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A generalised euphoria over generative artificial intelligence has gripped Wall Street. But the technology had little to do with the strong business performance reported by most of the big US tech companies in recent days.
對生成性人工智慧的普遍狂熱已經席捲了華爾街。然而，這項技術與最近幾天美國大型科技公司報告的強勁業績幾乎沒有什麼關係。
Understanding where the technology is starting to yield real business results — and where it isn’t — will be key to distinguishing the AI winners from the AI losers in the coming months and years.
理解這項技術在哪些領域開始產生實質性的商業成果，以及在哪些領域尚未產生，將是在未來幾個月乃至幾年內區分人工智慧贏家和輸家的關鍵。
Consider, for example, the business rebound that the biggest cloud computing platforms have experienced this year. Last week, reaccelerating growth in the cloud computing divisions at Microsoft and Google fed hopes that AI was starting to make a noticeable impact. This week, Amazon Web Services, the cloud market leader, has added to the upbeat mood.
例如，考慮一下今年最大的雲端計算平臺所經歷的業務反彈。上週，微軟(Microsoft)和谷歌(Google)的雲端計算部門的成長再次加速，讓人們看到了人工智慧開始產生顯著影響的希望。本週，雲端計算市場的領導者亞馬遜(Amazon)網路服務的表現也增添了樂觀情緒。
The recent results provide little insight, though, into how much this growth rebound reflects a pick-up in spending on generative AI, how sustainable any such spending will prove to be, and how expensive it will be to deliver the new AI services.
然而，最近的結果並未深入解析這種成長反彈在多大程度上反映了對生成式人工智慧的支出增加，這種支出能否持續，以及提供新的人工智慧服務將需要多大的成本。
The last two years brought a drastic fall-off in cloud growth. Many customers who had seen their cloud bills soar during the pandemic put a brake on new spending as they tried to work out how to get more bang for the buck.
過去兩年，雲端服務的成長急劇下滑。許多在疫情期間雲賬單飆升的客戶，爲了尋求更高的性價比，對新的支出進行了限制。
This pause, referred to euphemistically by the tech companies as a period of “optimisation”, laid waste to one of the industry’s biggest drivers of expansion. Revenue growth at AWS tumbled from 40 per cent at the end of 2021 to a relative trough of 12 per cent 18 months later.
這個被科技公司委婉地稱爲「優化」期的暫停，嚴重打擊了該行業最大的擴張動力之一。亞馬遜網路服務(AWS)的收入成長從2021年底的40%驟降至18個月後的相對低谷12%。
That it has now rebounded to 17 per cent in the latest quarter is a sign that the indigestion caused by the earlier binge of cloud spending is largely a thing of the past. According to Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief executive (and former head of the cloud division), this is a return to the status quo ante, when the move to the cloud was fuelled by a desire to drive down IT costs. With only 15 per cent of corporate IT workload in the cloud, he argues this trend has a long way to run.
最新季度的數據已經反彈至17%，這表明早期雲端計算支出過度引發的消化不良問題已基本成爲過去。亞馬遜首席執行長（前雲端計算部門負責人）安迪•賈西(Andy Jassy)表示，這是迴歸到以前的狀態，當時企業轉向雲端計算主要是爲了降低IT成本。他認爲，由於目前只有15%的企業IT工作負載在雲端，這一趨勢還有很長的路要走。
AI is not the main force here — though, at the margin, it is certainly becoming a factor. Most clearly, Microsoft’s annualised revenue from generative AI is now generally put at about $4bn, while Jassy also said it has become a “multibillion-dollar” business for AWS.
人工智慧並不是這裏的主力軍——然而，在邊緣上，它確實正在成爲一個因素。最明顯的是，微軟從生成式人工智慧中獲得的年化收入現在一般被認爲約爲40億美元，而賈西也表示，它已經成爲亞馬遜網路服務的「數十億美元」的業務。
It is unclear how quickly these AI revenues will grow, or how big the market will be. There has been a stampede by customers to train new AI models and to try out the new services these make possible. But until this period of mass experimentation passes, it is hard to predict how much value the new technology will create — or how much customers will be willing to pay for it.
目前，這些人工智慧收入將以何種速度成長，以及市場規模將有多大，還不得而知。客戶們紛紛湧入，訓練新的人工智慧模型，並嘗試這些模型所能帶來的新服務。然而，在這個大規模實驗階段過去之前，新技術將創造多少價值，或者客戶願意爲此付出多少代價，都還難以預測。
While the timing of the pay-off is uncertain, the costs are very real. Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft are on course for combined capital spending of more than $150bn in their current financial years, more than $40bn above what they spent the year before. These are massive downpayments on the promise of a coming tech boom.
雖然回報的時間不確定，但成本卻是實實在在的。Alphabet、亞馬遜和微軟在本財年的資本支出預計將超過1500億美元，比他們前一年的支出高出400億美元以上。這些都是對未來科技繁榮承諾的鉅額投入。
Cutting depreciation charges by extending the expected useful lives of all this new data centre gear has taken some of the edge off this vast build-up in investment at all three companies. Alphabet, for instance, boosted its operating profits by nearly $4bn last year after it increased the expected life of its servers and networking gear to six years, spreading the cost of buying new equipment over a longer period.
透過延長所有新數據中心設備的預期使用壽命以減少折舊費用，這在一定程度上緩解了這三家公司大規模投資的壓力。例如，Alphabet去年將其伺服器和網路設備的預期使用壽命延長至六年，將購買新設備的成本分攤到更長的時間內，從而使其營業利潤增加了近40億美元。
Another factor offsetting some of the pain is the cloud companies’ claim to be able to tie their investments closely to expected near-term revenue from customers who are lining up to try out the new technology. That helps to explain why Wall Street has taken the latest investment increases from the cloud companies in its stride.
另一個緩解部分壓力的因素是，雲端計算公司聲稱能夠將他們的投資與那些熱衷於嘗試新技術的客戶的預期近期收入緊密聯繫起來。這有助於解釋爲什麼華爾街能夠從容應對雲端計算公司最近的投資成長。
A further unknown is whether the generative AI wave will be disruptive enough to upset the balance of power in the cloud industry, which has looked remarkably stable in recent years. At an annualised $100bn, AWS’s revenue is probably twice that of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. Google is further behind.
另一個未知數是，生成式人工智慧浪潮是否足夠強大，以至於能夠顛覆近年來相當穩定的雲端計算行業的力量平衡。以年化計算，亞馬遜網路服務的收入可能是微軟Azure雲平臺的兩倍。谷歌則更爲落後。
Customers are understandably conservative about shifting their vital data and IT workloads between clouds, and AWS has been racing to build out its AI capabilities. But Microsoft’s early lead, thanks to its partnership with OpenAI, is a big factor behind Azure’s current growth rate of 31 per cent, nearly double the 17 per cent of AWS.
客戶對於在不同雲平臺之間轉移其關鍵數據和IT工作負載的保守態度是可以理解的，而亞馬遜網路服務一直在積極擴展其人工智慧能力。然而，微軟得益於與OpenAI的合作，在早期就取得了領先地位，這是Azure目前31%的成長率背後的一個重要因素，幾乎是亞馬遜網路服務17%的兩倍。
This will be a long race, with every chance of resetting the competitive dynamics between the tech giants.
這將是一場曠日持久的競賽，有可能重塑科技巨擘之間的競爭格局。