中国正在努力超越硅谷，赢得生物技术竞赛 [联合国媒体]

China is pushing hard to overtake Silicon Valley and win the biotech race, and gain control of the world’s biological data

中国正在努力超越硅谷，赢得生物技术竞赛

Eleonore Pauwels says the world should pay attention, as China achieves dominance in AI and biotech. Bio-intelligence is more than mapping genomes: whoever controls the resources may influence the well-being of entire populations

Eleonore Pauwels 说，随着中国在人工智能和生物技术领域占据主导地位，世界应予以关注，生物智能不仅仅是绘制基因组图：谁控制了资源，谁就可能影响整个人口的福祉。

Eleonore Pauwels is the Research Fellow on Emerging Cybertechnologies at the Centre for Policy Research at United Nations University, focusing on artificial intelligence

Eleonore Pauwels 是联合国大学（United Nations University）政策研究中心新兴网络技术研究员，专注于人工智能。

China is fast becoming the next AI-DNA powerhouse, threatening Silicon Valley’s long-standing global edge in bio-intelligence. As other countries form alliances with the two giants, the world will be divided into rival tech blocs. This new geopolitical order – depicted in Kai-fu Lee’s latest book, AI Superpowers – will not be shaped by US President Donald Trump’s trade wars, but by competition to control the artificial intelligence and biotech industries.

中国正迅速成为下一个人工智能DNA(AI-DNA) 强国，威胁着硅谷在生物智能领域的长期全球优势。随着其他国家与这两大巨头结成联盟，世界将被划分互竞争的科技集团。这种新的地缘政治秩序，根据李开复的最新着作《人工智能超级大国》(AI Superpower) 的说法，将不会受到美国总统唐纳德·特朗普贸易战的影响，而会受到控制人工智能和生物技术产业竞争的影响。

The world is already on the threshold of this new era. China has invested US$9 billion in expanding its AI and biotech capabilities within and beyond its borders, to take a great leap forward in the commodification of a resource that might be the new oil: namely, our biological and genomic data.
Equipped with AI programs that can decode the genetic profiles of entire populations and ecosystems, forms of “cybercolonisation” are increasingly likely, along with potentially massive shifts in geopolitical power. In fact, China and Silicon Valley seem poised for a race to control our biological data.

世界已经进入这个新时代的门槛。中国已投资90亿美元扩大其在国内外的人工智能和生物技术能力，以便在一种可能成为新石油的资源 (即我们的生物和基因组数据) 的商品化方面向前迈进一大步。
当配备了能够解码整个种群和生态系统基因图谱的人工智能程序，“网络殖民”变得越来越有可能，地缘政治力量面临潜在的巨大转变。事实上，中国和硅谷似乎准备展开一场控制我们的生物数据的竞赛。

AI is increasingly used to map and measure our biological functions. Many corporate AI platforms are already privy to our online behaviour, relationships, health and emotional states – but, increasingly, they will also acquire baseline information about our vital signs, organs and genomes.
Our cellphones can analyse shifting speech patterns to diagnose Parkinson’s disease. A company in China relies on wireless sensors to analyse workers’ brainwaves and monitor their emotional health. IBM Frontiers Institute is developing intelligent implants and nanobots to go inside the body for exploratory imagery and to report on blood-sugar levels.

人工智能越来越多地被用来绘制和测量我们的生物功能。许多企业人工智能平台已经了解我们的在线行为、关系、健康和情感状态，但它们也将越来越多地获得关于我们的生命体征、器官和基因组的基线信息。
我们的手机可以通过分析转换的语音模式来诊断帕金森氏症，中国的一家公司依靠无线传感器来分析工人的脑电波并监测他们的情绪健康，IBM前沿研究所正在开发智能植入物和纳米机器人，以进入人体内进行探索性成像，并报告血糖水平。

In large-scale, low-cost gene sequencing, China already surpasses the US. The world’s largest genetic research centre, the BGI based in Shenzhen, holds DNA samples of an estimated 40 million people. Formerly known as the Beijing Genomics Institute, the company is on a quest to map the DNA of all known plant and animal species on Earth.

在大规模、低成本的基因测序方面，中国已经超过了美国。
世界上最大的基因研究中心——总部设在深圳的华大基因研究所(BGI)，拥有约4000万人的DNA样本。
该公司原名北京基因组研究所，它正在探索绘制地球上所有已知动植物物种的DNA图谱。

BGI, which provides sequencing services in more than 60 countries, is betting big on the future: reading our genes, on a global scale, to crack famine, illness, evolution and the secrets of human intelligence.
Staff operate sequencers at a national gene bank, built by Chinese genetic research giant BGI, in Shenzhen. Photo: Xinhua

在60多个国家提供测序服务的华大基因正在押注于未来：在全球范围内读取我们的基因，以破解饥荒、疾病、进化和人类智慧的秘密。



中国基因研究巨头华大基因(Bgi) 在深圳建立的一家国家基因库，工作人员在操作测序仪。图片：新华社

In 2013, BGI dealt a blow to Silicon Valley when it bought Complete Genomics, a DNA sequencing company in California. BGI bought sequencing machines from another American firm, Illumina, but could now develop its own advanced machines.

2013年，BGI 收购了加州的一家DNA测序公司 Complete Genomics，这对硅谷来说是一个打击。
华大基因从另一家美国公司 Illumina 购买了测序仪，但现在可以开发自己的先进机器。

China excels at capturing markets and data sets. The Chinese company WuXi AppTec was an early investor in 23andMe, the popular US direct-to-consumer genetic testing company, and now has a foot in China and the US, and access to an extensive library of genomes from both markets.

中国在捕捉市场和数据方面表现出色，中国公司无锡AppTec 是“ 23andMe” 的早期投资者。
23andMe 是一家美国颇受欢迎的直接面向消费者的基因测试公司，该公司已涉足中国和美国市场，并从这两个市场获得了一个庞大的基因组库。

There are, of course, thriving AI and biotech platforms in Silicon Valley. Google and Amazon offer powerful cloud computing platforms to the largest genomics studies conducted in the US and beyond. 23andMe sits on a trove of genetic and physiological data from more than five million customers around the world. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, funded by US$13 billion in Facebook shares, pursues ambitious goals such as mapping out every cell in the human body and ending or managing all diseases “in our children’s lifetime”.

当然，硅谷也有蓬勃发展的人工智能和生物技术平台。
谷歌和亚马逊为在美国和其他国家的最大基因组研究提供了强大的云计算平台。23andMe 拥有来自世界各地500多万名客户的大量遗传和生理数据。
由Facebook出资130亿美元资助的“ 陈-扎克伯格倡议”(Chan Zuckerberg Initiative) （译注：又称“陈计划”）追求雄心勃勃的目标，比如绘制出人体内的每一个细胞，“在我们孩子的有生之年”结束或控制所有的疾病。

Yet, Silicon Valley sorely lacks a coordinated global strategy for AI and emerging digital technologies. While the Trump administration has stripped down the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Chinese government has outlined a “military-civilian integration development strategy” to harness AI and biotech.

然而，硅谷在人工智能和新兴数字技术方面严重缺乏协调的全球战略。尽管特朗普政府已精简了白宫科技政策办公室，但中国政府已概述了一项“军民融合发展战略”，以利用人工智能和生物技术。

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with his wife Priscilla Chan and their daughter Max. The couple have set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, with the goal of curing, preventing or managing all diseases “in our children's lifetime”. Photo: AFP

Facebook首席执行官马克·扎克伯格和他的妻子普里西拉·陈以及他们的女儿麦克斯



这对夫妇建立了“陈-扎克伯格倡议”(Chan Zuckerberg Initiative)，目标是“在我们孩子的有生之年”治疗、预防或控制所有疾病。图片：法新社

China has deployed massive resources to develop its own strategic technology sectors in close collaboration with national champion companies like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. Beijing has also kept the Silicon Valley giants out of the Chinese market for years. Since 2017, a new cybersecurity law has required all “network operators” – Chinese and foreign – to store data on servers within China and allow government officials to access it. And in the first half of 2018, Chinese venture capital funds invested US$5.1 billion in US biotech companies, surpassing the US$4 billion invested in all of 2017.

中国已经部署了大量资源，与百度、阿里巴巴和腾讯等国家级巨头企业密切合作，发展自己的战略技术行业。多年来，中国政府也一直将硅谷巨头排除在中国市场之外，自2017年以来，一部新的网络安全法要求所有“网络运营商”——无论是中国还是外国——都必须将数据存储在中国境内的服务器上，并允许政府官员访问这些数据。
2018年上半年，中国风险投资基金对美国生物技术公司投资51亿美元，超过2017年全年的40亿美元。

Control of bio-intelligence means far more than just mapping: whoever has a monopoly on the resources may well be able to influence the well-being of entire populations and impact innovation in allied countries.

对生物情报的控制不仅仅意味着测绘：谁垄断了资源，谁就很可能影响整个人口的福祉，并影响盟国的创新。

In economics and medicine, the implications are huge. A hi-tech country could “hack”, or quietly capture, another country’s bio-economy – its genomes, microbiomes and ecosystems – for its own economic growth. Inequality will rise between countries that are tech leaders and those that are tech takers, if skills are not transferred and financial benefits are not shared.

在经济领域和医学界，其影响是巨大的。一个高科技国家可以“黑进”或悄悄捕获另一个国家的生物经济——它的基因组、微生物和生态系统——以促进它自己的经济增长。
如果不转让技术，不分享经济利益，作为技术领先者的国家和作为技术接受者的国家之间的不平等将会加剧。

The consulting firm Frost & Sullivan predicts that AI technologies will generate US$6.7 billion in global revenue from health care by 2021, compared with US$633.8 million in 2014. For instance, liquid biopsies – blood tests to diagnose cancer – could set off the next gold rush in health care. By 2025, between 100 million and two billion human genomes could be sequenced, an effort expected to exceed the computing challenges of running YouTube and Twitter.

咨询公司 Frost&Sullivan 预测，到2021年，人工智能技术将为全球带来67亿美元的医疗收入，相比之下，2014年的收入为6.338亿美元。例如，液体活检，一项用于诊断癌症的血液检测的技术，可能会引发下一轮医疗保健领域的淘金热，到2025年，1亿到20亿人类基因组将被测序，这一努力预计将超过运营YouTube 和 Twitter 所面临的计算挑战。

Never before has our species been equipped to acquire biological data on such a grand scale. Such capacities may raise ambitions to not only monetise, but also weaponise, ever more bio intelligence.
Indeed, AI and biotech research is a strategic piece of a country’s security arsenal. It drives development in “medical countermeasures”, the vaccines and drugs needed to protect against a bioterrorist attack.

我们这个物种从未有过如此大规模地获取生物数据的能力，这样的能力可能会激发野心，不仅可能将更多的生物智能金钱化，还可能将其武器化。
事实上，人工智能和生物技术研究是一个国家安全武库的战略组成部分，它推动了“医学防护措施”（medical countermeasures）的发展，即预防生物恐怖袭击所需的疫苗和药物。

Algorithms are becoming a crucial tool for detecting potential threats from known and unknown DNA sequences. Applying AI deep learning to genomic data sets could help geneticists master genome editing and optimise human health; it could also lead to military applications.

算法正成为检测已知和未知DNA序列潜在威胁的重要工具，将人工智能深度学习应用于基因组数据集可以帮助遗传学家掌握基因组编辑并优化人类健康，它也可能导致军事应用。

China is planning to achieve dominance in bio-intelligence. The question is whether other countries will open their eyes to this and try to gain a competitive edge.

中国正计划在生物情报领域占据主导地位，问题是其他国家是否会对此睁大眼睛，并试图获得竞争优势。

michaelyyyeung
38 min 13 sec ago
The work on Bio- Genetics Intelligence started decades ago by China and by the US plus other developed countries. It is encouraging to see intense competition. We as human beings will see and enjoy breakthroughs in theses areas. This is good news. One thing I believe is biased is that when the US leads in a certain area of research, the outside takes it as being natural. But when China leads the research and progress in another area, people starts taking on and sounding out a negative approach! What's wrong with China taking the lead in certain areas like Bio-Technology or in the internet? Can we take a more objective approach? I have to admit that the US-dominance is past! There is a new world order looming and we have to embrace and not to reject...

生物遗传智能的研究始于几十年前，由中国、美国和其他发达国家共同发起，看到激烈的竞争是令人鼓舞的，作为人类，我们将看到并享受这些领域的突破，这是个好消息。
我认为有一点是有偏见的，那就是当美国在某一研究领域处于领先地位时，外界认为这是自然的。
但是，当中国在另一个领域的研究和进步处于领先地位时，人们就开始采取一种消极的态度。
中国在某些领域如生物科技或互联网领域处于领先地位有什么不好？
我们能采取更客观的做法吗？
我不得不承认，美国的统治地位已经过去了！
世界新秩序即将来临，我们必须拥抱而不是拒绝.
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