If you thought the global financial crisiswas bad…
如果你覺得2008年全球金融危機已經很糟了……
When the crash comes, stabilising markets will be easy compared with reordering society forAI, writes short-seller Carson Block
賣空者卡森·布洛克寫道：當崩盤到來時，穩定市場與AI帶來的社會重構相比將顯得輕而易舉。
WITHIN A FEW years, artificial intelligence will displace a significant portion of the world's highly paid knowledge workers. Aggregate demand will suffer, but flows into retirement investment accounts will turn net-negative: workers won't just stop paying in, they will need to withdraw funds.
在幾年之內，人工智慧將取代世界上很大一部分高薪知識工作者。總需求將受到影響，而且流入退休投資帳戶的資金將轉為淨流出：工人們不僅不會再投入資金，還將需要提取資金。
These outflows will come largely from passive investment funds, particularly S&P 500 index trackers. Although such redemptions involve selling every constituent in proportion to its index weight, the price impact will not be evenly distributed. The AI "mega-caps" that have powered the index higher, such as Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon, are also the names whose valuations have been most dependent on mechanical passive inflows as the marginal buyer. The result, ironically, is that the companies powering the AI revolution are likely to suffer the largest price drops.
這些資金流出將主要來自被動投資基金，尤其是標普500指數跟蹤基金。儘管這類贖回操作會按指數權重比例賣出每一個成分股，但價格影響並不會均勻分佈。那些推動指數走高的AI“巨型股”，如輝達、微軟和亞馬遜，其估值也最依賴於作為邊際買家的被動資金機械式流入。諷刺的結果是，推動AI革命的公司很可能會遭受最大的價格下跌。
AI is at the inflection point at which large language models are improving at a rate that is non-linear and will soon become exponential because they are themselves coding their successors. The most sophisticated users of AI are in tech companies. Using the current generation of models, they have in many cases reduced teams that previously had half a dozen workers or more to just one. It is quite possible that within three to four years AI will have replaced 15% of jobs in America's broader knowledge economy.
AI正處於一個拐點，大型語言模型正以非線性的速度在改進，並且很快將變得指數級加速——因為它們正在自己編寫自己的下一代程式碼。AI最成熟的使用者都在科技公司。利用當前一代模型，在許多情況下他們已經將原本有六名或更多員工的團隊縮減至一人。很有可能在三到四年內，AI將取代美國更廣泛知識經濟中15%的工作崗位。
The two counter-arguments are the "Jevons paradox"—the historical experience that new technology that increases efficiency also increases demand, thereby creating new jobs that offset losses—and scepticism about the slope of the adoption curve. Both will be proved wrong.
兩個常見的反駁論點是“傑文斯悖論”——即歷史上提高效率的新技術也會增加需求，從而創造新就業機會以抵消損失——以及對採用曲線陡峭程度的懷疑。兩者都將被證明是錯誤的。
Humanity's ability to innovate and invent clearly outpaces its ability to adapt to its innovations and inventions. AI models are doubling in power roughly every six months. This means that workers made obsolete will not be able to develop the skills to use AI as a tool, rather than to compete with it.
人類創新和發明的能力顯然超過了其適應這些創新和發明的能力。AI模型的能力大約每六個月翻一番。這意味著，被淘汰的工人將無法培養出將AI作為工具使用（而非與之競爭）的技能。
Even if demand for services and products increases because of falling costs and prices, many displaced workers will still be obsolete, with more workers made so by successor model generations. AI will have such a profound impact on businesses' costs and pricing that failure to adopt quickly will prove existential for a large swathe of the economy.
即使由於成本和價格下降而導致對服務和產品的需求增加，許多被取代的工人仍將面臨淘汰，而且後續的模型迭代還會讓更多工人步其後塵。AI將對企業的成本和定價產生如此深遠的影響，以至於對於大部分經濟體來說，若不迅速採用AI將是生死攸關的。
The job displacement will fall disproportionately on highly educated, well-paid workers whose retirement savings drive America's stock markets. Michael Green of Simplify Asset Management has shown how passive investing has resulted in "broken" equity markets that are largely driven at an index level by flows into retirement accounts. His and others' research shows how passive investing has led to multipliers on the aggregate market and individual stocks that cause the net inflow or outflow of one dollar to have a much larger impact on the stocks in which it is invested, possibly as high as a multiple of 100 for the largest firms.
失業將不成比例地落在高學歷、高收入的工人身上，而他們的退休儲蓄正是美國股市的驅動力。Simplify Asset Management的邁克爾·格林已經展示了被動投資如何導致“失靈”的股票市場——這些市場在指數層面主要是由流入退休帳戶的資金流所驅動的。他和其他人的研究表明，被動投資如何導致對整個市場和個股產生了乘數效應，使得一美元的淨流入或流出對其所投資的股票產生大得多的影響，對最大的公司可能高達100倍的乘數。
The S&P 500 has become an index that creates its own momentum for its largest constituents. Because the top ten companies now represent an unprecedented share of the market's value, the index is no longer a diversified basket but a concentrated volatility trap. When the professional class begins to draw down its accounts to service mortgages, the resulting market impact will be sudden and violent, as passive funds are forced to sell the index to meet the redemption demands of the displaced losers.
標普500指數已經成為一個為其最大成分股創造自身動量的指數。由於前十大公司如今佔據了市場價值前所未有的份額，該指數已不再是一個多元化的籃子，而是一個集中的波動性陷阱。當專業人士階層開始動用其帳戶來償還抵押貸款時，由此產生的市場影響將是突然而猛烈的，因為被動基金將被迫賣出指數，以滿足那些被AI取代的“輸家”的贖回需求。
Ironically, the companies with the highest multiples, which present the greatest risk from net outflows, are largely those that make up the AI stack. When the labour-displacement thesis plays out, it will be the stock prices of these new-world stars that get clobbered the hardest.
具有諷刺意味的是，那些估值倍數最高、在淨流出中風險最大的公司，基本上正是構成AI堆疊的那些公司。當勞動力替代的論斷成為現即時，這些新世界明星的股價將受到最沉重的打擊。
The resulting crash in equity prices, particularly combined with falling aggregate demand, will itself be enough to cause a financial crisis on the scale of the global one of 2007-09, if not larger. Problems in private credit and insurance companies' balance-sheets may well make things worse. A reduction in liquidity globally will affect all asset values. Deflationary pressures will mount.
由此產生的股價暴跌，尤其是再加上總需求的下降，其本身將足以引發一場規模堪比（甚至超過）2007-09年全球金融危機的金融風暴。私人信貸和保險公司資產負債表中的問題很可能會使情況變得更糟。全球流動性的減少將影響所有資產價值。通縮壓力將不斷加劇。
The good news is that the crisis of almost 20 years ago has given policymakers a well-tested playbook to restore liquidity and reflate assets. The bad news is that stabilising the financial markets will be the easy bit for governments. They will struggle far more to manage the reordering of society that will result from the mass displacement of highly productive labour.
好消息是，近20年前的那場危機已經為政策制定者提供了一套經過充分檢驗的、用於恢復流動性和重振資產的政策手冊。壞消息是，穩定金融市場對政府來說將是容易的部分。他們將在管理高生產率勞動力大規模失業所導致的社會重組方面面臨更為艱巨的挑戰。
Don't say you want a revolution
別說你想要一場革命
Ultimately, in another irony, the AI revolution will lead to a world in which many consumers no longer have the income to participate in the revolution. Remaking a society in which growth has been decoupled from employment is a task for which today's political structures are unprepared, to put it mildly. We will witness not just an almighty market correction, but the end of the existing social contract. In terms of politics and policy, as the old saying goes, "You ain't seen nothing yet."
最終，再一個諷刺是，AI革命將導向一個許多消費者不再有收入參與這場革命的世界。重塑一個增長與就業脫鉤的社會，說得客氣點，是當今政治結構尚未準備好的任務。我們將見證的不僅僅是一次巨大的市場調整，更是現有社會契約的終結。在政治和政策方面，正如老話所說：“你還沒看到真正的變化呢。” (Economists 雙語閱讀社)