紐時賞析／科技巨頭加碼 押寶人工智慧不手軟

Tech Titans Accelerate Investment Into A.I.

科技巨頭加碼 押寶人工智慧不手軟

Four of the tech industry’s wealthiest companies made it clear this week that their spending on artificial intelligence was not about to slow down.

4大科技巨頭本周明確表態，對人工智慧的投資不會減速。

But the outlays from Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon — which all raised their spending by billions of dollars, saying they needed to meet demand for AI — are increasingly feeding concerns that the tech industry is heading toward a dangerous bubble.

然而，這一波由谷歌、Meta、微軟和亞馬遜領頭的「花錢競賽」也引發市場擔憂：當各家動輒追加數十億美元投資以追趕AI潮流時，科技產業恐正走向一場危險的泡沫。

AI remains an unproven and expensive technology that could take years to fully develop. How much companies will ultimately get back in return from AI products like chatbots is unclear. And smaller companies pursuing AI gold, financial analysts pointed out, are not nearly as wealthy.

AI仍屬昂貴且未被完全驗證的技術，距離成熟商用可能還需數年。各家公司能否從聊天機器人等AI產品回收巨額投資仍不明朗，報酬率甚至可能遠低於預期。金融分析師提醒，許多追逐AI淘金夢的中小企業財力有限。

Last week, the Bank of England wrote that while the building of data centers, which provide computing power for AI, had so far largely come from the cash produced by the biggest companies, it would increasingly involve more debt. If AI underwhelms — or the systems ultimately require far less computing — there could be growing risk.

英國央行上周警告，支撐AI運算力的資料中心建設目前主要靠大型企業自有資金，但未來勢必仰賴更多舉債。一旦AI成效不如預期，或所需算力低於預估，企業債務風險恐持續上升。

“This is a fast-evolving topic, and the future is highly uncertain,” the bank wrote.

央行總結指出：「這是一個快速演變的領域，未來仍極度不確定。」

Concerns mushroomed this week after a series of earnings reports. On Wednesday, Google said it was increasing what it planned to spend on AI data center projects this year by $6 billion, after dropping nearly $64 billion on them over the past nine months.

一系列財報發布後，市場疑慮急遽升溫。谷歌周三宣布，過去9個月在AI數據中心專案已經投入近640億美元，今年計畫再投資60億美元。

Microsoft said it had spent $35 billion in its latest quarter, $5 billion more than what it had told investors to expect just a few months ago. And Meta raised its spending forecast to at least $70 billion by the end of the year, which would be nearly double what it spent last year.

微軟表示，他們在最新季度已支出350億美元，比前幾個月告知投資人的預期支出多了50億美元。Meta將今年度支出預測提高到至少700億美元，幾乎是去年的2倍。

On Thursday, Amazon also said it would be “very aggressive” in adding more data centers and would spend $125 billion this year on capital expenditures — and even more next year.

亞馬遜周四表示將「積極擴建」資料中心，今年資本支出達1250億美元，明年更高。

Google, Microsoft and Amazon, which are the three largest providers of cloud computing in the United States, said they did not have enough computing power to meet customer demand. That’s despite those three and Meta shelling out a combined $112 billion in just the past three months on capital expenditures, which included construction of data centers. Over the past 12 months, the four spent a total of more than $360 billion in capital expenditures.

美國3大雲端運算服務供應商谷歌、微軟和亞馬遜均坦言，雲端運算需求超出可供應量。4大巨頭近3個月合計撒幣1120億美元，過去12個月總投資突破3600億美元。

文／Karen Weise，譯／羅方妤

說文解字看新聞

【張佑生】

無論樂意與否，人類都已身處AI無所不在的世界，科技巨擘燒錢不手軟，相信連本帶利可以賺更多。Outlay是支出，近似expense/cost，原先指開業時的費用，金額可大可小，現在常用於大型或長期投資：The company’s AI outlays doubled compared to last year.

Bubble是新聞英文很常見的字，指資產價格脫離基本面、因投機心理而上漲的現象；世人目睹過網路泡沫(dot-com bubble)、股市泡沫(a stock market bubble)，AI熱潮(boom)會不會引發科技泡沫(tech bubble)？尚待觀察。

另外一個常見字是computing power，中文稱運算能力或算力，指電腦或伺服器的資料處理能力，是AI與雲端科技的核心基礎：AI models require massive computing power to process data.

資料中心(data center)則是另一個熱門字，各國都在搶蓋，用電與環保問題卻很少被提及。

AI演變一日千里，和fast-evolving（瞬息萬變的）相比，rapidly changing略嫌陽春，前者更常用於政策、醫學、科技。