【经济学人】AI 写作正在接管 Westminster 吗?

Is AI writing taking over Westminster?

AI 写作正在接管 Westminster 吗？

Several influential policy papers are failing AI detectors

几份有影响力的政策文件未能通过 AI 检测

What comes to mind, reading these sentences? “The challenge is not technical but political, requiring careful sequencing, clear communication, and sustained commitment.” Or: “Private ownership is not rewarding innovation but collecting a toll on Victorian infrastructure while deferring the investment required to keep it functional. The technology has not changed. The ownership has—and the ownership is the problem.”

读到这些句子时，你会想到什么？“挑战不是技术性的，而是政治性的，需要谨慎排序、清晰沟通和持续承诺。”或者：“私有制并不是在奖励创新，而是在维多利亚时代的基础设施上收取通行费，同时推迟维持其正常运转所需的投资。技术没有改变。所有权变了——而所有权正是问题所在。”

Boredom first, probably. Policy writing can be sandpaper-dry. But something else might stand out too, at least to anyone who often interacts with artificial-intelligence models like ChatGPT or Claude. Prose produced by those AI tools has a distinctive smell. One telltale whiff is a love of contrasts: “not technical but political”; “The technology has not changed. The ownership has”. Another is tricolons. Humans have long appreciated groups of three, Cicero studded his speeches with them, but AI’s enthusiasm is superhuman: “careful sequencing, clear communication, and sustained commitment”. And then there are the em-dashes—everywhere.

首先想到的，大概是无聊。政策写作可以像砂纸一样干涩。但至少对那些经常与 ChatGPT 或 Claude 这类人工智能模型互动的人来说，可能还会注意到别的东西。这些 AI 工具生成的文字有一种独特气味。一个明显特征，是它喜欢对比：“不是技术性的，而是政治性的”；“技术没有改变。所有权变了。”另一个特征是 tricolons，也就是三项并列结构。人类长期以来就欣赏三项组合，Cicero 的演讲中就大量使用这种结构，但 AI 对它的热情简直超越人类：“谨慎排序、清晰沟通和持续承诺”。然后还有 em-dashes，也就是破折号——到处都是。

Readers today can do better than guesswork and amateur stylometry, though. Over the past few years, AI detection technology has improved dramatically. These tools use similar machine-learning techniques to AI models. Pangram, a market leader, boasts of a 0.01% false-positive rate. A study by researchers at the University of Chicago found it had a “near-zero” error rate on longer texts.

不过，今天的读者不必只靠猜测和业余 stylometry，也就是文体统计分析。过去几年里，AI 检测技术已经大幅进步。这些工具使用与 AI 模型类似的机器学习技术。市场领导者 Pangram 声称，其误报率只有 0.01%。University of Chicago 研究人员的一项研究发现，在较长文本上，它的错误率“接近于零”。

Pangram flags each of the policy papers those quotes came from as being mostly written by AI. One was by Louise Haigh, an MP and close adviser to Andy Burnham, Britain’s prime-minister-in-waiting. The other was “The Productive State”, a manifesto of nearly 70 pages published by Mainstream, a Labour group linked to Mr Burnham; it offers a “Framework for Manchesterism”, Mr Burnham’s still-loosely-defined economic programme. Ms Haigh said, in a statement to the Telegraph, that AI was used for “version control”. Mainstream told The Economist that one co-author used Claude to “expose line-level differences and unify the voice of both authors’ independently drafted sections through copy editing”.

Pangram 将这些引文所来自的每一份政策文件都标记为大部分由 AI 撰写。其中一份出自 Louise Haigh，她是一名 MP，也就是国会议员，同时是 Andy Burnham 的亲密顾问，而 Burnham 被视为英国的“准首相”。另一份是 “The Productive State”，这是一份近 70 页的宣言，由与 Burnham 先生有关联的 Labour 团体 Mainstream 发布；它提出了一个 “Framework for Manchesterism”，也就是 Burnham 先生仍然定义较为模糊的经济纲领框架。Haigh 女士在给 Telegraph 的声明中表示，AI 被用于“版本控制”。Mainstream 告诉 The Economist，一名共同作者使用 Claude 来“揭示逐行差异，并通过文字编辑统一两位作者独立起草部分的语气”。

That raises two questions. Is this AI writing a problem? And why the links to Mr Burnham? Start with the first. Politics is full of prose not written by the apparent author: politicians have speechwriters, intellectuals employ research assistants. Perhaps AI is no different, even if the prose is clunkier. But people setting out ideas in politics are asking for something quite audacious: to reshape how a country is governed around what they think. Any writer knows how much putting words on a page can tighten one’s arguments. Even subcontracting that to an aide beats skipping the sometimes painful process entirely. AI certainly produces sloppy prose, but it also papers over sloppy thinking.

这引出了两个问题。这样的 AI 写作是不是一个问题？以及为什么这些内容都与 Burnham 先生有关？先看第一个问题。政治中充满了并非由表面作者本人写出的文字：政治人物有演讲撰稿人，知识分子会雇用研究助理。也许 AI 并没有什么不同，即便它的文字更笨拙。但在政治中提出理念的人，实际上是在提出一种相当大胆的要求：围绕自己的想法重塑一个国家的治理方式。任何写作者都知道，把文字写到纸上，能在多大程度上收紧自己的论证。即使把这项工作分包给助手，也比完全跳过这个有时痛苦的过程更好。AI 固然会生成粗糙的文字，但它也会掩盖粗糙的思考。

Maybe that matters less if, as Ms Haigh and the “Productive State” authors say, AI is used only for a late polish. The trouble is that readers can detect whether AI wrote the final product, but not how authors used it. And when AI’s involvement is disclosed only after the press come knocking, trust takes some earning back.

如果像 Haigh 女士和 “Productive State” 的作者们所说，AI 只是被用于最后润色，那么这也许没那么重要。问题在于，读者可以检测最终成品是否由 AI 撰写，却无法知道作者到底如何使用了 AI。而当 AI 的参与只有在媒体上门追问之后才被披露时，信任就需要重新慢慢赢回来。

What about the potential Burnham factor? Mr Burnham’s coup was plotted slowly, but executed quickly. From the moment he won the Makerfield by-election, he was all but guaranteed to end up in Number 10. Yet he is still vague on many of the big questions facing Britain. That mismatch offers political entrepreneurs a chance to try to shape the wet clay of Burnhamism around their own priorities. The currency of ideas in Westminster is PDFs, ideally long ones. And when you need one quickly, who better to turn to than Claude?

那么，潜在的 Burnham 因素又是什么？Burnham 先生的夺权计划酝酿缓慢，但执行迅速。从他赢得 Makerfield 补选的那一刻起，他几乎就注定会进入 Number 10，也就是唐宁街 10 号首相府。然而，在英国面临的许多重大问题上，他仍然态度模糊。这种不匹配，为政治创业者提供了机会，让他们可以围绕自己的优先事项，试图塑造 Burnhamism 这块尚未定型的湿黏土。在 Westminster，思想的货币就是 PDF，最好还是很长的 PDF。而当你需要快速产出一份时，还有谁比 Claude 更适合求助呢？

全篇重点词汇：

stylometry /staɪˈlɒmətri/ 文体统计分析。the statistical analysis of writing style, often used to identify authorship.

false-positive /ˌfɔːls ˈpɒzətɪv/ 误报；假阳性。a result that incorrectly identifies something as present or true.

tricolon /ˈtraɪkɒlən/ 三项并列结构。a rhetorical device using three parallel words, phrases or clauses.

paper over /ˈpeɪpər ˈəʊvə(r)/ 掩盖；遮掩问题。to hide a problem temporarily rather than solve it.

prime-minister-in-waiting /ˌpraɪm ˌmɪnɪstər ɪn ˈweɪtɪŋ/ 准首相；被认为即将成为首相的人。a politician widely expected to become prime minister in the near future.

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