果要在劳动力数量停止增长的情况下保持有意义的经济发展，创新速度就需要维持在高水平 。人才作为进步引擎将变得更加关键。如果要靠超级智能AI来拯救世界，那也需要天才人物，而不仅仅是芯片和电力。

问题在于，尽管世界的人才储备巨大，但能充分发挥其潜力的人太少。当今的科学创新集中在西方人手中，其中许多人来自富裕背景。才华常常未被发现；即使被发现了，由于上大学或移居他国的财务和现实障碍，早期的潜力也并非总能实现。

其结果是在富国和穷国都出现了人才资源的悲剧性浪费。据一项估计，在数学竞赛中表现与富裕国家学生同样出色的较贫穷国家学生，日后发表的研究成果却较少，从顶尖大学获得博士学位的可能性也只有一半。另一项研究表明，如果美国能消除发明创造方面的阶级、性别和种族差距，该国的创新者数量将翻两番。

政治家们非但没有消除这种浪费，反而在忽视它。一个失败之处是移民政策。公司和大学应该能够在全球人才库中招揽人才。如果没有为自己和家人提供这样的机会，美国"七大"科技巨头中的四家的超级明星老板今天就不会坐在他们的位置上。一项估计认为，通过为特别聪明的学生消除财务障碍来放宽移民，将使未来群体的科学产出增加多达50%。但特殊的移民项目往往缺乏诚意且官僚主义盛行——因为移民政策不受欢迎。

那么在国内寻找天才的情况又如何呢？竞赛和选拔计划在发现早期潜力方面出人意料地有效。国际数学奥林匹克竞赛的金牌获得者日后获得重大科学奖项的可能性是麻省理工学院本科生的50倍；OpenAI的一半创始人都曾在该竞赛中磨砺过技艺。但大多数国家在人才发掘方面缺乏系统性。富人占尽优势；其他所有人则依赖个人奋斗和些许运气。

美国就是一个应引以为戒的例子。美国建立在移民基础上，拥有任人唯贤的文化和顶尖大学，本应在人才争夺战中胜出。但在21世纪20年代初，对多样性、公平和包容性的过度关注使得针对天才学生的项目陷入停滞。唐纳德·特朗普正在加剧这些失误。他的政府刚刚宣布大幅提高H-1B签证项目的费用，许多研究人员和技术人员正是通过该项目进入美国的。而对哈佛等精英大学的报复性打压，也危及了研究经费和招收外国学生的空间。

The brainy train

智者快车

美国的错误为其他国家提供了追赶的机会。中国正在引入年轻的外国科学家和技术专家。英国可能完全取消技术移民的签证费用。法国希望吸引外国研究人员迁入。这些举措固然不错，但还远远不够。人才正等待被发掘。其收益将是巨大的。世界何时才能醒悟？■

其中有梗

标题解读｜The brainy train

这则标题是《经济学人》典型的双关式文字游戏。

1. 字面意义

brainy 指“聪明的、有才智的”；

train 指“火车”；

2. 文学性呼应：gravy train

The brainy train

THIS IS At ale of squandered wealth and the vast, needless waste of human potential. The secret of economic success is innovation and the secret of innovation is the brilliance, creativity and drive of the most talented few. But even as governments throw money at schemes to boost their economies, including chipmaking factories and rare-earth mines, brainpower is going unloved. And the waste is getting worse

You need only look at the red-hot market for grey cells to understand how commercial and economic success is increasingly being powered by the individual rather than the firm. In the race to dominate artificial intelligence (AI), America’s tech giants are assembling small teams of crack data scientists. On Wall Street a race for top talent is under way·, with hedge funds nabbing hotshot traders for vast sums. Scientific breakthroughs tend to be the work of a small elite: the leading 1% of researchers generate over a fifth of citations. In China scientists returning from spells in the West are being feted as national heroes.

The rewards for superstars are growing. The best surgeons and concert pianists have long commanded the highest fees and the patronage of the wealthy. Today, however, the superstar effect is on steroids. Some programmers in their 20s command seven-, eight- or even nine-figure salaries. The number of artists on Spotify taking home more than $10m a year has grown three times as much since 2017 as the number earning above $100,000. Lawyers’ fees used to be shared out; increasingly the big money is going to the top earners at the best law firms, who massively outperform partners at their second-tier rivals.

Some of this reflects the exuberance of America’s financial markets: flush with capital, firms are able to spend even more on talent. But something deeper is afoot. Vast computing resources turbocharge the capacity of the wonkiest hedge-fund brains to devise and carry out trades, helping them turn their talents into even greater profits. Ultra-cheap digital distribution creates bigger markets for individual creators. And the size of the potential rewards for winning the race in AIturns even the most extravagant individual salary into a rounding error.

As AIspreads from discovery to exploitation, a similar effect could ripple through the rest of the economy. Studies of investors and entrepreneurs suggest that the technology will extend the dominance of the best performers, who can use it to do better still. AIagents could strip out layers of the business-process workers needed to run today’s firms, making it easier still for bright sparks to set up companies with ever-smaller collections of clever people.

This is a boon to superstars born with talent and blessed with good fortune. But it is also a vital source of wealth for everyone else. The world is ageing rapidly. If the economy is to keep growing meaningfully as the number of workers stops rising, the pace of innovation will need to stay high. Talent will become even more vital as the engine of progress. If superintelligentAIis to come to the rescue, it will require ingenious people, not merely chips and electricity.

The trouble is that, although the world’s reservoir of talent is vast, too few people are achieving their potential. Today scientific innovation is concentrated among Westerners, many of them from well-off backgrounds. Talent often goes unidentified; even when it is found, early promise is not always realised, because of the financial and logistical hurdles of going to university or moving to another country.

The result is a tragic waste of human gifts in both rich countries and poor. By one estimate, students in poorer countries who fare as well in maths contests as their richer peers go on to publish less research, and are half as likely to earn a doctorate from a leading university. Another study suggests that if America’s class, gender and race gaps in invention were closed, the number of innovators in the country would quadruple.

Far from eliminating this waste, politicians are neglecting it. One failure is immigration. Firms and universities should be able to fish in the global pool of talent. Without such a chance for themselves and their families, the superstar bosses of four of America’s “Magnificent Seven” tech firms would not be in their jobs today. One estimate reckons that easing immigration by removing financial barriers for especially bright students would raise the scientific output of future cohorts by as much as 50%. But special immigration programmes are often half-hearted and bureaucratic—because immigration is unpopular.

What of the search for genius at home?·Contests and scouting programmes are surprisingly good at spotting early promise. Gold-medal winners at international maths Olympiads are 50 times more likely to go on to win a big science prize than undergraduates at MIT; half the founders of OpenAIcut their teeth in the contest. But most countries are not systematic about talent. The rich have all the advantages; everyone else relies on individual drive and a dose of luck.

America is an example of what to avoid. Built on immigration, with a culture of meritocracy and top-ranking universities, it should win the tussle for talent. An obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion in the early 2020s stalled programmes for gifted students. Donald Trump is adding to the missteps. His administration has just announced drastically higher fees for the H-1Bvisa programme, through which many researchers and techies enter America. And a vindictive crackdown on Harvard and other elite universities has jeopardised funding for research and the scope to take foreign students.

America’s errors are a chance for other countries to catch up. China is introducing a visa scheme for young foreign scientists and technologists. Britain may ditch visa fees for skilled arrivals altogether. France hopes to attract foreign researchers who move·. That is fine so far as it goes, but it is half-hearted. Talent is waiting to be tapped. The gains would be immense. When will the world wake up? ■

来源：左右图史