摘要：1月6日，OpenAI CEO 山姆・奥特曼（Sam Altman）在X 平台发布名为《Reflections（反思）》的长文博客，再度聚焦 OpenAI 发展历程。
1月6日，OpenAI CEO 山姆・奥特曼（Sam Altman）在X 平台发布名为《Reflections（反思）》的长文博客，再度聚焦 OpenAI 发展历程。
奥特曼回顾 OpenAI 成立以来，感慨这些年五味杂陈，是其人生中最有成就感却也最累、压力最大的时段，尤其过去两年更是不愉快。不过，他心怀感激，并表示若能重来，愿以不同方式处事，如今的自己相较一年前已成长为更优秀、更成熟的领导者。
进展方面，OpenAI 已确信知晓如何构建传统意义上的通用人工智能（AGI），且预计 2025 年首批 AI 智能体将 “进军” 劳动力市场，切实改变公司产出模式，还坚信向大众普及优秀工具会催生广泛效益。展望未来，OpenAI 目标更远，已朝着超级智能迈进。
以下为博客全文及翻译：
The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into the next paradigm of models that can do complex reasoning. New years get people in a reflective mood, and I wanted to share some personal thoughts about how it has gone so far, and some of the things I’ve learned along the way.
ChatGPT 两周岁生日刚过去一个多月，如今我们已经迈入了能够进行复杂推理的模型的下一个范式。新年总会让人陷入沉思，我想分享一些个人的想法，谈谈到目前为止事情的进展，以及我在此过程中学到的一些东西。
As we get closer to AGI, it feels like an important time to look at the progress of our company. There is still so much to understand, still so much we don’t know, and it’s still so early. But we know a lot more than we did when we started.
随着我们越来越接近通用人工智能（AGI），审视公司的进展感觉像是一个关键时刻。仍有诸多需要了解的东西，仍有太多我们未知的领域，而且现在还为时尚早。但与刚起步时相比，我们已经懂得多得多了。
We started OpenAI almost nine years ago because we believed that AGI was possible, and that it could be the most impactful technology in human history. We wanted to figure out how to build it and make it broadly beneficial; we were excited to try to make our mark on history. Our ambitions were extraordinarily high and so was our belief that the work might benefit society in an equally extraordinary way.
大约九年前，我们创立了 OpenAI，因为我们坚信通用人工智能（AGI）是能够实现的，并且它可能会成为人类历史上最具影响力的技术。我们想要弄清楚如何构建它，使其广泛造福人类；我们满怀热忱，试图在历史上留下自己的印记。我们雄心勃勃，同样也坚信这项工作可能会以一种非凡的方式惠及社会。
At the time, very few people cared, and if they did, it was mostly because they thought we had no chance of success.
在当时，几乎没人在意，即便有人在意，也大多是因为他们认为我们没有成功的机会。
In 2022, OpenAI was a quiet research lab working on something temporarily called “Chat With GPT-3.5”. (We are much better at research than we are at naming things.) We had been watching people use the playground feature of our API and knew that developers were really enjoying talking to the model. We thought building a demo around that experience would show people something important about the future and help us make our models better and safer.
2022 年，OpenAI 还只是一个默默耕耘的研究实验室，当时在研发一个暂时被称作 “与 GPT-3.5 对话” 的项目。（我们搞研究的本事可比给项目起名的本事强多了。）我们一直在观察人们使用我们应用程序接口（API）的测试功能，并且了解到开发者们非常喜欢与模型对话。我们当时认为，围绕这种体验打造一个演示版本，既能向人们展示有关未来的一些重要东西，又有助于我们把模型改进得更好、更安全。
We ended up mercifully calling it ChatGPT instead, and launched it on November 30th of 2022.
所幸最后我们将它命名为 ChatGPT，并在 2022 年 11 月 30 日推出。
We always knew, abstractly, that at some point we would hit a tipping point and the AI revolution would get kicked off. But we didn’t know what the moment would be. To our surprise, it turned out to be this.
从抽象意义上来说，我们一直都知道，在某个时刻我们会迎来一个转折点，人工智能革命将会爆发。但我们不知道那一刻何时到来。令我们惊讶的是，这个转折点就是 ChatGPT 的推出。
The launch of ChatGPT kicked off a growth curve like nothing we have ever seen—in our company, our industry, and the world broadly. We are finally seeing some of the massive upside we have always hoped for from AI, and we can see how much more will come soon.
ChatGPT 的推出开启了一条我们前所未见的增长曲线，无论是在我们公司、我们所处的行业，还是在更广泛的世界范围内都是如此。我们终于看到了一直以来希望从人工智能身上获得的一些巨大优势，而且我们也能预见到，更多的优势很快就会到来。
It hasn’t been easy. The road hasn’t been smooth and the right choices haven’t been obvious.
这一路走来并不容易。道路并不平坦，正确的选择也并非显而易见。
In the last two years, we had to build an entire company, almost from scratch, around this new technology. There is no way to train people for this except by doing it, and when the technology category is completely new, there is no one at all who can tell you exactly how it should be done.
在过去的两年里，我们几乎是从零开始，围绕这项新技术建立起了一整个公司。除了亲身实践，没有别的办法来培养员工适应这项工作，而且当技术领域全新未知时，根本没有人能确切地告诉你该怎么做。
Building up a company at such high velocity with so little training is a messy process. It’s often two steps forward, one step back (and sometimes, one step forward and two steps back). Mistakes get corrected as you go along, but there aren’t really any handbooks or guideposts when you’re doing original work. Moving at speed in uncharted waters is an incredible experience, but it is also immensely stressful for all the players. Conflicts and misunderstanding abound.
在几乎毫无经验的情况下如此高速地建立一家公司，过程混乱不堪。常常是前进两步，后退一步（有时甚至是前进一步，后退两步）。错误会在前进过程中得到纠正，但在开创性工作中，确实没有什么手册或路标可循。在未知水域中快速前行是一种不可思议的体验，但对所有参与者来说，也是压力巨大的。冲突和误解比比皆是。
These years have been the most rewarding, fun, best, interesting, exhausting, stressful, and—particularly for the last two—unpleasant years of my life so far. The overwhelming feeling is gratitude; I know that someday I’ll be retired at our ranch watching the plants grow, a little bored, and will think back at how cool it was that I got to do the work I dreamed of since I was a little kid. I try to remember that on any given Friday, when seven things go badly wrong by 1 pm.
这些年是我迄今为止人生中最有成就感、最有趣、最美好、最吸引人、最疲惫、最紧张的几年，尤其是过去的两年，格外不愉快。但最强烈的感受是感激；我知道，有朝一日我退休后会在我们的牧场看着植物生长，或许会有点无聊，那时我会回想起，能从事从小就梦想的工作是多么酷的一件事。在任何一个周五，当下午 1 点前有七件事都出了大差错的时候，我都会试着想起这一点。
A little over a year ago, on one particular Friday, the main thing that had gone wrong that day was that I got fired by surprise on a video call, and then right after we hung up the board published a blog post about it. I was in a hotel room in Las Vegas. It felt, to a degree that is almost impossible to explain, like a dream gone wrong.
一年多前的一个周五，那天出的主要问题是，我在视频通话中突然被解雇了，然后我们刚挂断电话，董事会就发布了一篇关于此事的博客文章。当时我在拉斯维加斯的一个酒店房间里。那种感觉，几乎难以言表，就像是一场噩梦。
Getting fired in public with no warning kicked off a really crazy few hours, and a pretty crazy few days. The “fog of war” was the strangest part. None of us were able to get satisfactory answers about what had happened, or why.
在毫无预警的情况下当众被解雇，引发了极其疯狂的几个小时，以及相当疯狂的几天。最奇怪的是那种 “战争迷雾” 般的混乱状态。我们谁都没能得到关于所发生之事及其原因的满意答案。
The whole event was, in my opinion, a big failure of governance by well-meaning people, myself included. Looking back, I certainly wish I had done things differently, and I’d like to believe I’m a better, more thoughtful leader today than I was a year ago.
在我看来，整件事是包括我自己在内的善意之人在治理上的一次重大失败。回首往事，我当然希望自己当初能以不同的方式行事，而且我愿意相信，如今的我比一年前是一个更优秀、更深思熟虑的领导者。
I also learned the importance of a board with diverse viewpoints and broad experience in managing a complex set of challenges. Good governance requires a lot of trust and credibility. I appreciate the way so many people worked together to build a stronger system of governance for OpenAI that enables us to pursue our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits all of humanity.
我也明白了，在应对一系列复杂挑战时，一个拥有多元观点和广泛经验的董事会是多么重要。良好的治理需要大量的信任和公信力。我很感激有这么多人齐心协力，为 OpenAI 建立起了一个更强大的治理体系，使我们能够追求确保通用人工智能造福全人类的使命。
My biggest takeaway is how much I have to be thankful for and how many people I owe gratitude towards: to everyone who works at OpenAI and has chosen to spend their time and effort going after this dream, to friends who helped us get through the crisis moments, to our partners and customers who supported us and entrusted us to enable their success, and to the people in my life who showed me how much they cared.
我最大的收获是，我有太多要感恩的人和事：感谢在 OpenAI 工作、选择花费时间和精力追逐这个梦想的每一个人，感谢在危机时刻帮助我们挺过去的朋友们，感谢支持我们、信任我们并托付我们助力其成功的合作伙伴和客户，以及感谢我生命中那些向我表达关心的人。
We all got back to the work in a more cohesive and positive way and I’m very proud of our focus since then. We have done what is easily some of our best research ever. We grew from about 100 million weekly active users to more than 300 million. Most of all, we have continued to put technology out into the world that people genuinely seem to love and that solves real problems.
我们都以更加团结和积极的方式重新投入工作，从那以后，我为我们的专注感到非常自豪。我们做出了一些堪称有史以来最出色的研究成果。我们的周活跃用户从大约 1 亿增长到了 3 亿多。最重要的是，我们一直在向世界推出人们真心喜爱且能解决实际问题的技术。
Nine years ago, we really had no idea what we were eventually going to become; even now, we only sort of know. AI development has taken many twists and turns and we expect more in the future.
九年前，我们真的不知道自己最终会变成什么样；即使现在，我们也只是略知一二。人工智能的发展历经诸多波折，我们预计未来还会有更多。
Some of the twists have been joyful; some have been hard. It’s been fun watching a steady stream of research miracles occur, and a lot of naysayers have become true believers. We’ve also seen some colleagues split off and become competitors. Teams tend to turn over as they scale, and OpenAI scales really fast. I think some of this is unavoidable—startups usually see a lot of turnover at each new major level of scale, and at OpenAI numbers go up by orders of magnitude every few months. The last two years have been like a decade at a normal company. When any company grows and evolves so fast, interests naturally diverge. And when any company in an important industry is in the lead, lots of people attack it for all sorts of reasons, especially when they are trying to compete with it.
有些波折令人欣喜，有些则很艰难。看着一连串的研究奇迹不断涌现，很有意思，许多唱反调的人也变成了真正的信徒。我们也看到一些同事离开，成为了竞争对手。随着公司规模扩大，团队往往会发生人员更替，而 OpenAI 的规模扩张速度极快。我认为有些情况是不可避免的 —— 初创公司通常在每次规模迈上新台阶时都会出现大量人员流动，而在 OpenAI，每隔几个月，人员数量就会呈数量级增长。过去的两年，对于一家普通公司来说，相当于十年。当任何一家公司发展和演变如此之快时，利益分歧自然就会出现。而且，当任何一家处于重要行业领先地位的公司，会因为各种各样的原因遭到很多人的攻击，尤其是当他们试图与其竞争时。
Our vision won’t change; our tactics will continue to evolve. For example, when we started we had no idea we would have to build a product company; we thought we were just going to do great research. We also had no idea we would need such a crazy amount of capital. There are new things we have to go build now that we didn’t understand a few years ago, and there will be new things in the future we can barely imagine now.
我们的愿景不会改变；我们的策略将继续演变。例如，一开始我们没想到要建立一家产品公司；我们原以为只是要做伟大的研究。我们也没想到需要如此巨额的资金。现在有一些几年前我们不了解的新事物需要我们去构建，未来还会有一些我们现在几乎无法想象的新事物。
We are proud of our track-record on research and deployment so far, and are committed to continuing to advance our thinking on safety and benefits sharing. We continue to believe that the best way to make an AI system safe is by iteratively and gradually releasing it into the world, giving society time to adapt and co-evolve with the technology, learning from experience, and continuing to make the technology safer. We believe in the importance of being world leaders on safety and alignment research, and in guiding that research with feedback from real world applications.
到目前为止，我们为自己在研究和部署方面的业绩感到骄傲，并致力于继续推进我们在安全和利益共享方面的思考。我们仍然相信，让人工智能系统安全的最佳方法是迭代式地、逐步地将其推向世界，给社会时间来适应并与这项技术共同进化，从经验中学习，并继续让这项技术变得更安全。我们相信，在安全与对齐研究方面成为世界领导者的重要性，并利用来自现实世界应用的反馈来指导这项研究。
We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it. We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies. We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great, broadly-distributed outcomes.
我们现在有信心，按照传统理解，我们知道如何构建通用人工智能（AGI）。我们相信，在 2025 年，我们可能会看到首批人工智能智能体 “加入劳动力市场”，并切实改变公司的产出。我们仍然相信，迭代式地将出色的工具交到人们手中，会带来伟大的、广泛分布的成果。
We are beginning to turn our aim beyond that, to superintelligence in the true sense of the word. We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future. With superintelligence, we can do anything else. Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity.
我们开始将目标转向更远大的方向，追求真正意义上的超级智能。我们热爱现有的产品，但我们是为了辉煌的未来而努力。有了超级智能，我们将无所不能。超级智能工具可以极大地加速科学发现和创新，远远超出我们仅凭自身所能做到的，进而极大地增加富足与繁荣。
This sounds like science fiction right now, and somewhat crazy to even talk about it. That’s alright—we’ve been there before and we’re OK with being there again. We’re pretty confident that in the next few years, everyone will see what we see, and that the need to act with great care, while still maximizing broad benefit and empowerment, is so important. Given the possibilities of our work, OpenAI cannot be a normal company.
这在目前听起来像是科幻小说，甚至谈论起来都有点疯狂。没关系 —— 我们以前也经历过这种情况，再次面对也没问题。我们相当有信心，在接下来的几年里，每个人都会看到我们所看到的，并且认识到在谨慎行事的同时，仍要最大限度地实现广泛的利益和赋能，是多么重要。鉴于我们工作的可能性，OpenAI 不可能是一家普通的公司。
How lucky and humbling it is to be able to play a role in this work.
能够在这项工作中发挥作用，是多么幸运和令人谦卑啊。
(Thanks to Josh Tyrangiel for sort of prompting this. I wish we had had a lot more time.)
来源：新浪财经