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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.
对生成性人工智能的普遍狂热已经席卷了华尔街。然而，这项技术与最近几天美国大型科技公司报告的强劲业绩几乎没有什么关系。
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.
理解这项技术在哪些领域开始产生实质性的商业成果，以及在哪些领域尚未产生，将是在未来几个月乃至几年内区分人工智能赢家和输家的关键。
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，考虑一下今年最大的云计算平台所经历的业务反弹。上周，微软(Microsoft)和谷歌(Google)的云计算部门的增长再次加速，让人们看到了人工智能开始产生显著影响的希望。本周，云计算市场的领导者亚马逊(Amazon)网络服务的表现也增添了乐观情绪。
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，最近的结果并未深入解析这种增长反弹在多大程度上反映了对生成式人工智能的支出增加，这种支出能否持续，以及提供新的人工智能服务将需要多大的成本。
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.
过去两年，云服务的增长急剧下滑。许多在疫情期间云账单飙升的客户，为了寻求更高的性价比，对新的支出进行了限制。
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.
这个被科技公司委婉地称为“优化”期的暂停，严重打击了该行业最大的扩张动力之一。亚马逊网络服务(AWS)的收入增长从2021年底的40%骤降至18个月后的相对低谷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.
最新季度的数据已经反弹至17%，这表明早期云计算支出过度引发的消化不良问题已基本成为过去。亚马逊首席执行官（前云计算部门负责人）安迪•贾西(Andy Jassy)表示，这是回归到以前的状态，当时企业转向云计算主要是为了降低IT成本。他认为，由于目前只有15%的企业IT工作负载在云端，这一趋势还有很长的路要走。
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.
人工智能并不是这里的主力军——然而，在边缘上，它确实正在成为一个因素。最明显的是，微软从生成式人工智能中获得的年化收入现在一般被认为约为40亿美元，而贾西也表示，它已经成为亚马逊网络服务的“数十亿美元”的业务。
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，这些人工智能收入将以何种速度增长，以及市场规模将有多大，还不得而知。客户们纷纷涌入，训练新的人工智能模型，并尝试这些模型所能带来的新服务。然而，在这个大规模实验阶段过去之前，新技术将创造多少价值，或者客户愿意为此付出多少代价，都还难以预测。
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.
虽然回报的时间不确定，但成本却是实实在在的。Alphabet、亚马逊和微软在本财年的资本支出预计将超过1500亿美元，比他们前一年的支出高出400亿美元以上。这些都是对未来科技繁荣承诺的巨额投入。
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.
通过延长所有新数据中心设备的预期使用寿命以减少折旧费用，这在一定程度上缓解了这三家公司大规模投资的压力。例如，Alphabet去年将其服务器和网络设备的预期使用寿命延长至六年，将购买新设备的成本分摊到更长的时间内，从而使其营业利润增加了近40亿美元。
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.
另一个缓解部分压力的因素是，云计算公司声称能够将他们的投资与那些热衷于尝试新技术的客户的预期近期收入紧密联系起来。这有助于解释为什么华尔街能够从容应对云计算公司最近的投资增长。
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.
另一个未知数是，生成式人工智能浪潮是否足够强大，以至于能够颠覆近年来相当稳定的云计算行业的力量平衡。以年化计算，亚马逊网络服务的收入可能是微软Azure云平台的两倍。谷歌则更为落后。
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.
客户对于在不同云平台之间转移其关键数据和IT工作负载的保守态度是可以理解的，而亚马逊网络服务一直在积极扩展其人工智能能力。然而，微软得益于与OpenAI的合作，在早期就取得了领先地位，这是Azure目前31%的增长率背后的一个重要因素，几乎是亚马逊网络服务17%的两倍。
This will be a long race, with every chance of resetting the competitive dynamics between the tech giants.
这将是一场旷日持久的竞赛，有可能重塑科技巨头之间的竞争格局。
