我們繼續講文章最後的部分：It should be noted that, since Figma’s I.P.O., its stock has fallen back to below eighty dollars. This could be interpreted as a sign of sanity prevailing, but, given that the shares are still trading at more than double the offering price, other privately owned A.I. companies will be encouraged to enter the stock market. Renaissance Capital, a research firm that specializes in I.P.O.s, lists eight prominent candidates: OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Databricks, SymphonyAI, Waymo, Scale AI, and Perplexity. Almost all of these companies are unicorns: they have been valued at more than a billion dollars in fund-raising deals with venture capitalists and other early investors. But, across the country, according to the research firm Tracxn, there are about seven thousand smaller and lesser-known A.I. companies, more than a thousand of which have already received Series A funding from external backers to finance their operations.這一段講，美國目前有數千家AI企業，其中上千家有小有規模並且融到了資，其中更有八家規模不菲的獨角獸。這些都是IPO市場的潛在力量。interpret 解釋，理解，還有口譯的意思。interpreter 口譯員。translator 譯者，通指翻譯。sanity prevailing 理性佔上峰。prevail是佔據上風。這句的意思是，這可以被解釋理性逐漸回歸的訊號。given在這裡引導原因狀語，相當於in view of、considering，翻譯成“考慮到，鑑於”等含義，我覺得可以理解成“給定某某情況下”，把give常見的給的含義放進去，就比較容易理解這個分詞的含義了。這句意思是，鑑於股價仍然是發行價（offering price）的兩倍多，其他私人擁有的AI公司也將被鼓勵進入股票市場。Renaissance Capital 文藝復興資本。Renaissance 再生，復興，來自re（again）和naisci（生）組合，大寫的時候可以表示文藝復興。萬豪酒店旗下有Renaissance Hotel，中文譯為萬麗酒店。OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Databricks, SymphonyAI, Waymo, Scale AI, and Perplexity.文章列舉的八家公司，我們可以從名字中窺視一二。Anthropic，此前我們講BBC報導假裝上班那課，提到馬普所的人類學家項飆，人類學家anthropology，來自anthropos（希臘語，人），7月初參與課程的或許記得，第一次課就提到了這個詞，可以翻閱第一篇筆記。SymphonyAI sym-phony（同，聲音，交響樂）。Waymo是Google旗下智能駕駛公司。unicorn 獨角獸（uni-，one；corn，角）。finance 這裡顯然用為動詞，注意這種靈活用法，非常值得借鑑。The ready availability of early-stage funding means that a necessary condition for a dot-com-style bubble is in place. So are three more: excitement among investors about a pathbreaking technology—generative A.I. clearly has the potential to impact great swaths of the economy; a Wall Street production line staffed by investment bankers eager to earn fees for organizing I.P.O.s; and accommodative policy. Last month, the Trump Administration announced an “AI Action Plan,” which aims to remove barriers to the deployment of the new technology and to deter individual states from introducing “burdensome” regulatory A.I. laws. The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, appears to be preparing to cut interest rates next month, which could give another boost to the markets.接著上文作者指出的泡沫存在的兩個特徵外，作者在這段進一步闡述，泡沫形成還有另外三個條件：投資者對突破性技術的熱情，華爾街投行賺取佣金的動力，以及寬鬆的政策（accommodative policy）。作者還預估了聯準會的降息。necessary condition 必要條件。deployment 推廣。de-，un，not；ploy，同plic一樣，也是fold的含義（此前有complicated，complex等，一個詞根），本身就來自於拉丁語 displicare：不摺疊，擴展，向外部署。現在流行企業出海，這也是個常用詞。deter sb from doing sth，相當於prevent sb from doing sth，阻止某人做某事，下段文章就出現了這個詞組。Federal Reserve 聯準會。本文預測聯準會會降息，將進一步推動市場繁榮（boost）。恰好，昨日聯準會主席鮑爾講話，傳遞降息鴿聲，8月22日晚的美國股市一片大漲。下圖是聯準會，希臘Ionic式樣的柱子，柱頭有漩渦形裝飾 volute（上次學vol（卷）這個詞根時提到）。There are, however, some important differences between now and the nineties, one of which is that the online economy is no longer a vast open plain on which enterprising individuals can propose to build castles to the sky. It is a redoubt of monopoly capitalism, in which Big Tech dominates the horizon. During the dot-com era, or its early stages, anyway, small startups could reasonably hope to exploit first-mover advantage, gain early traction, and create durable business franchises. In the A.I. economy, it seems possible that many of the rewards will go to top firms that can afford to build and maintain large A.I. models and can use their market power and financial might to ward off, or buy out, potential competitors. A vigorous antitrust policy could perhaps prevent this from happening, but, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week, the Administration’s pledge to pursue such a policy is now under threat from lobbyists and power brokers with close ties to the President. If investors decide that monopolies are the future of the A.I.-driven economy, the outcome in the stock market could well mean further gains for existing industry giants rather than a broad-based bubble.to build castles to the sky 在空中建城堡 Just like constructing an actual castle in the sky seems impossible, this phrase describes someone's unrealistic ambitions or dreams.castle中的t不發音，-sten, -ften, -stle 結尾，t一般不發音。listen、fasten、moisten（ 弄濕）、soften這些以en結尾的幾個動詞，t都不發音；often中的t發出來會很好聽；justly發不發音都行。wrestle（摔跤）、whistle（口哨），hustle and bustle（熙熙攘攘），t都不發音。redoubt形容最後的堡壘或據點，指的是a temporary or supplementary fortification。這個詞來自法語 redoute，初看以為是re-doubt（懷疑），翻譯後發現文意說不通，再翻字典。monopoly 壟斷。mono-，一個。poly來自希臘語，售賣，sell。traction 從詞根來看，tract是拉，draw，名詞，牽引、拖曳等含義。這裡引申為得到廣泛認同。franchises 特許經營權。這句是說，在網際網路泡沫的早期階段，小型初創公司（startups）可以指望發揮（exploit）先發優勢（first-mover advantage）得到外界的認同（traction），並建立持久的特許經營權。ward off 躲避，驅逐。lobbyist 說客。giant 巨頭，來自希臘語。之前提到這個詞，還舉例說，自行車品牌捷安特就是這個詞。最後一句話的意思是，如果投資者認定壟斷是AI驅動型經濟的未來，那麼股票市場的結果就可能是現存大公司從中繼續得利，而不會是一個廣泛的（broad-based）泡沫。作者在接下來的兩段給了輝達和思科的例子，當然，也承認了不確定性。因為預測一個危機的到來太難了，長期和短期的概念也沒有具體的時間，尤其是當今這個時代。 (美廬) 近期談AI泡沫的聲音增多了，比如OpenAI CEO Sam Altman近日也談到了這個問題，同樣和上世紀九十年代末的網際網路泡沫對比。我們現在繼續看《紐約客》這篇文章：Having written extensively on the dot-com boom and bust, I found some of Goldman’s analysispersuasive. Many people have either forgotten, or are too young to remember, the extremes reached during the dot-com years. In the logic of speculative hysterias—from the seventeenth-century “tulipmania” in Holland to the rise of Pets.com—greed, fomo, and the greater-fool theory of investing eventually combine to banish caution, common sense, and financial gravity. Back in March, there was plenty of fomo and trend-following on Wall Street, but it hadn’t reached the levels of the late nineties. Five months on, however, echoes of the dot-com era are getting louder.作者讓一步，承認高盛報告具有一定的道理，但作者提醒人們不要忘記網際網路泡沫時代的極端案例，作者還舉了17世紀荷蘭的鬱金香狂熱和網際網路泡沫時代的寵物商店倒閉的例子。boom and bust 繁榮和破裂。這裡還是用了頭韻修辭。analysis 分析。動詞analyze，前面出現了一個詞analyst 分析師。analysis來自希臘語（ana-lysein），複數是analyses，是希臘語語法在英語中的殘留。類似的詞還有，emphasis，diagnosis（診斷，dia-，through；gnos，know），basis，crisis（注意發音，前面的I發音/ai/），ellipsis（省略號，注意區分 eclipse 日月食，ellipse 橢圓，如此ellipsis和ellipse共享同一個複數形式，注意在語境中區分）。persuasive 有說服力的，動詞persuade，per-，through，completely，suade來自suadere（advise）。反義詞 dissuade（dissuade sb from doing 說服某人不做某事，名詞 dissuasion）。speculative hysterias 投機性的歇斯底里症。hysteria 歇斯底里症，hysterical，詞根hyster是womb的意思，子宮，這是古代對醫學認識的侷限導致的。tulipmania 鬱金香熱。mania表示某某狂熱，如bibliomania 藏書癖（biblio來自希臘語，bibliography 參考文獻，bibliophile 書籍愛好者，Phil是love；法語bibliothèque 圖書館，德語Bibliothek 圖書館），megalomania 自大狂，monomania 偏執狂（mono，一個）。鬱金香熱發生在17世紀的荷蘭，是歷史上第一起金融泡沫事件。大仲馬寫過一部小說《黑鬱金香》講的也是這件事，英國歷史學家撰寫《鬱金香熱》，詳細描述了這個現象。上世紀八十年代中國出現的君子蘭熱，也有類似的情況。Pets.com：網際網路泡沫時期的一家線上寵物商店。曾出現在美國超級碗的黃金廣告時段內，也在印到了感恩節大遊行的氣球上。2000年2月，Pets.com上市，發行價11美元，融資8250萬美元，9個月後倒閉，價格0.22美元。fomo，fear of missing out.錯失恐懼症。所謂的“不怕錯買，就怕錯過”的心態。the greater-fool theory：The greater fool theory argues that prices go up because people are able to sell overpriced securities to a "greater fool," whether or not they are overvalued. That is, of course, until there are no greater fools left.價格能上漲，是因為持有人能夠將它以高價賣給“更大的傻瓜”，不必管是否價值高估。類似於我們說的擊鼓傳花。financial gravity：Financial gravity is a sense of how heavily interest rates weigh on markets and the economy. It accounts for both the level of the rate and the time at that level.有的地方翻譯為金融重力。從釋義來看，指的是利率和時間對經濟的影響。不過我沒特別明白，希望有方家來指教。Consider Palantir Technologies, whose A.I. software is used by the Pentagon, the C.I.A., and ICE, not to mention by many commercial companies. A couple of days before Huang visited the White House, Palantir released a positive earnings report. By the end of the week, according to the Yahoo Finance database, the market was valuing the company at more than six hundred times its earnings from the past twelve months, and at about a hundred and thirty times its sales in that same time span. Even during the late nineties, figures like these would have raised eyebrows.進一步，作者以Palantir公司舉例，這家公司的軟體曾經被五角大樓、CIA和ICE使用，目前估值已經是一年前的600倍，銷售額達到了130倍，即便是上世紀90年代，也沒有如此瘋狂。Pentagon 五角大樓。pent，希臘語，五；agon，角。本意是五角形。美國國防部大樓呈五邊形，pentagon大寫的時候指代這個機構。hexagon 六角形，heptagon七角形，octagon，nonagon，decagon。C.I.A 中央情報局，全稱Central Intelligence Agency。另外還是司法部下屬的FBI聯邦調查局，Federal Bureau of Investigation。ICE：移民及海關執法局(Immigration and Customs Enforcement)。Immigration 移民，指的是移入的居民，移出的居民稱為emigrant。一個美國人移民到德國，對德國來說，他是immigrant，對美國來說是emigrant。raised eyebrows：不如菲茨傑拉德用的level好。“You precious!” cried Evylyn and kissed her, but before she left the room she levelled another frown at Hilda. （Fitzgerald The Cut-Glass Bowl）Eye-popping I.P.O.s, another feature of the dot-com era, are also making a comeback. At the end of July, Figma, a firm that makes software used by internet developers, and which has added A.I. features to its suite of products, issued stock on the New York Stock Exchange at thirty-three dollars a share. When trading started, the price jumped to eighty-five. It closed the day at $115.50—a two-hundred-and-fifty-per-cent gain on the offering price. Watching this market action, I was reminded of August 9, 1995, when Netscape, which made the Netscape Navigator web browser, went public. Its stock was priced at twenty-eight dollars, rose to seventy-five, and closed at $58.25. In percentage terms, this leap was smaller than the first-day rise in Figma’s stock, but it’s often described as the beginning of the dot-com bubble.本段是說，網際網路泡沫的另一特徵是瘋狂的IPO正在重現，並舉例Figma公司的例子。這家公司在紐交所上市，發行價33美元，當日一開始就衝到85，最終收盤價是115.5，漲幅250%。作者說，想起了1995年8月，另一家上市公司的情況，那次是網際網路泡沫開始的時候。Eye-popping 令人瞠目的。New York Stock Exchange 紐約證券交易所，世界上最大的交易所，簡稱NYSE。offering price 發行價。IPO這個詞的O就是offering。I was reminded of，注意remind這個詞後面用介詞of，令人想起。類似的詞還有，cure sb of sth（治癒某人某疾病），rob sb of sth（搶劫），inform，warn，常用語被動的deprive（剝奪）等。went public 走向公開（市場），還是上市的意思。作者沒有使用同一個詞，而是換著用，漢語稱為變文。寫作中要注意，同一含義下變換詞句，避免單調，下文還有類似的例子。 (美廬) 當有些事情被炒得上頭的時候，總有人出來潑冷水，這次是紐約客。新技術誕生之初，總是伴隨質疑聲，而且很多質疑和擔憂來自有影響力的人或機構。本篇《紐約客》的文章就是。業內人士的高期望也許是出於需要，大眾對新技術的期望往往受此影響。以前搜尋興起的時候，很多人覺得不必學習了，到時候想知道啥，直接搜就行，還說關鍵是培養思維能力。不過，我不太明白，如果不學習，思維能力從何而來。現在ai興起了，覺得也沒必要學習了，關鍵是學會提問。不過我也感覺，提問本身是要大量學習才能獲得的高級技能。我向來保守，對AI的熱情很差，到現在為止，幾乎沒用過AI，其中一個重要原因是捨不得付費。作為一個沒有用過AI的人，我似乎也無權發表關於AI的觀點。既然我們是學英文的，就看看這篇文章吧。還是要先廢話一下，講下這本雜志。到目前為止，美廬夜讀首次選入《紐約客》（The New Yorker）的文章，還是不太尋常的，大多數做外刊學習的博主，都會將《紐約客》放入優先選文的第一梯隊。前兩期有一篇文章，是一位作家的碎碎念，很有意思，但感覺講不出作者的幽默感，於是作罷。該雜志以非虛構作品為主，他們的事實核查是出了名的；其虛構作品也一樣出名，包括短篇小說、詩歌、小品和漫畫，許多著名作家都曾在上面發表作品，如村上春樹、納博科夫、菲利普·羅斯、賽林格、約翰·厄普代克等。當然，這雜志是品味的象徵，讀《紐約客》似乎是一種時尚，我雖然讀的不多，但這個雜志還是很愛收集的。今年是雜志創辦百年，出版了兩本合集，一本是小說集，一本是詩歌集，我前兩天周五在上海外文書店見到了詩歌卷的這本合集。介紹《紐約客》的三個經典封面，第一個是紐約客的形象漫畫，也是紐約人的代表形象。第二張，是1946年刊登的對廣島原子彈爆炸後的人們的採訪，第三張是2001年911事件後的封面。後來也有一些雜志模仿、致敬紐約客，比如東京人，上海人。本文的題目是：Is the A.I. Boom Turning Into an A.I. Bubble?這裡顯然用了alliteration 頭韻修辭。關於這種修辭，我們之前在講中國短劇那篇文章提到過，參見：夜讀｜Jane Austen 簡·奧斯汀，Taylor Swift 黴黴作品裡的頭韻修辭副標題是：As the stock prices of Big Tech companies continue to rise and eye-popping I.P.O.s reëmerge, echoes of the dot-com era are getting louder.eye-popping 吸引眼球的I.P.O. 全稱 Initial Public Offering，金融術語，首次公開發行，就是通常說的上市。這裡用的複數形式。reëmerge 再次湧現。複合詞，re（again）emerge（湧現）。e上面兩個點 double dots是分音符（Le tréma），表示這個e和前面的元音字母要分開各自發音。這個來自法語， 一般出現於ë; ï; ü，有些詞借用到英文裡來，也會保留下來，比如 naïve，reënter（一般寫re-enter）, coöperation（一般寫cooperation）。老派的人還會這麼寫，紐約客這麼寫並不奇怪。echoes 複數es。我聽到不止一種說法，說以o結尾的單詞，有生命加es，無生命加s。這個也許僅限於初中詞彙，當然echo也可以理解為有生命，這詞源於希臘神話。下面這些詞，buffalo（水牛，紐約州北部有Buffalo市，有的翻譯為水牛城，有的音譯為布法羅），cargo（貨物），mosquito（蚊子，目前廣東人民正在和它大作戰），motto（格言），zero，加s或es都行；veto（一票否決），echo（回聲），加es；kangroo（袋鼠），zoo，加s。dot-com era 網際網路時代，借用.com來指代千禧年前後的網際網路興起的時代。When Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the chipmaker Nvidia, met with Donald Trump in the White House last week, he had reason to be cheerful. Most of Nvidia’s chips, which are widely used to train generative artificial-intelligence models, are manufactured in Asia. Earlier this year, it pledged to increase production in the United States, and on Wednesday Trump announced that chip companies that promise to build products in the United States would be exempt from some hefty new tariffs on semiconductors that his Administration is preparing to impose. The next day, Nvidia’s stock hit a new all-time high, and its market capitalization reached $4.4 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable company, ahead of Microsoft, which is also heavily involved in A.I.pledged 承諾，發誓be exempt from 被免除某事。exempt這裡作為形容詞。hefty： heavysemiconductors：半導體。semi-，半，semisphere 半球，semifinal 半決賽。impose sth on 對某事施加。後面用介詞on，本文的on在semiconductors前面，介賓短語提前了。all-time 創紀錄的involve 捲入。vol 卷。vol 卷，revolve 循環周轉，四季流轉，revolution旋轉，革命，evolve 發展，進化，devolve 流下，轉移，移交，revolt 叛亂（re-back，against），volume 卷，體積，聲量（早期電視機收音機的音量也是轉動的，現在不這樣了，但這個詞保留下來了），volute 漩渦形，比如Inonic樣式的希臘柱子柱頭就是這種volute。Welcome to the A.I. boom, or should I say the A.I. bubble? It has been more than a quarter of a century since the bursting of the great dot-com bubble, during which hundreds of unprofitable internet startups issued stock on the Nasdaq, and the share prices of many tech companies rose into the stratosphere. In March and April of 2000, tech stocks plummeted; subsequently many, but by no means all, of the internet startups went out of business. There has been some discussion on Wall Street in the past few months about whether the current surge in tech is following a similar trajectory. In a research paper entitled “25 Years On; Lessons from the Bursting of the Technology Bubble,” which was published in March, a team of investment analysts from Goldman Sachs argued that it wasn’t: “While enthusiasm for technology stocks has risen sharply in recent years, this has not represented a bubble because the price appreciation has been justified by strong profit fundamentals.” The analysts pointed to the earnings power of the so-called Magnificent Seven companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. Between the first quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of this year, Nvidia’s revenues quintupled, and its after-tax profits rose more than tenfold.這段是追溯了2000年前後網際網路泡沫破裂的時代，當時有成百上千家公司股價暴跌。本文還提到，就在今年三月，高盛發表了對25年前的事件的檢討，但高盛認為今日對Ai的熱情並不意味著股價升值不合理，因為有堅實的利潤作為基礎，尤其是七姐妹的超強盈利能力。the great dot-com bubble 偉大的網際網路.com時代，有點揶揄的口氣。這句話是說，距離千禧年那次網際網路時代已經四分之一世紀了，在那個時代成百上千個不盈利（unprofitable）網際網路初創公司（startups，這個詞在上一篇BBC談假裝上班的時候出現過）在納斯達克（Nasdaq）發行股票，很多科技公司的股價（share prices）漲到很高的價格（stratosphere，本意是平流層）。stratosphere 平流層，指很高的高度。sphere 環境。troposphere對流層，mesosphere 中間層（meso-，中間，between，Mesopotamia 美索不達米亞，意思是兩河之間，這個詞我們應該很熟悉了），thermosphere 熱層（thermo-熱，thermometer 溫度計，meter是測量的意思）plummet 暴跌，墜落。go out of 消失trajectory 軌跡。詞根是ject（throw，扔，以後再講這個詞根）。entitle 以某某為標題。en和名詞title變成動詞。burst 破裂，爆破Goldman Sachs 高盛集團。全球著名的投資銀行，也是道瓊斯成分股之一。price appreciation 價格上漲。Magnificent Seven companies 所謂的七家大型公司。也稱為美股表現出色的科技股七姐妹，分別是下文的Alphabet（Google的母公司）, Amazon, Apple, Meta（臉書，原來叫Facebook）, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla。Alphabet意思是字母表，來自希臘開始的兩個字母alpha和beta，組成新詞，指的是字母表。quintuple 五倍。這裡作為動詞來用。拉丁語五，quinque。我們知道double和triple，四倍照樣可以造出來，quadruple，六倍是sextuple（六是sex），七倍septuple（七是sept，法文也是sept，September九月，原本是第七個月，曆法改後成了九月），八倍octuple（octopus 章魚，八爪魚），等等，我們可以一直寫下去。tenfold 十倍，簡潔表達，下文還有fivefold 五倍。The Goldman paper also provided a salutary history lesson. Between 1995 and 2000, it pointed out, the tech-heavy Nasdaq index rose fivefold, and at the peak of the market a widely used valuation measure for the stocks that trade on it—the price-to-earnings ratio, or “P/E”—topped a hundred and fifty, a level not seen before or since then. By comparison, the five-year period from March, 2020, to March, 2025, had been relatively tame. It’s true, the Nasdaq had roughly doubled, and the P/E ratio had gone up considerably; but it hadn’t got anywhere near three figures.這段繼續引用高盛的報告，對比了1995年到2000年之間，以及2020年至2025年之間，這兩段的科技股的表現對比，強調說，雖然兩次都出現了納指的高增長，但市盈率（price-to-earnings ratio, or “P/E”）明顯不同，來闡述目前AI的泡沫並不存在。salutary 有益的。salut，法文打招呼用這個詞，salutation 出現在英文裡。這個詞來自salus，本意是健康health。tech-heavy Nasdaq index 科技成分為主的納斯達克指數。Nasdaq是美股三大證券交易所，另外兩個，其中一個是下文出現的New York Stock Exchange（NYSE）紐約證券交易所。tame 溫和的。three figures 三位數。這段是說，上次1995年到2000年，納指漲了五倍，市盈率到了150，但這次2020-2025年，納指漲了兩倍，市盈率不足三位數，因此相對溫和了很多（had been relatively tame）。 (美廬) 
