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In my early days as a graduate student, I went on a snorkeling trip off the coast of the Bahamas.
當我還在讀研究生的時候，我在巴哈馬海岸參加了一次潛泳之旅。
I'd actually never swum in the ocean before, so it was a bit terrifying.
我之前從沒在海里游過泳，心里難免有些忐忑。
What I remember the most is, as I put my head in the water and I was trying really hard to breathe through the snorkel,
讓我印象最深的是，當我把頭潛入水中時很努力地試圖通過通氣管呼吸，
this huge group of striped yellow and black fish came straight at me ... and I just froze.
這時一大群擁有黃黑相間條紋的魚徑直向我游過來，我瞬間變得不知所措。
And then, as if it had suddenly changed its mind, came towards me and then swerved to the right and went right around me.
之后魚群好像突然改變了主意，游到我面前，然后突然右轉，與我擦肩而過。
It was absolutely mesmerizing. Maybe many of you have had this experience.
這魚群徹底驚艷到我了。也許你們中的許多人也有過這樣的經歷。
Of course, there's the color and the beauty of it, but there was also just the sheer oneness of it,
當然，令人著迷的不但有它的艷麗和壯美，同時也有它純粹的同一性，
as if it wasn't hundreds of fish but a single entity with a single collective mind that was making decisions.
好像它不是成百上千條魚，而是單一有唯一集體思維的個體在做決定。
When I look back, I think that experience really ended up determining what I've worked on for most of my career.
回想起來，這段經歷對我職業生涯的大部分工作起到了決定性的作用。
I'm a computer scientist, and the field that I work in is artificial intelligence.
我是一個計算機科學家，從事的領域是人工智能（AI）。
And a key theme in AI is being able to understand intelligence by creating our own computational systems
人工智能中一個關鍵的主題是能通過創造我們自己的計算機系統來了解智能，
that display intelligence the way we see it in nature.
這些系統展現了我們在自然中所觀察到的智能。
Now, most popular views of AI, of course, come from science fiction and the movies, and I'm personally a big Star Wars fan.
如今AI最受歡迎的想法是源于科幻小說和電影，我本人就是《星球大戰》的超級粉絲。
But that tends to be a very human-centric view of intelligence.
但那些關于AI的想法往往以人類為中心。
When you think of a fish school, or when I think of a flock of starlings, that feels like a really different kind of intelligence.
當你想到魚群，或當我想到一群八哥時，那是一種全新的關于智能的體會。
For starters, any one fish is just so tiny compared to the sheer size of the collective,
首先，每一條魚在龐大魚群的映襯下都顯得非常微不足道，
so it seems that any one individual would have a really limited and myopic view of what's going on,
所以似乎任何一個個體對于所發生事物的視角都是非常有限和片面的，
and intelligence isn't really about the individual but somehow a property of the group itself.
智能似乎與個體無關，而是群體的某種屬性。
