The Economist 丨新光社译：Facebook——帝国雄心

为争夺下一个计算机时代的主导权，马克·扎克伯格严阵以待。...

自罗马帝国时代以来，“竖大拇指”就成为了公众眼中象征权力的有力符号。在成立仅仅12年后，Facebook已然成为一个大帝国，它拥有庞大的用户数量、巨大的财富、有魅力的领导人以及超乎想象的成就和影响力。这一全球最大的社交网站如今已拥有16亿用户，其中有10亿人每天平均使用时间超过20分钟。在西方世界，在最普及的计算设备及智能手机上，Facebook所占份额是在所有受欢迎的社交软件中最大的；美国人在移动互联网中使用的软件有30%属于Facebook。同时，它是全球第六有价值的上市公司，估值约3250亿。

即便如此，作为Facebook的创始人兼首席执行官，31岁的马克·扎克伯格还有更大的野心。他计划使用太阳能无人机发射互联网信号为贫困国家中的信号隔绝地区提供互联网接入服务，同时，他还在人工智能（AI）、聊天机器人（“chatbots”）以及虚拟现实（VR）技术上大举押注。然而对信息时代主导权的争夺使他与以谷歌为主的其他科技帝国的矛盾日益增长，随之而来的”战争“也将使一个与所有人息息相关的数字化未来逐渐成型。

Facebook的成功要归功于那些能够吸引大量用户的强大功能，因为用户的关注与偏好信息可以被销售给广告商，谷歌也是如此。但这两者又在用户生活中扮演截然不同的角色：谷歌拥有全球海量信息，而Facebook了解你和你的朋友们；你使用谷歌去完成工作，又转向Facebook以消磨时间。尽管如此，他们的优势地位和战略部署却是十分类似。无可匹敌的数据量造就了这两家公司难以挑战的地位和巨大的收益， 同时带来财富来支持它们的大胆投资以及对潜在的竞争者的收购。也正因此，两家公司都渴求更多的用户与数据，虽然他们打着行善的旗号，却只有这种需求真正解释了它们为什么如此热衷于使用无人机或是谷歌气球来扩展发展中国家的互联网接口。

当下的任务是通过新的方法利用大数据提供新的服务并赚到钱。对于facebook，AI技术中的“机器学习”过程被认为能够完成这一任务， 在学习过程中机器通过处理大量数据来主动学习而非被动地按照明确的程序运行。例如现在Facebook已经使用人工智能技术去识别相片中的人脸，以及给用户提供个性化的状态更新和广告资讯。Facebook同样也推出了人工智能助手以及可以通过短信与用户互动的聊天机器人。下一周Facebook即将在它的Messenger平台上推出聊天机器人功能（现在的Messenger平台已经有了一些功能，比如用Uber叫车），使得chatbots有更广的应用。同时，Facebook在虚拟现实（VR）中也投入了大量资金，在2014年它用20亿收购了这个新兴领域的翘楚Oculus----这次投资展现的是Facebook对计算通信行业在智能手机时代之后的走向的大胆预测。

但Facebook在各个领域都有许多竞争对手。Google正在用AI（人工智能）来改善互联网服务并为自动驾驶汽车导航，同时其他的工业巨头也在AI（人工智能）上耗资不菲，尽管凭借最雄厚的财力和最多的数据Facebook和谷歌可以吸引到最好的研究人员和最有前景的创新公司。Facebook在声控系统的研发中落后于亚马逊, 苹果, 谷歌, 微软，而在聊天机器人方面，它面临的竞争来自于微软和大量新兴公司——他们急于证明机器人程序可作为新的应用程序。Facebook在虚拟现实领域中也在与其强大的竞争对手较量，扎克伯格将可以把信息叠加在现实世界中的VR（虚拟现实）视作AR（增强现实）的垫脚石。然而微软凭借近年来最引人注目的产品HoloLens头戴式全息眼镜直接进入AR（增强现实）；已经活跃于VR（虚拟技术）领域的谷歌也已向一家不知名的AR（增强现实）公司Magic Leap注资。

Facebook的野心和它所面临的竞争，反映出这样一个共识：这些新兴科技将改变人们与他人、与数据和与周边环境的交流方式。人工智能将会帮助设备和服务预测你的需求（谷歌的收件箱已经开始为你的电子邮件提供回复建议）。你将可以直接在会话界面查阅信息，或者通过语音或者文字控制机器人来完成任务。智能服务会应用在相当多的产品上，比如一些可穿戴的设备，汽车和VR、AR眼镜。在今后十年中，计算机很可能会使用以人工智能作为媒介的虚拟现实界面，用户通过手势和语音输入信息，使整个世界都得以展现。信息将会在你周围的世界中被呈现出来，使新的沟通方式、创新和协作成为可能。

这是一个Facebook，谷歌和微软都在为之奋斗的伟大愿景。但是在这过程中一定会涉及到隐私和安全的问题: 因为处理所有的信息来提供个性化的服务看起来像是对于用户一种监视，而且如果消费者觉得他们提供个人信息（现在广告公司正在逐渐意识到收集信息的成本问题）并未带来足够好的回报或者信息安全性不足时，这种服务反而会引起抵制。

另外，人们也在担心信息的过分集中和垄断，以及系统的封闭使得人们难以转换服务。Facebook在印度的一个免费接入互联网计划被印度的电信部门阻止，因为他们认为让一个企业去担任“看门人”的角色是危险的。德国的竞争管理局也正在调查facebook处理用户数据的方式。可以想见，随着Facebook越来越强大，类似案例会越来越多，就像之前微软和谷歌所面对的那样。

与数十亿人的生活维持更紧密的联系并获得巨额收益和避免人们的抵制----这两者的平衡将是本世纪最大的商业挑战之一。即使是在罗马帝国，皇帝也会发现人民突然与他作对。当我们为扎克伯格的成功而喝彩时，也要替他担忧。

NOT since the era of imperial Rome has the “thumbs-up” sign been such a potent and public symbol of power. A mere 12 years after it was founded, Facebook is a great empire with a vast population, immense wealth, a charismatic leader, and mindboggling reach and influence. The world’s largest social network has 1.6 billion users, a billion of whom use it every day for an average of over 20 minutes each. In the Western world, Facebook accounts for the largest share of the most popular activity (social networking) on the most widely used computing devices (smartphones); its various apps account for 30% of mobile internet use by Americans. And it is the sixth-most-valuable public company on Earth, worth some $325 billion.

Even so, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 31-year-old founder and chief executive, has even greater ambitions. He has plans to connect the digitally unconnected in poor countries by beaming internet signals from solar-powered drones, and is making big bets on artificial intelligence (AI), “chatbots” and virtual reality (VR). This bid for dominance will bring him into increasing conflict with the other great empires of the technology world, and Google in particular. The ensuing battle will shape the digital future for everyone.

Empires built on data

Facebook has prospered by building compelling services that attract large audiences, whose attention can then be sold to advertisers. The same is true of Google. The two play different roles in their users’ lives: Google has masses of data about the world, whereas Facebook knows about you and your friends; you go to Google to get things done, but turn to Facebook when you have time to kill. Yet their positions of dominance and their strategies are becoming remarkably similar. Unparalleled troves of data make both firms difficult to challenge and immensely profitable, giving them the wealth to make bold bets and to deal with potential competitors by buying them. And both firms crave more users and more data—which, for all the do-gooding rhetoric, explains why they are both so interested in extending internet access in the developing world, using drones or, in Google’s case, giant balloons.

The task is to harness data to offer new services and make money in new ways. Facebook’s bet on AI is a recognition that “machine learning”—in which software learns by crunching data, rather than having to be explicitly programmed—is a big part of the answer. It already uses AI techniques to identify people in photos, for example, and to decide which status updates and ads to show to each user. Facebook is also pushing into AI-powered digital assistants and chatbot programs which interact with users via short messages. Next week it is expected to open up its Messenger service (which can already be used to do things like order an Uber car), to broaden the range of chatbots. And Facebook’s investment in VR—it bought Oculus, the cheerleader of this emerging field, for $2 billion in 2014—is a bold guess about where computing and communication will go after the smartphone.

But Facebook faces rivals in all these areas. Google is using AI techniques to improve its internet services and guide self-driving cars, and other industry giants are also investing heavily in AI—though with the deepest pockets and the most data to crunch, Facebook and Google can attract the best researchers and most promising startups. Facebook lags behind Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft when it comes to voice-driven personal assistants; when it comes to chatbots, it faces competition from Microsoft and a host of startups eager to prove that bots are the new apps. And its push into VR —which Mr Zuckerberg sees as a stepping stone to “augmented reality” (AR), where information is superimposed on the real world—pits it against formidable rivals, too. Microsoft has jumped straight to AR with its HoloLens headset, its most impressive product in years, and Google, already active in VR, has invested in Magic Leap, a littleknown AR startup.

The scale of Facebook’s ambition, and the rivalries it faces, reflect a consensus that these technologies will transform how people interact with each other, with data and with their surroundings. AI will help devices and services anticipate your needs (Google’s Inbox app already suggests replies to your e-mails). Conversational interfaces will let you look things up and get things done by chatting to a machine by voice or text. And intelligent services will spread into a plethora of products, such as wearable devices, cars and VR/AR goggles. In a decade’s time computing seems likely to take the form of AR interfaces mediated by AI, using gestures and speech for inputs and the whole world as its display. Information will be painted onto the world around you, making possible new forms of communication, creativity and collaboration.

This is the ambitious vision that Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other technology giants are working towards. But along the way there are certain to be privacy and security concerns. Crunching all that information to provide personalised services looks a lot like surveillance, and will cause a backlash if consumers do not feel they are getting a good deal in return for handing over their personal details (as the advertising industry is discovering to its cost)—or if security is inadequate.

There will also be worries about concentration and monopoly, and the danger of closed ecosystems that make it hard for people to switch between services. Facebook’s plan to offer free access to a limited subset of websites was blocked by India’s telecoms regulator, which argued that it was “risky” to allow one company to act as a gatekeeper. And Germany’s competition authority is investigating the way Facebook handles personal data. As its dominance grows, Facebook can expect to face more such cases, as Microsoft and Google did before it.

Striking a balance between becoming ever more intimately entwined in billions of peoples’ lives, making huge profits as a result and avoiding a backlash will be one of the biggest business challenges of the century. Even in ancient Rome, emperors could find that the crowd suddenly turned against them. So applaud Mr Zuckerberg—and fear for him, too.

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