Waymo与谷歌眼镜背后的实验室，致力于重塑您的生活

在我们开始之前先说明一下，本期节目中我们会多次谈及谷歌及其母公司Alphabet。谷歌是NPR的财务支持者。这里是TED广播时间。每周，开创性的TED演讲。

A note before we get started, we talk a lot about Google and its parent company, Alphabet, in this episode. Google is a financial supporter of NPR. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks.

我们现在的任务就是大胆梦想。

Our job now is to dream big.

在TED大会上呈现。

Delivered at TED conferences.

以实现我们期望看到的未来。

To bring about the future we want to see.

遍布全球。为了理解我们是谁。从这些演讲中，我们为您带来会让您惊喜的演讲者和观点。

Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

你根本不知道会发现什么。

You just don't know what you're gonna find.

挑战您。

Challenge you.

我们真的需要问问自己，为什么这值得关注？甚至能改变你。

We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you.

我真的感觉自己完全变了个人。是的。你有这种感觉吗？值得传播的思想。来自TED和NPR。我是Manoush Zamorodi。

I literally feel like I'm a different Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From Ted and NPR. I'm Manoush Zamorodi.

为安全起见，到达后车门将保持锁定。几十年前，自动驾驶汽车的想法听起来还像科幻小说。你到了。但现在这些汽车在旧金山、洛杉矶、凤凰城等城市已变得相当普遍。我的车到了。

For your safety, the doors will remain locked when we arrive. A few decades ago, the idea of a self driving car sounded like science fiction. You are here. But now these cars are becoming pretty commonplace in cities like San Francisco, LA, Phoenix. My ride is here.

我打的是Waymo。Waymo是自动驾驶汽车行业的领导者之一。谢谢。乘客们纷纷在社交媒体上分享他们的体验。

I'm taking Waymo. One of the leaders in the self driving car industry is Waymo. Thank you. And passengers have taken to social media to share their experiences.

大家，我一直想试试这些东西，宝贝，我马上就要体验了。

Y'all, I always want to try one of these things and babe I'm about to do it.

反应各不相同。哦，它动了。没有司机坐在这里感觉太奇怪了。

With a wide range of reactions. Oh, it's moving. It was so weird having no driver in this seat.

大家，我简直不敢相信。

Y'all, I cannot believe this.

我独自一人开着这整辆车行驶在路上。

I've got this whole car to myself driving down the road.

这位乘客特别喜欢Waymo消除了人际互动的需求。

This passenger in particular loved that Waymo cut out the need for human interaction.

这真是一次非常棒的体验，完全独自一人在这里。当你乘坐Lyft或Uber时，你知道，有另一个人在开车，不是针对他们，但这就像你没有隐私，没有自己的空间。

This is just such a nice experience to be in here completely by myself. When you hop in a Lyft or an Uber, you know, there's another person driving and nothing against them, but it's just like you don't have your privacy. You don't have your space.

当然，也有很多乘客制作的视频展示了这项技术有趣和故障的一面。一个TikTok视频显示，在旧金山的一个社区，凌晨4点一群Waymo车辆不停地互相鸣笛。另一个视频拍到一名男子在乘车途中睡着，无法被唤醒。嘿，该醒醒了。

Of course, there are also a lot of videos made by passengers showing the funny and glitchy sides of this technology. One TikTok video showed a group of Waymo vehicles honking at each other incessantly at 4AM in a San Francisco neighborhood. Another captured a man who'd fallen asleep during his ride and couldn't be roused. Hey. It's time to wake up.

还有一个视频记录了一名男子无法让他的Waymo停下来，车辆开始在停车场里绕圈行驶。

Yet another documented a man who had no way to stop his Waymo, which had started driving in circles in a parking lot.

我在一辆Waymo里

I'm in a Waymo

联系乘客支持。

to rider support.

是的。我还要赶飞机。为什么这东西在转圈？我头都晕了。看看它在干什么。

Yeah. I got a flight to catch. Why is this thing going in a circle? I'm getting dizzy. It's look at what it's doing.

我理解。真的非常抱歉，迈克。我们正在处理一辆车的情况。它是在绕圈吗？有人说他们在自动驾驶汽车里感觉更安全。也有人觉得更不安全。

I understand. I'm really, really sorry, Mike. We're currently working with the situation of a vehicle. Is it circling around Some say they feel safer in self driving cars. Others feel less safe.

所以问题就变成了，你更信任谁？人类还是机器？

So the question becomes, who do you trust more? A human or a machine?

目前，我们生活的世界里主要是人类在驾驶汽车，每年全球有超过一百万人死于车祸，其中绝大多数，大约95%的死亡，是由驾驶员失误造成的。

Right now, we live in a world where mostly humans are driving cars, and more than a million people a year die in car accidents around the world, the vast majority of them, something like ninety five percent of those deaths, are caused by driver error.

这是阿斯特罗·泰勒。他是X公司的首席执行官。这家公司是Alphabet所谓的登月工厂，一些技术领域最聪明的人聚集在这里，试图解决世界上一些最大的问题。而人类的易错性是他们试图破解的众多问题之一。他们希望你能比信任人类更信任机器。

This is Astro Teller. He is the CEO of X. This is the company Alphabet's so called moonshot factory, where some of the brightest minds in technology come together to try to figure out how they can solve some of the world's biggest problems. And human fallibility is one of the many issues they're trying to hack. They want you to be able to trust machines more than humans.

他们的自动驾驶汽车项目，现在被称为Waymo，是他们最初的登月计划之一。当时，他们提出的重大问题是

Their self driving car project, now known as Waymo, was one of their first moonshots. And at the time, the big question they were asking was

如果我们能把汽车视为现代版的电梯会怎样？曾经有一段时间，电梯是由人类操作的，现在我们回头看会觉得那很古怪。这就是那个激进的 proposed 解决方案，那种对未来的愿景。当时有很多理由相信这是可能的。也许最好的例子是DARPA，即美国国防高级研究计划局，多年来一直在举办这些大奖赛，以鼓励美国学术界，特别是研究自动驾驶车辆。

What if we could see cars as being the modern equivalent of elevators? There was a time when elevators were operated by humans, and we now, when we look backwards, can see that as very quaint. And so that was the radical proposed solution, that sort of vision of the future. And then there was a number of reasons to believe it might be possible. Maybe the best example was that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, for The United States, had been running these grand challenges for a number of years to encourage academics in The United States, in particular, to work on self driving vehicles.

他们不是在沙漠里举办过比赛吗？

Didn't they have races out in the desert?

没错。他们在2004年2月于沙漠中举办了一场约150英里的比赛，结果无人获胜。

Exactly. So they had a race out in the desert in 02/2004. It was about a 150 miles, and nobody won.

没人完成比赛？

Nobody finished?

甚至没人完赛。

Nobody even finished.

是啊。

Yeah.

但在2005年2月，他们举办了同样的150英里比赛，有三支队伍完成了比赛。获得第一名的车队使用的赛车叫Stanley，由斯坦福大学教授塞巴斯蒂安·特龙领导的团队打造。

But in 02/2005, they had the same race, same 150 miles, and three teams finished. And the team that came in first was the car was called Stanley, and the team was run by a professor at Stanford named Sebastian Thrun.

塞巴斯蒂安·特龙后来加入谷歌工作。几年后的2010年，他创立了X——登月工厂，邀请阿斯特罗作为联合创始人，希望打造一个二十一世纪的贝尔实验室，一个孕育大胆、改变生活的发明的孵化器。

Sebastian Thrun ended up working at Google. And a few years later in 2010, he started X, the moonshot factory, bringing Astro in as his cofounder with the hopes of building a twenty first century Bell Labs, an incubator for bold, life changing inventions.

所以第一个项目是自动驾驶汽车，而X的成立就是作为这类项目的孵化地，并从事更多类似的项目。

So the first project was the self driving cars, and X was formed as a kind of place for that to live and to do more things like that.

像自动驾驶汽车这样的项目往往始于一个看似不可能的想法种子，而这正是X登月工厂建立的基础。阿斯特罗和他的团队旨在通过将风险和失败视为创新的阶梯而非障碍，来解决世界上一些最大的问题。因此，今天我们将与阿斯特罗·泰勒共度一小时，探讨X众多登月项目的高潮与低谷。这些技术领先于时代，有些成功了，有些失败了，但都帮助激发了其他突破性项目。首先，我们来谈谈什么是登月计划。

Projects like a self driving car often start from a seed of an idea that seems impossible, and that is the foundation on which X's moonshot factory was built. Astro and his team aim to tackle some of the world's biggest problems by treating risk and failure not as obstacles, but as steps toward innovation. So today, we're spending the hour with Astro Teller to explore the highs and lows of many of the moonshots at X. Technologies that are ahead of their time, some which succeeded, and some that have failed, but helped spark other groundbreaking projects. To start, let's talk about what a moonshot even is.

登月计划，至少从我们的角度来看，必须具备三个基本要素。首先，必须有一个你可以明确指出并想要解决的世界性大问题。其次，必须有一个激进的解决方案，我们可以预先同意它很可能解决那个世界性大问题。然后第三，必须存在某种突破性技术，即使它只是给我们一线希望，让我们有可能实现那个激进的解决方案。这是一个可测试的假设。你有一个提议的起步方式。

A moonshot, at least from our perspective, has to have three basic components. First, there has to be a huge problem with the world that you can name and wanna solve. Second, you have to have a radical proposed solution that we can preagree it would very likely solve that huge problem with the world. And then three, there has to be some kind of breakthrough technology that even if it's just gives us a glimmer of a hope that we could make that radical proposed solution, It's a testable hypothesis. You have a proposed way of starting.

所以一旦我们具备了这三个要素，我们就会称之为登月故事假说。但这并不是旅程的终点。这只是获得开始旅程的许可。

So once we have those three things, we would call that a moonshot story hypothesis. And that's not the end of the journey. That's just permission to begin the journey.

嗯哼。

Uh-huh.

对于任何试图建立创新工厂的人来说，其中一个失败模式是，一旦你有了第一个进展非常顺利的项目，从短期来看，创新工作的领导者开始将越来越多的精力投入到这个进展顺利的项目上就变得合理了。因此，我们建立了一个称为‘毕业’的流程。一旦某个项目能够独立生存，它就不应该再留在这里了。一旦它开始规模化，我们就希望它离开。

And one of the failure modes for anyone who's ever tried to get an innovation factory going is that as soon as you have the first thing that's going really well, it becomes rational in the short term for the leaders of the innovation effort to start focusing more and more of their energy on the thing that's going really well. And so we've set up a process called graduation. As soon as something could live on its own, it needs to not be here anymore. Once it's starting to scale, we want it to leave.

我猜这几乎就像是在说，你们就像是试验厨房。你们在寻找最好的食谱。但假设你们找到了终极纸杯蛋糕配方。你们不会去开一个纸杯蛋糕工厂。做纸杯蛋糕的人会离开。

I guess it's like almost saying, like, you guys are the test kitchen. You're finding the best recipes. But let's say you land on the ultimate cupcake. You're not gonna start a cupcake factory. The cupcake people are gonna leave.

他们会想办法大量制作纸杯蛋糕、销售它们、进行市场营销等等。但你们要回去研究另一个配方。

They're gonna figure out how to make lots of cupcakes, sell them, market them, etcetera. But you guys are gonna go back and figure out another recipe.

完全正确。我们的工作不是规模化生产。你说得对，我们就像一个试验厨房。但我们的任务不仅是验证某项技术的可行性，还要尝试提出并回答所有问题，消除所有关于这能否真正成为世界一代人一次的重大机遇的主要风险。我们用'登月计划'这个词来提醒自己保持宏大的愿景，持续梦想。

Exactly right. Our job is not to scale things. You're exactly right that we're a test kitchen. But our job is not just to prove the the technical feasibility of something, but to try to ask and answer all of the questions, to burn down all of the major risks around whether this really could be a once in a generation opportunity for the world. We use the word moonshots to remind us to keep our visions big, to keep dreaming.

这是阿斯特罗·泰勒在TED舞台上的演讲。

Here's Astro Teller on the TED stage.

我们用'工厂'这个词来提醒自己，我们希望有具体的愿景和具体的计划来实现它们。但我告诉你一个秘密：登月计划工厂是一个混乱的地方。但我们不是回避混乱，假装它不存在，而是试图将其转化为我们的优势。

And we use the word factory to remind ourselves that we want to have concrete visions, concrete plans to make them real. But I have a secret for you. The moonshot factory is a messy place. But rather than avoid the mess, pretend it's not there. We've tried to make that our strength.

我们大部分时间都在搞破坏，试图证明自己是错的。就是这样，这就是秘诀。首先直面问题中最困难的部分。兴奋地欢呼：嘿，我们今天要怎么搞垮我们的项目？

We spend most of our time breaking things and trying to prove that we're wrong. That's it. That's the secret. Run at all the hardest parts of the problem first. Get excited and cheer, hey, how are we going to kill our project today?

我们保持着一种有趣的平衡：让不受约束的乐观主义推动我们的愿景，同时又利用热情洋溢的怀疑精神为这些愿景注入生命和现实感。

We've got this interesting balance going where we allow our unchecked optimism to fuel our visions, but then we also harness enthusiastic skepticism to breathe life, breathe reality into those visions.

你们是如何在财务上管理这一点的？如果有人觉得，如果我们投入这么多资金、时间和人力来解决这个问题，我们一定能攻克它。这样的理由足够吗？还是你会反感这种说法？

How do you manage that financially? If if you you know, I'm sure someone is like, if we throw this much money, this much time, and this many people at this problem, I know we can crack this. Is that enough, or would you hate to hear that argument?

我实在不想听到这种论点。

I would hate to hear that argument.

好吧。

Okay.

我们的目标不是激进创新，而是高效地追求激进创新。我们正试图将这一过程系统化。因此我们必须反复追问：我们考虑的每个想法的风险回报比是多少？我们努力降低风险，试图发现我们所审视的事物中可能有1%或2%最终能成为规模巨大、持久的企业，并对世界产生真正重大的积极影响。

Our goal is not radical innovation. Our goal is to pursue radical innovation efficiently. We're trying to systematize the process. So the question we have to ask over and over and over again is what is the reward risk ratio for each of the ideas that we're considering? We're trying to burn down risk and discover which one or 2% of the things that we look at actually could be very large enduring businesses that were real turn out to be really great for the world.

那么让我们回到Waymo，也就是自动驾驶汽车。过程中肯定遇到过坎坷，但请详细说说整个过程。你们是如何从一个想法、一场沙漠竞赛，到在

So let's go back to Waymo, the the self driving car. There must have been bumps in the road, but, like, talk me through, like, the process. How do you get from an idea, a race in the desert, to being incubated in the moonshot factory, and then actually getting to the point that you haven't been killed, that you meet all the criteria?

到2010年2月，我们已经有了一辆车。那是一辆能自动驾驶的普锐斯，它可以通过一个小电机自己转动方向盘，还能控制刹车和油门踏板。我们做的第一件大事是告诉团队：这里是大湾区10段不同的100英里道路，我们希望你们每段路至少完全自主驾驶一次——全程无人触碰油门、刹车或方向盘。你们可以尝试任意多次。

So by 02/2010, we had a car. It was a Prius that could drive itself. It could turn its own wheel with a little motor, and it could apply the brake pedal and the gas pedal. And the first big thing that we did was we said to the team, here are 10 different 100 mile stretches of road in the Greater Bay Area, and we want you to drive each of these 100 mile stretches at least once each with nobody touching the gas pedal, the brake pedal, or the steering wheel. You can try as many times as you want.

必须确保绝对安全，但完成这10段100英里的路程后要向我们汇报。团队花了大约一年时间才完成这个目标。

You have to be really safe about it, but you tell us when you've accomplished these 10 different 100 mile stretches. And it took the team about a year to accomplish that.

嗯哼。

Uh-huh.

我们学到了很多。他们成功实现目标的那一刻让我们意识到，我们可能时机把握得恰到好处——既不过早也不过晚。因为我们对此充满热情并承担了部分风险，这让其他人也开始相信这个起初无人认真将其视为潜在商业机会的领域。

And we learned a ton. And the fact that they accomplished it was a real moment for us to go, oh, we might be the right amount too early here because we got excited about it and burned down some of the risk, which then gets other people to believe in something that at first, when we started, there was no one else in the world working on that seriously as a potential business.

稍后节目将探讨自动驾驶汽车的未来，以及X实验室另一个进展不太顺利的登月项目——谷歌眼镜的起源故事。今天节目中，我们将用一小时对话登月工厂X的首席执行官阿斯特罗·泰勒。我是曼努什·扎莫罗迪，您正在收听NPR的TED广播小时节目。稍后回来。在继续节目之前先插播一条提醒。

In a minute, the future of self driving cars and the origin story of another one of X's moonshots that didn't go quite as well, Google Glass. On the show today, an hour with the CEO of the moonshot factory called X, Astro Teller. I'm Manoush Zamorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back. A quick note before we get back to the show.

哇哦！听众们对我们系列节目《孩子们还好吗？》第一集采访的科技公司CEO维克多·里帕尔贝利提出了大量观点。这场关于人工智能进入课堂的讨论让人既着迷又不安。

Woo wee. Boy, listeners had a lot of opinions on Victor Riparbelli, the tech CEO who we interviewed for part one of our series called are the kids alright? This was a conversation about AI in the classroom. People were fascinated. They were freaked out.

同时也引发了强烈愤慨。我们非常高兴这期节目在Spotify和Facebook上激发了大量辩论与对话。若您想深入了解我和维克多讨论的一些议题，比如政府应在管理AI中扮演什么角色？AI企业CEO承担哪些伦理责任？请收听本周的TED广播小时Plus特别节目。

They were also outraged. We are so glad this episode sparked a lot of debate and conversation, in Spotify, on Facebook. But, also, if you want to dig deeper into some of the ideas that Victor and I talked about, like what role should governments play in managing AI? What ethical responsibilities do AI CEOs have? Listen to our TED Radio Hour Plus episode this week.

我们将深入探讨所有这些问题。当然也诚挚邀请您成为Plus订阅用户，支持本节目及公共广播事业。欢迎订阅。请持续分享观点，感谢收听。这里是NPR的TED广播小时。

We get into all of it. We would also love you, of course, to become a plus subscriber and support this show and public radio generally. Check it out. Keep the thoughts coming, and thanks. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

我是曼努什·扎莫罗迪。今天我们将与阿斯特罗·泰勒共度一小时。他是企业家、计算机科学家，也是Alphabet旗下所谓登月工厂X的CEO。所有项目除了需要攻克技术难题，还面临法律监管等重大障碍，以及公众是否真正需要这些新技术。

I'm Manoush Zamorodi. Today, we're spending the hour with Astro Teller. He is an entrepreneur, computer scientist, and the CEO of X, Alphabet's so called moonshot factory. With all of their projects, there are, of course, technical challenges to navigate. But there are also other big hurdles like laws and regulations and whether the public even wants their new technology.

我记得有段时间关于自动驾驶汽车的讨论重点并非'天啊它们上路了'，而是非常哲学化的电车难题——当面临选择撞向两人还是五人时，自动驾驶汽车会如何决策？当时这一切都停留在理论层面。而如今Waymo已在多个城市投入运营。

I mean, I've I remember there was a period where a lot of the conversation about self driving cars, it really wasn't about, oh my gosh, they're on the road. It was very philosophical. Know, it was the trolley question, you know, who how will a self driving car decide if it's faced with having to go around a crowd killing potentially two people versus five people. It was all very theoretical. And now fast forward to today, and and Waymo is operating in multiple cities.

不过，你认为公众的接受度在哪里呢？比如，人们准备好接受这个了吗？他们在某些地方准备好了吗？

Where do you think the public acceptance is, though? Like, are are people ready for this? Are they ready for it in certain places?

我认为在Waymo尚未进入的城市，公众接受度参差不齐。有些城市非常期待Waymo的到来。当然也有人会紧张，因为他们从未体验过自动驾驶汽车。但我想说的是，在像旧金山、奥斯汀、凤凰城、洛杉矶这样自动驾驶汽车很多的地方，我见过一些原本从不乱穿马路的人。

I think the public acceptance in cities where Waymo isn't yet is all over the map. There are cities that are really excited to have Waymo come. I'm sure there are people who are nervous because they have never experienced a self driving car. What I will tell you is that in places where there are a lot of self driving cars, like San Francisco or Austin, Phoenix, Los Angeles. I've watched people who would never jaywalk across the street because they don't trust the humans to stop.

他们会在自动驾驶汽车前乱穿马路，因为他们如此确信自动驾驶汽车会做出正确的反应。

Jaywalk in front of self driving cars because they're that sure that the self driving car will do the right thing.

哦，哇。

Oh, wow.

实际上我认为，作为社会，我们需要思考这个问题。如此高度的信任将如何开始改变我们使用城市的方式？

Which I actually think, you know, we need to think about as a society. How will trust that high start to change how we use our cities?

我是说，我们来谈谈一些负面的抵制。2025年初，洛杉矶发生了针对美国移民执法的抗议活动，几辆Waymo汽车遭到破坏，被纵火烧毁。给人的感觉是，这些汽车某种程度上成为了人们对自动化、企业权力、监控等方面不满的替罪羊。这对你来说一定很难接受。

I mean, let's talk about some of the negative pushback. So earlier in 2025, there were those protests over US immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, and several Waymo cars were vandalized. They were set on fire. And the sense was that those cars were sort of stand ins for frustration with automation, with corporate power, with surveillance. That must have been really hard for you to watch.

确实很难。但我想指出，作为一个社会，我们面临着一些相当大的社会和公民挑战。最终，我们需要通过公共政策决策来解决我们社会的运作方式。所以我承认人们可能对未来感到恐惧和沮丧，但我不认为这些恐惧和沮丧真的只是关于自动驾驶汽车。我认为这涉及更广泛的一系列问题，我完全没有轻视它们的意思。

It was. But I would suggest that we have some sizable social and civic challenges as a society. And, ultimately, we're going to need to address how our society functions through public policy decisions. So I acknowledge that people are potentially scared and frustrated about the future, but I I don't believe that those fears and that frustration is really about self driving cars. I think it's a much broader set of things, and I'm not minimizing them at all.

但我认为这些问题的解决方案本质上是关于我们如何组织社会的决策，而要求某家公司对其技术进行这样或那样的微调，我认为这并不能解决那些问题。所以

But I think that the solutions to those problems are fundamentally decisions about how we're gonna organize our society and asking some corporation to sort of tweak its technology in one direction or another. I don't think it's gonna solve those problems. So

对于那些可能会说'好吧，你是什么意思？'的人来说，那个自动驾驶汽车成为常态、对每个人都好的世界愿景是什么？它如何改变安全性、交通，或者我猜甚至是我们设计城市的方式？

for people who maybe are like, well, what do you mean? What is that vision for a world where autonomous cars are the norm and it's it's a a good thing for everyone? How could it change safety or or traffic or, I guess, even the way we design cities?

嗯，Waymo一直收到大量请求，人们希望能够把孩子放进自动驾驶汽车里，送他们去各种地方，而这种方式是那些父母绝对不会同意让他们的孩子——目前是14岁及以上——坐进一个有他们不认识的人类司机的Uber或Lyft车里。所以这是一个例子，说明因为没有司机，使得父母能够让孩子去他们需要去的地方，对他们的孩子感到安全，然后如果他们当时不能开车送孩子，他们可以用他们的时间做别的事情。所以我认为这些可以在任何地方停靠、可以去城市任何地方的迷你巴士的积极连锁反应，我希望它们会对城市的功能产生非常积极和深远的变化。

Well, so Waymo has been inundated with requests for people to be able to put their kids into the self driving cars to send their kids to various places in a way that those parents would never have been okay to put their kid, this is 14 and older for right now, into an Uber or a Lyft car with a human driver who they didn't know. So that's an example where there's an affordance because there isn't a driver that's making the parents able to get their kids where they need to go, feel safe about their kids, and then they can do something else with their time if if they weren't able to drive their kids at that time. So I think then the positive knock on effects of these mini buses that can stop anywhere and go to anywhere in a city, I'm hoping we'll have a really positive and profound change on how cities function.

我很想谈谈我最喜欢的话题之一，那就是我们身上的技术，以及可能增强我们人类功能的技术。我们可以谈谈谷歌眼镜吗？

I would love to talk about, one of my favorite topics, which is, technology that we have on our bodies and that enhances potentially our human functions. Can we talk about Google Glass?

当然可以。

For sure.

好的。因为它的发展轨迹非常有趣。提醒大家一下，2013年，谷歌推出了Glass。

Okay. Because that has had a very interesting trajectory. Just to remind people, 2013, Google launched Glass.

我们在这里要做一些相当神奇的事情。那么现在告诉我，谁想看Glass的演示？这个

We're gonna do something pretty magical here. So tell me now, who wants to see a demo of Glass? This

是那种眼镜，在一只眼睛上方有一个小显示屏。

was glasses that had, like, a little display above one of the eyes.

这款可穿戴技术包含电池、微型计算机、摄像头和无线连接，能够实时传输用户所看到的一切。

The wearable technology contains a battery, tiny computer, camera, and a wireless link and can broadcast whatever the user sees.

它可以拍照。可以发送信息。可以完全免提地连接到你的手机。当时你们主要想解决什么重大问题呢？

It could take photos. It could send messages. It could connect to your phone all hands free. When what was the big problem you were trying to solve then at that point?

我们生活中太多时间沉浸在数字世界，这种方式与我们在物理世界的体验存在深刻割裂。这其实是由我们与电脑和手机的交互界面决定的。你可能没注意到——使用手机实际上需要10到12秒来完成掏手机、解锁、打开应用这一系列动作。但如果戴着智能眼镜，比如你说'拍照'就能立即拍摄，整个过程只需1秒而非12秒。这样你就能以更自然的方式捕捉更生活化的画面。

We spend so much of our lives in the digital world in a way that feels deeply disconnected from our lives in the physical world. And that's a function of the user interfaces that we have with our computers and with our phones. You'd be surprised being on your phone actually takes about ten or twelve seconds just to sort of, like, get it out, unlock it, go to the app that you want. If you have glasses and it's, for example, able if you just say, take a picture and you get the picture, that was a one second activity, not a twelve second activity. It allows you to get much more natural pictures and to get them in a much more natural way.

我们在物理世界的生命体验与数字世界的生命体验之间，本不该存在如此巨大的割裂。

There doesn't have to be such a large schism between our experience of our lives in the physical world and our experience of our lives in the digital world.

那么请告诉我们后来发生了什么。为什么它没有成功推广？听你这么描述——不用盯着手机，我立刻想到自己酸痛的肩颈和社区里那些低头驼背的青少年。这听起来是个很棒的理念，究竟出了什么问题？

So so remind us what happened. Why why didn't it take off? Because when you put it that way, like, not looking at our phones, I'm thinking of my aching shoulders and neck and all the hunched teenagers that wander around my neighborhood. That sounds like a great idea. What happened?

虽然原因肯定不止两个，但我认为最主要的原因有以下两点。

I'm sure it wasn't just these two things, but I'll tell you what I believe the top two things were.

好的。

Okay.

首先是谷歌眼镜上装有摄像头，我认为当时社会还在逐渐适应到处都有很多摄像头的概念。

The first is there was a camera on Google Glass, and I think society was still getting used to the idea that there were a lot of cameras everywhere.

而且

And

这是谷歌眼镜首当其冲的问题，而在过去十二、十三年里，社会已经向前发展了。我认为我们现在对手机和摄像头几乎无处不在的看法已经大不相同了。嗯。另一个问题是我们确实将Glass设计为一个学习平台。我们在Glass早期就知道它不是一个成熟的产品。

that was something that Google Glass bore the brunt of, and society has moved forward in the last twelve, thirteen years. And I think we feel very differently about the idea that there are phones and cameras kinda constantly around us. Mhmm. The other issue was we really designed Glass to be a learning platform. We knew in the early days of Glass that it wasn't a product.

我们对此非常清楚，因此我们启动了一个名为'探索者计划'的项目，将其提供给那些明确报名、旨在向我们反馈这款产品未来发展方向的人。但在这个过程中，人们开始非常认真地将其视为一种身份象征，并作为身份象征来佩戴。

We were so clear on that that we started what was called the Explorer program, and we were giving it to people who were explicitly signing up to give us feedback about what this wanted to become as a product. But along the way, people started taking it very seriously as a status symbol and and wearing it as a status symbol.

一旦你戴上谷歌眼镜，它突然就成了你的一部分。

Once you put on Google Glass, it's suddenly just a part of you.

好吧。谷歌正在告诉谷歌眼镜用户，在使用眼镜拍摄他人时要先征得同意。否则可能会让人觉得有点毛骨悚然。另外

Alright. Google is telling Google Glass users ask for permission when using Glass to take pictures of others. That can get kinda creepy. Also

而我们让自己陷入了一种误解，认为玻璃（Glass）已经是一个成品，但实际上它当时还不是。

And we let ourselves fall into an understanding of glass as being a product when it really wasn't yet.

所以当你说它不是一个成品时，你的意思是它更像是一个原型或者供人们测试的东西？

So when you say it's wasn't a product, do you mean it was more like a prototype or something for for people to test?

从设计的角度来看，它非常坚固且精致。但一个产品不仅仅取决于工业设计有多好。

From a design perspective, it was incredibly solid and polished. But a product isn't just how well designed the industrial design is.

嗯。

Mhmm.

一个产品还需要深刻理解你为接收者提供的价值以及他们期望从中获得什么。而我们当时还不知道它有什么用处。例如，我们把它提供给独立电影制作人并与他们合作。我们并没有告诉他们，这绝对是未来制作真实电影的方式。但我们是在问，这有用吗？

A product is also a deep understanding of what value you're delivering to whoever's receiving it and what they expected to get from it. And we didn't know what it was good for yet. So for example, we were giving it to and working with independent filmmakers. And we weren't telling them, this is definitely how you should make cinema verite going forward. But we were asking, is this useful?

你会用它来做什么？我们猜测玻璃（Glass）可能会催生很多准专业级别的应用。所以，如果你是餐厅的服务员、餐厅的领班或者医院的护士，玻璃（Glass）会有用吗？是的，几乎肯定会有用。

What would you do with this? We suspected that a lot of kind of prosumer activity would happen with glass. So if you were, a waiter at a restaurant or the maitre d' at a restaurant or a nurse in a hospital, Could glass be useful? Yeah. Almost certainly.

但你会怎么使用它？我们当时并不知道。所以探索者计划的目的就是把它交到这些人手中，让他们告诉我们他们希望它能做什么，这样我们就能 essentially 为他们所处的场景原型化开发出适合玻璃（Glass）的应用程序。

But how would you use that? We didn't know. So that was the point of the explorer program was getting it into the hands of these people so they could teach us what they wish it would do so that we could prototype the applications essentially for glass that sort of met them where they were.

但它确实被使用了，对吧？因为我记得听说它被用来培训飞行员和外科医生，而且在工业应用方面非常成功。我记错了吗？

But it did get used, didn't it? Like, because I remember hearing that it was being used to train pilots and surgeons and that it had sort of an industrial use case that was very successful. Am I is that wrong?

你说得对。我们过去过于关注消费者，而实际上在幕后，真正依赖它的是石油钻井平台的工作人员、飞机维修人员、医院的护士等人群，他们都在说：请不要把这个拿走，我现在工作离不开它。所以随着时间的推移，我们转向了那些真正发现其用途的领域。

You're right. We had focused too much on consumers, whereas very quietly in the background, it was actually people on, like, oil rigs, people who are maintaining airplanes, you know, nurses and hospitals who are the ones who are like, please don't take this away from me. I was like, I need it for my job now. And so over time, we pivoted to be where people were finding use in it.

你会不会觉得这个设备是时机没把握好，推出得太早了？

Would you say that this was a device that you didn't get the timing right, that you were too early?

是的，在那个情况下我们确实太早了。我们从中吸取了很多教训，而现在通过Android XR，以及与Warby Parker和三星的合作，谷歌已经宣布我们正在开发新版设备。所以它的时代再次到来了。我认为现在时机正合适，但这已经是十二年后了。

Yes. We were too too early in that case. We learned a lot from it, and Google, through Android XR, and working with Warby Parker and Samsung, has now announced that we're doing a newer version of this. So its time has come again. I think that the timing is right now, but that's twelve years later.

正如你指出的，2013年已经是很久以前了，所以我们当时确实太早了。

As and as you pointed out, 2013 was kind of a while ago, so we were too too early.

就像你提到的，现在Alphabet正在与Warby Parker等公司合作开发智能眼镜，具备实时翻译和旅行指南等功能。而且你们面临竞争，雷朋Meta眼镜也在提供类似工具。再次进入这个市场你们会感到怯场吗？还是说'哦，我们早有经验了'？

So so as you mentioned, now Alphabet is working with Warby Parker and some other companies on smart glasses with features that have, like, live translation and travel guide functions. And you have competition. This is a market where Ray Ban meta glasses are offering similar tools. How do you feel gun shy going into this? Or are you like, oh, we've been here.

我们知道该如何前进。

We know how to go forward.

我认为时机已经成熟。人们对这些价值感到兴奋，对这些外形尺寸感到舒适，而且技术也在不断进步。光线可以直接投射到眼镜镜片上，然后反射进眼睛，这使得体验更加无缝，更像一副自然的眼镜，这也促进了消费者的接受度。

I think that the time is is now. I think people are excited for these values. I think they're comfortable with these form factors, and the technology has moved forward. The light basically can be projected into the lens of glasses in a way that then reflects into your eye. So it feels much more seamless, much more like a natural pair of glasses than it did before, and that's also helping with consumer acceptance.

因此我预测，这将成为未来十年我们与技术互动的重要方式。

So I predict that this becomes a significant way that we interact with technology over the next decade.

我的意思是，感觉这个轮子转得越来越快。我记得当初人们觉得戴AirPods有点装——像是科技宅男才戴AirPods。而现在，几乎人人都戴AirPods或耳塞之类的。但依然存在一些基本的人类问题，比如隐私，你不知道别人什么时候会偷拍你，或者可能通过面部识别知道你的名字，尽管你甚至没跟他们说过话。

I mean, it feels like this this sort of wheel is turning faster and faster. I remember when, like, people thought you were kind of a jerk for wearing AirPods. Like, tech bro, wearing AirPods. And now, I mean, everybody wears AirPods or earbuds or whatever you wanna call them. But there's still the issue of fundamental human things like privacy and not knowing when someone can take a photo of you, for example, or can maybe have facial recognition and and know your name even though you haven't even spoken to them.

一方面是外观上的接受度，另一方面则是这些更大的社会规范和我们在不知不觉中与陌生人达成的默契。你认为这些也会改变吗？比如我15岁的孩子就非常在意在拍照前先征求别人的同意，尽管事实上大家无时无刻不在拍照。

There's the cosmetic sort of acceptance, and then there are these bigger sort of societal norms and and agreements that we make with strangers without even knowing it. Do you think some of those are going to change as well? Or I see, like, my 15 year old, like, is very conscientious about asking people before she can take a photo despite the fact that, like, everyone's taking pictures all the time.

没错。你刚才描述的问题非常现实，我们作为一个社会需要去解决它们。但我不认为这些问题与眼镜本身有关。如果你在夏威夷度假，正在享用早餐，周围可能有30部手机，人们可能未经允许就拍下你的照片。

Right. And I I I think the problems you just described are very real, and we need to work through them as a society. But I don't think they have anything to do with glasses per se. If you're on vacation in Hawaii and you're enjoying your breakfast, there are 30 phones all around you. People could be taking photos of you without asking.

你希望他们不会这么做，但他们可能已经在那些照片上运行面部识别来找出你是谁。所以我们作为一个社会需要解决你刚才提到的问题，但我认为眼镜的引入并不会让这个问题变得与现在有本质上的不同。

You hope that they won't. They could already be running facial recognition on those photos to find out who you are. So we as a society need to work through the things that you just described, but I think that the introduction of glasses is not going to make the problem substantially different than it already is.

那么你见证了想法是如何通过机构、通过世代孕育的。但我认为——我这么说对吗？你经常用的一个词是“堆肥”？意思是想法来回循环，或许成为新想法生长的土壤的一部分。你是这么称呼它的吗？

So so you've seen how ideas gestate, through institutions, through generations. But I think that the am I right in saying that the word that you often use is compost? That ideas go back and sort of, I guess, maybe are part of the soil in which new ideas grow. Is that is that what you call it?

是的，我们称之为登月计划堆肥。但如果你在X公司工作，我们需要帮助你的一件事就是学会如何坦然接受停止某个你付出了巨大努力的项目。这对我们所有人来说都是情感上的挑战，无论我们试图在理智上多么诚实。因此，随着时间的推移，我们开发了许多不同的方法来帮助人们超越最初的痛苦和悲伤，去看到终止一个他们真正兴奋并付出了巨大努力的项目之后的意义。

Yeah. We call it moonshot compost. But if if you worked here at x, one of the things we would need to help you with is how to feel okay about stopping something that you've worked really hard on. That is emotionally challenging for all of us no matter how intellectually honest we're trying to be. And so we have, over time, developed a lot of different ways to help people see past the initial hurt and sadness of having to end something they were really excited about and had worked really hard on.

我们学到的一点是，X公司的运作方式的一部分（提醒人们这一点对他们有帮助）就是在你结束某个项目时对你说：我们因登月计划堆肥而茁壮成长。这意味着当你停止你的项目时，这并不是否定解决你曾经充满激情想要解决的问题。这个问题会继续留在这里激励着我们。你不必失去在这个过程中开发的软件、硬件，甚至建立的合作伙伴关系。所有这些都将回归到X公司这块比喻的土壤中，而且我们有很多很好的例子，我们曾经在做某件事，

One of the things that we've learned is part of how x works, and it helps people to remind them of this, is to say to you as you're ending something, we thrive on moonshot compost. What that means is when you stop your project, that is not a rejection of solving the problem you were really passionate about solving. The problem will stay here with us, and we'll be inspired by that problem still. We don't have to lose the software, the hardware, even the partnerships that you built as part of this. It's all gonna go back into the metaphorical dirt here at x, and we have lots of really great examples where we we were doing something.

虽然没有完全成功，但经过一段间歇后，我们以不同的方式重新开始，最终得到了好得多的解决方案。因此，我们可以看到新想法的初始根源和萌芽就存在于旧想法的残余中，这也是我们以特定方式庆祝失败的原因之一——因为失败就是学习。帮助提醒人们关于登月计划堆肥的概念，是帮助他们理解这个循环并对此感觉更好的方式。

It didn't quite work out. But after a break, we came back in a different way and ended up with a much better solution. And so we can see the initial roots, the germination of that new idea in the leftovers from the old idea, which is one of the reasons we celebrate failure the way we do is because failure is learning. And helping remind people about moonshot compost is a way to help them understand that cycle and feel better about it.

我很好奇这个循环是否因为人工智能而加速了。我的意思是，普通人可能会觉得，天啊，人工智能这东西是真的。但你当然已经谈论它几十年了。你能告诉我们更多吗？我的意思是，它已经融入我们讨论的所有项目中。

I am so curious whether that cycle is speeding up because of artificial intelligence. I mean, as I think normal people feel like, oh my gosh. This artificial intelligence thing is real. But you, of course, have been talking about it for decades. Can can you tell us more about I mean, it's baked into all the projects we've been talking about.

它是否加速了你和你的团队测试、失败，再测试、再失败的循环？

Has it sped up this cycle of test and fail, test and fail for you and your team?

确实如此。我们在几乎所有构建的项目中都使用人工智能，同时我们也利用人工智能和机器学习的各个方面作为工具，帮助我们越来越快地完成工作。所以，是的，这也是事实。因为我们在X公司做的很多事情（虽然不是全部）都涉及到以某种非平凡的方式与物理世界、现实世界接触。我们倾向于不只做纯数字化的项目。

It has. We use artificial intelligence in almost everything that we build, but we also use aspects of artificial intelligence and machine learning as tools in helping us to do what we do faster and faster. So, yes, that's true as well. Because a lot of the things that we do here at X, not all of them, but a lot of them have some aspect of getting in contact with the physical world, the the real world in sort of nontrivial ways. We don't tend to work on things that are just digital.

我们

We

往往会受到物理世界的一定速率限制，需要制作物理原型、将其投入现实世界、在现实世界中体验它们并获取反馈。因此我们进展更快，但可能没有你想象的那么快，因为物理世界有其自身的复杂性和需求，人工智能无法完全解决。

tend to be a bit rate limited by the physical world, making a physical prototypes, getting them into the world, having experiences with them in the world, and getting that feedback. So we are moving faster, but maybe less faster than you might imagine because the physical world has its own sort of complexity and demands that artificial intelligence can't entirely resolve.

稍后回来，阿斯特罗将向我们透露X实验室的一些最新登月项目，这些项目旨在解决气候变化等世界上一些最复杂紧迫的问题。今天节目中，字母表公司登月工厂负责人阿斯特罗·泰勒。我是马诺·佐莫罗迪，您正在收听NPR的TED广播时间。稍后回来。这里是NPR的TED广播时间。

When we come back, Astro lets us in on some of the latest moonshots at X that aim to solve some of the world's most complex and urgent problems, like climate change. On the show today, the head of x alphabet's moonshot factory, Astro Teller. I'm Manoj Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Back in a minute. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

我是马诺·佐莫罗迪。今天节目中，我们将与字母表公司所谓的登月工厂X实验室的首席执行官阿斯特罗·泰勒对话。到目前为止，我们已经听到了X实验室两个最公开的登月项目的起源故事：自动驾驶汽车公司Waymo和谷歌眼镜。但X实验室的技术专家还致力于无数其他大多数可能从未听说过的项目，包括那些致力于改善我们食品系统的项目。

I'm Manoj Zamorodi. Today on the show, we're talking to Astro Teller, the CEO of X, Alphabet's so called moonshot factory. And so far, we've heard the origin stories of two of X's most public moonshots, Waymo, the self driving car company, and Google Glass. But the technologists at X have worked on countless other projects that most of us have probably never heard of, ones that are working to improve our food systems.

因此我们开展的第一项举措是将我们的机器人带到种子库。

So the first initiative we did was to take our robots to the seed banks.

还有一些项目致力于保护我们的海洋。

Others that are trying to protect our oceans.

我们所做的是在水下安装摄像头，在周围布置传感器，这样我们就能

What we do is we put cameras underwater. We put sensors around, and we're able

还有更多项目致力于将世界上一些最偏远的地区连接到互联网。

And still more working to connect some of the most remote areas in the world to the Internet.

我们连接的两国当局，他们觉得难以置信。

The authorities of the two countries that we had connected, they found it incredible to believe.

目前正在进行的项目之一叫做Tapestry。

One of the current projects in the works is called Tapestry.

我们曾多次接近实现重大突破（moonshot），但随后意识到世界各地包括本国的电网运行方式，从多方面阻碍了这些突破的实现。让我详细解释一下。电网是世界上最大的机器，最复杂的机器，也是最昂贵的机器。世界各地运营电网的人都是好人。

We got so many times to the cusp of a moonshot and then realized that the way the electric grid around the world, including in this country, is functioning won't allow for those moonshots in various ways. Let me unpack this some. The grid is the world's largest machine. It's the world's most complex machine, and it's the world's most expensive machine. The people who run the grid around the world are good people.

他们很聪明，但对他们所做的事情也只是勉强掌控，因为他们所运营的这个系统，在像美国这样的大地方，是过去一百二十多年里拼凑起来的。所以，如果你去找任何电网运营商，让他们给你看一张他们电网上每根电线、每个逆变器、每个变压器的地图，他们实际上根本没有那张地图。

They're smart people, and they kind of barely have a handle on what they're doing because the thing that they're operating was cobbled together in any large place like The United States over a hundred and twenty years. So if you go to any grid operator and say, show me a map of where every wire is on your grid, every inverter, every transformer, they literally don't have that map.

嗯。

Mhmm.

因此，为了帮助世界各地的电网运营商达到这样一个水平：能够以廉价、可靠、高效、理想清洁（即尽可能低的碳足迹）的方式为所有需要的人供电，我们大约七年前在X启动了名为Tapestry的重大项目（moonshot），其长期愿景是开发软件服务，帮助他们管理现有电网以规划未来，并最终实现实时优化。现在，我们的Tapestry项目正在帮助美国、智利、新西兰的电网运营商。我们即将在英国、南非启动，也刚刚开始在澳大利亚启动。所以，在电网因变革的重负而呻吟、而我们又如此依赖它的这个时代，我们为这个项目能给世界带来的帮助感到无比自豪和兴奋。

So in order to help grid operators of the world get to the place where we can get electricity to everyone who needs it cheaply, reliably, effectively, ideally clean, you know, with as low a carbon footprint as possible, We started a moonshot about seven years ago at X called Tapestry to with the aspiration long term to help make software services that could help them to manage the grid as that that they currently have to plan for the future and ultimately to optimize it in real time. And so the our Tapestry Moonshot is now helping grid operators in this country, in Chile, in New Zealand. We're starting in The UK. We're starting in South Africa, just starting in Australia. So we're really proud and excited about the help that that moonshot can bring to the world at a time when the grid is groaning under the weight of change, and we depend on it.

人类依赖它来种植粮食、在医院照顾病人、日益增多的汽车充电，以及数百项其他事务。

Humanity depends on it for how we grow our food, how we sort of take care of people in hospitals, how we charge our cars increasingly, and hundreds of other things.

那么，如果这个系统成功推广到所有这些地方，电网工作人员能更清楚地了解实际运行情况，并且我想，在需要时能够互相支持——我的意思是，我们在美国听说整个县都会断电，因为它们没有连接到其他电网。如果这个项目成功了，会是什么样子？

So what does that look like if if this gets a successful rollout to all these places and people who work on the grid, have more knowledge, I guess, of what exactly is operating? And and I and I suppose can back each other up if it comes to I mean, we hear here in The United States about entire, counties going dark because they're not connected to another grid. Is what does it look like if this is a success?

是的。让我给你举一个非常具体的例子。几乎任何东西接入电网都要等待异常漫长的时间。无论是风电场、太阳能电站、数据中心，几乎任何设施都是如此。

Yeah. Let let me give you a really concrete example. There are weirdly long wait times to plug almost anything into the grid. If you have a wind farm, a solar field, a data center, almost anything.

嗯。

Mhmm.

当你想将其接入电网时，电网运营商既有法律义务也有道德责任，让他们最聪明的人才深入研究各种未来的假设情况，尝试想象在各种奇怪场景下，接入这个设施——比如说一个太阳能电站——是否会对电网造成损害或导致电网断电？这些都是非常复杂的系统。问题是，如果你花一个月时间来确定接入那个太阳能电站是否安全，在你思考的这一个月里，又有五个太阳能电站排到了队伍后面。

And you wanna plug it into the grid. It's both a legal and moral obligation on the part of the grid operators to have their very smartest people pour over lots of future what ifs and try to imagine in all kinds of weird scenarios, would plugging this thing into the grid, let's say it's a solar field, would that hurt the grid in any way or cause our grid to go dark? These are very complex machines. Yeah. The problem is if it takes you a month to figure out whether it's safe to plug that solar field into the grid, in the month you've spent thinking about that, five more solar fields got onto the back of the line.

嗯。所以当你听到这被称为互联队列时，这对世界上任何电网运营商来说都是如此。嗯。等待时间从大约五年到有时超过十年不等，这使得从财务角度来说，如果你要排队等待那么长时间才能获准接入电网，实际建设任何项目都是不可行的。所以这是一个各方面都出现问题的例子。

Mhmm. And so when you hear this is called the interconnect queue in for any grid operator in the world. Mhmm. And the wait times vary from about five years to sometimes more than ten years, which is causing it to be financially, a nonstarter to actually build anything if you're gonna have to wait in lines that long to be allowed to plug into the grid. So this is an example where everything is sort of broken down.

我们与智利国家及其国家电网（称为CEN，c e n）合作了几年。在经过多年测试Tapestry软件后，他们现在已经将其作为处理（其中包括）互联队列的方式。他们表示，我们加快了安全检查某物是否能接入电网的速度，他们认为这样更安全，因为我们为他们运行了更多的场景，而且时间缩短到了原来的三十分之一。也就是说一天而不是一个月。这正在改变智利国家处理队列项目的能力，并开始缩小那个互联队列。

And we've spent several years with the country of Chile and their national grid, which is called CEN, c e n. And after having tested the Tapestry software for a number of years, they have now made it the sort of way that they're processing their, among other things, their interconnect queue. And they've said that we've sped up the way that they can safely check whether something can be plugged into the grid where they believe it's both more safe because we're running a lot more scenarios for them, and it is happening in one thirtieth the time. So in a day instead of a month. And that is transforming the country of Chile's ability to get things off the queue and to start to shrink that interconnect queue.

所以这是电网面临困境的一个非常重要但非常现实的具体方面。通过使用合适的新软件，它的性能可以得到大幅提升。

So that is one very important but very real concrete way that the grid is struggling. And with the use of the right new software, it could be performing in a much better way.

所以，简单来说，你正在讨论的是让整个国家更快地转向太阳能、风能和其他可再生能源。

So so just to lay it out, that this you're talking about transitioning entire countries to solar, to wind power, to renewables faster.

我的意思是，是的。那也可以是其中的一部分。但要明确一点，如果你想将一座燃煤电厂接入电网，或者想把一个铝冶炼厂接入电网，你都得排同样的队。即使是像医院这样的大型建筑，也得排同样的队。

I mean, yes. That also can be part of it. But to be clear, if you wanted to plug a coal fired power plant onto the grid or if you wanted to plug an aluminum smelter onto the grid, you have to wait in that same line. Even a like a large building like a hospital has to wait in that same line.

不过，我能问问关于气候的问题吗？因为，你知道，如果我们谈论登月计划的标准——大问题、根本性解决方案、可行路径，那么气候问题绝对会排在首位，是你想要解决的事情。你是否在思考如何在未来十年内通过你的登月计划对全球变暖产生影响？

Can I ask you though about climate? Because, you know, if we if we talk about the moonshot criteria, big problem, radical solution, plausible path, climate, like, that would definitely, like, be at the top of the list as something you you would wanna tackle. Is that are you thinking of ways you can make a dent in global warming in the next decade with your moonshots?

当然。人类正在影响地球，而这些变化反过来影响我们，这是真实的，而且会持续下去。所以基本观察是：目前，人类每年制造的东西，取决于你怎么计算，大约价值1000亿美元。我们在不同程度上使用它们，有时只是一个下午，有时像建筑物一样用五十年，然后它们最终进入垃圾填埋场。

For sure. The way that, you know, humanity is affecting the earth and the way that those changes in the earth are affecting us is real, and it's gonna continue. So basic observation. Right now, humanity makes, sorta depending on how you count, about $10,000,000,000,000 of stuff every year. And we use it to varying degrees, sometimes for, you know, an afternoon, sometimes for fifty years like a building, and then it goes into landfill.

我们制造的几乎所有东西，我们制造的实体物品最终都会进入垃圾填埋场。但进入填埋场的东西已经被高度加工过，其中仍蕴含大量价值。我们只是不知道如何提取它。大致来说，想象一个由于某种原因无法回收的塑料瓶。

Almost all the stuff we made, the physical stuff we make eventually makes it into landfill. But the stuff that goes to landfill has already been so processed. There's a lot of embodied value still left. We just don't know how to get it out. So rough order of magnitude, think about a plastic bottle that can't, for whatever reason, be recycled.

剧透警告：我们放入蓝色回收箱的东西，有90%最终去了垃圾填埋场。它们并没有被回收利用。

Spoiler alert. 90% of what we put into the blue bins goes to landfill. It does not go to a recycler.

我知道。这让我想哭，Astro。

I know. It makes me cry, Astro.

我知道。是的，确实如此。我们人类可以做得更好。如果我们把每年消耗10万亿美元资源、从中获取部分价值，然后将剩余约5万亿美元价值填埋的过程，看作是在利用世界上最大的资源——那些垃圾填埋场。

I know. It's it's yes. And we as humanity can do better. What if we saw this process of every year taking $10,000,000,000,000 of stuff, kinda getting some value out of it, and then putting about $5,000,000,000,000 of remaining value into landfill. See those landfills as the world's greatest resource.

如果我们能重新获取那些蕴含的剩余价值，我们就能实现真正的循环经济。因此我们在x公司建立了一个系统，这是循环经济的登月计划。我们希望在混凝土、纺织品和电子垃圾等领域实现这一目标，但碰巧我们从塑料开始。实际上，我们能够以每小时约10英里的速度，就像在快速传送带上一样，观察经过的每件物品，了解其分子构成，从而将每件物品引导至合适的回收方式，以正确的方法将其分解回分子层面。事实证明，回收方式多种多样。

If we could only get the rest of that embodied value back out again, we could be a real circular economy. So we have built a system here at x, a moonshot for circularity. We aspire to do this with things like concrete and textiles and and electronic waste, but it happens that we're starting with plastic. And we actually can, at about 10 miles an hour, like, on a fast conveyor belt, look at everything going by, and know what its molecular makeup is so that we can route each of these things to the kind of recycling that will allow us to get it back down to the molecules in the right way. And turns out there's a lot of different recycling.

你可以机械回收，用巨大的金属齿咀嚼它们；可以加热熔化它们；还有各种化学回收工艺；实际上，还可以用小虫子吃掉它们，进行各种生物回收。但如果你不知道里面是什么，就无法将其送往正确的地方，或参数化这些回收过程，以从送往不同区域的物品中获得最佳效果。所以这个名为Mattera的项目已经取得了很大进展。

You can mechanically recycle things, kinda chew them up with big metal teeth. You can heat them to sort of melt them. There's other kinds of chemical recycling processes, and actually, you can have little buggies eat them, biological recycling of various kinds. But if you don't know what's in it, you can't actually send them to the right place or parameterize those recyclings situations to get the best out of the things that you're sending into those different areas. So this project, which is called Mattera, is has made a lot of progress.

它正在与全球一些公司合作。去年年底我们举办了一个盛大的庆祝活动。他们装满了一油罐车的原始油，这些油完全由被回收商拒绝、本要送往填埋场的塑料制成，可以重新用于制造塑料瓶。这对我们来说是一个非常重要的时刻。

It's working with some companies around the world. We actually had a big party late last year. They filled a tanker truck full of sort of virgin oil that can be put back into the making of plastic bottles entirely from plastic that had been rejected by recyclers and was headed to landfill. That was a really nice moment for us.

所以这似乎完美体现了这样一种理念：如果它能赚钱，并且对地球有益，它就会规模化。我的意思是，这可能会彻底改变我们使用和处理材料的整个生态系统。

So it does seem to sort of perfectly embody this idea of, like, it will scale if it can make money and is also a good thing for the planet. I mean, this could change the entire sort of ecosystem of how we use materials and get rid of materials.

正是如此。所以

Exactly. And so

我们什么时候能知道，Astro？什么时候能知道你们能否实现这个目标？

When will we know, Astro? When will we know if you can do this?

嗯，我的意思是，我们知道我们能在一定程度上做到这一点，而且这些都是漫长的旅程。当你看看像Google Brain这样的项目，它源自X实验室，你知道，现在正是它的辉煌时刻，这取决于你怎么计算，它几乎用了十五年时间才引发了——或者说它是引发现代社会机器学习爆炸的诸多因素之一。我们之前讨论过的Waymo，那是十五年前的事了。Wing，那个用于包裹投递的无人机项目，现在已经在全球多个地方进行大量投递服务。它们正在快速扩展规模，而它们大约始于十二年前。

Well, I mean, we know we can do it to some extent, and these are long journeys. When you look at something like Google Brain that came from x, you know, that's having its moment in the sun now, that was sort of depending on how you count almost fifteen years that sort of caused the or was one of the things that caused the modern explosion of machine learning in society. Waymo, which we talked about, that was fifteen years ago. Wing, the drones for package delivery, they're now doing a lot of deliveries in a range of places around the world. They're scaling quickly, and that they started about twelve years ago.

所以如果你看看像Matera这样大约五年前启动的项目，我会非常希望七年后的今天，我们都能理所当然地认为我们的大部分塑料确实得到了回收，或者肯定很快就能被回收。但激进创新的一部分就在于它需要时间。我希望我能以不同的方式实现它，但事情就是这样运作的。

So if you look at something like Matera, which is about five years old, I would be very hopeful that seven years from now, we all take it for granted that most of our plastic does get recycled or certainly will soon get to be recycled. But part of radical innovation is it takes time. I wish I could make it differently, but that's just how it works.

我我在想，你是否认为你吸引了一种不同类型的人来为你工作？我我的意思是，最近我们读到马克·扎克伯格向AI软件工程师提供巨额财务套餐的消息，这就像是一场招聘军备竞赛正在进行。这是否改变了你的业务方式，以及你如何吸引最具创造力的技术人才来到这个登月工厂？

I I wonder, do you attract, do you think, a different type of person to come work for you? I I mean, we're reading these days about these huge financial packages being offered by Mark Zuckerberg to AI software engineers that that this is, like, sort of there's a hiring arms race going on. Does it change how you do business and how you attract the sort of most creative technical minds to the moonshot factory?

老实说，变化不大。我认为想在一个登月工厂工作的人有点与众不同。如果你在寻找一个高度稳定的环境，这里可不是合适的地方。人们需要非常适应模糊性和高变化率，才能在X感到舒适。我们实际上开玩笑说我们是混乱的飞行员。

Not much, honestly. I think the people who wanna work at a moonshot factory are a bit of a different breed. If you're looking for a highly stable environment, this is the wrong place to come. People need to be very comfortable with ambiguity and a high rate of change in order to be comfortable at x. We actually joke that we're chaos pilots.

如果你想和我们一起做那些艰难、可怕的探索工作，尝试创造下一个重大突破，那么这个地方可能适合你。只是想要那种东西的人是非常不同的。

If you wanna do that hard, scary explorer work to try to make the next swarm with us, then this place might be for you. It's just a very different person who wants that kind of a thing.

你在硅谷有点像个神话人物。我的意思是，在电视节目中，你你你也是一个角色。但是，你知道，这个你踩着轮滑鞋的形象。有一篇写你的特稿，我想是在万圣节，你打扮成甘道夫，在那个地方滑来滑去。

You are kind of a mythic figure in Silicon Valley. I mean, on the TV show, you you you're a character on there as well. But, you know, this idea that you're on your, like, rollerblades. There was one profile that was written. I think it was on Halloween, and you were dressed as Gandalf, sort of gliding around the place.

就像，你已经在这里待了有一段时间了。你你你代表了一种，我认为，是硬核技术知识与真正奇思妙想的结合。这是一个公平的评价吗？

Like, you've been around for a while. You you you represent sort of, I think, hard technical knowledge combined with real whimsy. Is that a fair assessment?

确实如此。我的意思是，我认为这里有两件不同的事情在发生。我永远不会做不真实的事情。所以我以真实的自己出现，部分原因是我希望鼓励这里的每个人都以真实的自己出现。如果我们不是所有人都百分之百地投入，我们就无法成为一个非凡的探索者群体，无法拥有强大的心理安全感，无法让彼此的想法以真正有趣的方式碰撞，而碰撞产生的火花正是我们所珍视的真正金粉。

It is. I mean, I think there's two separate things going on. I would never do something that was inauthentic. So I'm showing up as a real version of myself partly because I wanna encourage everyone else here to show up as a real version of themselves. We're not going to be an extraordinary group of explorers who can have great psychological safety and whose ideas can clash with each other in really interesting ways where the sparks that come from those clashes turn out to be the real gold dust that we value if we aren't all, you know, at a 100%.

但我也在向人们传递一个信号：不要把我太当回事，也不要太把自己当回事，并且表明，我们可以对我们长期为人类努力实现的目标极度认真，但同时又不以那种严肃到无法发现意外珍宝的方式去做。从来没有人是在咬紧牙关、一味苦干的过程中创造出真正独特和不寻常的东西的。幽默和傻气其实非常接近创造力的源泉，而不是那种冷酷的决心。所以当我以甘道夫的形象出现时，我的意思是，我喜欢甘道夫。他是我长大后想成为的人之一。

But I am also sending a signal to people not to take me too seriously, not to take themselves too seriously, and that it's possible to be intensely serious about what we're trying to accomplish in the long run for humanity while not doing it in a way that's so serious, we can't find those unexpected gems. No one ever created something really unique and unusual while gritting out determinedly, the process. Humor and silliness are actually very close to the wellsprings of creativity, not kind of grim determination. So when I show up as Gandalf, I mean, I like Gandalf. He's one of the people I wanna be when I grow up.

但这也是我试图解除人们戒备的方式，提醒他们内心有很多东西没有释放出来，而这里是一个安全的地方可以这样做。因为如果我希望你说出那百分之一真正精彩、出乎所有人意料的想法，让他们感到惊讶，你就必须同样安全地说出另外九十九个错误的想法。嗯。而且这不能仅仅是大家勉强接受。

But it's also my way of trying to disarm people and remind them that they have so much inside them that they're not letting out and that this is a safe place to do that. Because if I want you to say that one in a 100 things that's really brilliant and everyone didn't see coming, and they're like, what? You have to feel equally safe saying 99 things that are just wrong. Mhmm. And that has to not just be barely okay with people.

必须让他们感到欣喜。

It has to delight them.

你说得听起来太容易了，Astro。

You make it sound so easy, Astro.

嗯，就像我说的，事实，我们必须努力实现的目标，事实其实很容易。它真的很简单。困难的是实际运作它。你不必通过甘道夫的服装和轮滑鞋来运作它。但无论如何，你必须向人们发出成千上万个信号，表明你对他们有所期望是认真的。

Well, like I said, the facts, what we have to work towards, the facts are really easy. It is really simple. It's actually operationalizing it. You don't have to operationalize it with Gandalf costumes and rollerblades. But one way or another, you have to send a thousand signals to people that you're serious about what you want from them.

你要求团队进行的‘忘却学习’，你必须让他们感到安全，并且觉得按照你希望的方式出现对他们来说并不是一件愚蠢的事情。这才是困难的部分。

The unlearning that you're asking from your team, you have to make them feel safe and, like, it's not a dumb thing for them to do to show up in the ways that you're saying you want them to show up. That's the hard part.

刚才发言的是阿斯特罗·泰勒。他是Alphabet旗下登月工厂X的联合创始人兼首席执行官。如果您想了解更多关于他们项目的信息，可以收听阿斯特罗亲自主持的《登月计划》播客。节目前面播放了其中的片段。观看阿斯特罗·泰勒的完整演讲，请访问ted.com。

That was Astro Teller. He is the cofounder and CEO of X, Alphabet's Moonshot Factory. If you'd like to learn more about their projects, check out the Moonshot podcast that Astro hosts himself. You heard clips from it earlier in the show. To see Astro Teller's full talk, just go to ted.com.

非常感谢您收听我们今天的节目。如果您喜欢并有所收获，请在Spotify上给我们留言或发送邮件至TedRadioHour@NPR.org。我们会阅读每一条留言和邮件，非常期待听到您的声音。本期节目由凯蒂·蒙特莱奥内制作，萨纳兹·梅什坎普尔和我共同编辑。NPR的制作团队还包括詹姆斯·德拉胡西、瑞秋·福克纳·怀特、马修·克卢捷、菲奥娜·吉隆和哈沙·纳哈达。

Thank you so much for listening to our show today. If you liked it, got something out of it, please leave us a comment on Spotify or email us at TedRadioHour@NPR.org. We read every comment and email, and we love hearing from you. This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone and edited by Sanaz Meshkampur and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes James Della Hussi, Rachel Faulkner White, Matthew Cloutier, Fiona Giron, and Harsha Nahada.

我们的执行制片人是艾琳·野口。音频工程师是吉米·基利。主题音乐由拉姆汀·阿拉·布鲁伊创作。我们在TED的合作伙伴包括克里斯·安德森、罗克珊·海拉什和丹妮拉·巴拉雷佐。我是马努什·佐莫罗迪，您正在收听的是NPR出品的《TED广播时间》。

Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineer was Jimmy Kealy. Our theme music was written by Ramtine Ara Blui. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxanne Hylash, and Daniella Balarezzo. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

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