Artificial intelligence may bring about the end of the world as we know it – but not in the way most would expect

正如我们所知，人工智能可能会带来世界末日——但不是以大多数人所期望的方式

The global economy was already navigating a minefield of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) when US President Donald J. Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs reverberated across international markets. This aggressive escalation of trade barriers, including a mélange of sudden rate hikes, retaliatory measures, and rhetorical brinkmanship, didn’t just amplify the chaos; it ignited the specter of a full-blown economic firestorm.

全球经济早已在波动性、不确定性、复杂性和模糊性（VUCA）的雷区中艰难前行，而美国总统唐纳德·J·特朗普的“解放日”关税却在国际市场上引发了震动。这种激进的贸易壁垒升级，包括突然的税率上调、报复性措施和口头上的边缘政策，不仅放大了混乱，还点燃了一场全面经济风暴的幽灵。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


Volatility unleashed
The moment the tariffs were announced, markets convulsed. Stock indices plummeted, erasing $2.1 trillion in global market cap within days, while currency markets whipsawed as traders scrambled to price in the fallout. Supply chains, still reeling from pandemic-era disruptions, faced new shocks. Factories in Vietnam scrambled to reroute shipments, German automakers recalculated production costs overnight, and Chinese exporters braced for 145% retaliatory duties on key goods. The tariffs acted like a sledgehammer to an already teetering Jenga tower of global trade, with each blow amplifying volatility far beyond their intended targets.

波动性爆发
关税宣布的那一刻，市场剧烈震荡。全球股市指数暴跌，几天内蒸发了2.1万亿美元的全球市值，而货币市场则因交易员争相评估后果而剧烈波动。供应链仍在从疫情时期的干扰中恢复，又面临新的冲击。越南的工厂匆忙重新安排运输，德国汽车制造商连夜重新计算生产成本，中国出口商则为关键商品面临的145%报复性关税做准备。关税就像一把大锤，砸向本已摇摇欲坠的全球贸易积木塔，每一击都将波动性远远放大，超出了其预定目标。

Uncertainty weaponized
While volatility reigned, the tariff war between the United States and China introduced a deeper, more corrosive uncertainty. Businesses accustomed to stable trade rules now faced policy seesaws. Exemptions granted one day were revoked almost overnight while the constant threat of broader tariffs were dangled without clarity on timing or scope.
CEOs delayed investments, fearing sudden cost hikes. The Federal Reserve, already grappling with inflation, found itself trapped in a Catch-22 situation: raise rates to tame inflation and risk recession, or hold steady and watch confidence erode. Meanwhile, allies like the EU and Canada retaliated with precision strikes on politically sensitive US exports, ranging from bourbon to motorcycles, threatening 2.6 million American jobs at one point. The potential unemployment tallies just kept rising worldwide.
The message was clear: no one was safe from the fallout.

不确定性被武器化
在波动性肆虐的同时，美国与中国之间的关税战引入了一种更深层、更具腐蚀性的不确定性。习惯于稳定贸易规则的企业如今面临政策的大起大落。一天前获得的豁免几乎在一夜之间被撤销，而更广泛关税的持续威胁悬而未决，时间和范围均无明确说明。
首席执行官们推迟了投资，担心成本突然上涨。已经应对通货膨胀的美联储发现自己陷入进退两难的境地：提高利率以遏制通胀可能引发衰退，或保持稳定则眼看信心逐渐侵蚀。与此同时，欧盟和加拿大等盟友对政治上敏感的美国出口产品（如波本威士忌和摩托车）实施精准报复性打击，一度威胁到260万个美国就业岗位。全球潜在的失业人数持续上升。
信息很明确：没有人能从这场余波中幸免。

Complexity spirals out of control
As the trade war escalated, the global economic order began to fracture. Nations abandoned decades of multilateralism in favor of ad hoc alliances. China fast-tracked deals with the EU and ASEAN and began to court rivals Japan and India. The US, on the other hand, found itself isolated. Companies, desperate to adapt, began planning redundant supply chains – one for tariff-free markets and another for the US. This only served as a costly and inefficient hedge against further disruptions. Regulatory labyrinths simultaneously emerged overnight. A single auto part might now face several different tariff rates depending on its origin, destination, and material composition. The system now groaned under the weight of its runaway complexity.

复杂性螺旋失控
随着贸易战的升级，全球经济秩序开始破裂。各国放弃了数十年的多边主义，转而青睐临时联盟。中国加速与欧盟和东盟达成交易，并开始拉拢竞争对手日本和印度。另一方面，美国发现自己陷入孤立。企业为了适应局势，拼命开始规划冗余供应链——一个针对免关税市场，另一个针对美国。这只是对进一步中断的一种昂贵且低效的对冲措施。与此同时，监管迷宫一夜之间涌现。一个汽车零部件现在可能因其原产地、目的地和材料构成而面临几种不同的关税税率。整个系统在失控的复杂性重压下不堪重负。

Ambiguity: Strategy or stumbling block?
Worst of all was the ambiguity. Trump frxd the tariffs as a “negotiating tool” to revive US manufacturing, yet no coherent industrial policy followed. Were these temporary measures or a permanent decoupling from China? Would they actually bring jobs back, or simply raise prices for consumers? The administration’s mixed signals left allies questioning America’s reliability and adversaries probing for weakness. Geopolitically, the tariffs accelerated a crisis of trust. NATO allies doubted US commitments, Southeast Asian nations hedged toward Beijing, and the Global South explored alternatives to the dollar. The longer the ambiguity persisted, the more the world adapted to a reality where the US was no longer the anchor of the global economy.
What makes these tariffs uniquely dangerous is their role as a VUCA multiplier. They don’t just create volatility – they lock it in. Uncertainty doesn’t subside – it metastasizes. Complexity isn’t resolved – it becomes the new normal. And ambiguity isn’t clarified – it is weaponized. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: tariffs provoke retaliation, which fuels inflation, which strains central banks, which spooks investors, which forces more protectionism. Meanwhile, the dollar’s dominance erodes, supply chains Balkanize, and businesses lose faith in long-term planning.

模糊性：战略还是绊脚石？
最糟糕的是模糊性。特朗普将关税说成是重振美国制造业的“谈判工具”，却并未出台连贯的产业政策。这些措施究竟是暂时的，还是意味着与中国的永久脱钩？它们真的能带回就业岗位，还是仅仅提高消费者的价格？美国政府发出的混杂信号，让盟友质疑美国的可靠性，也让对手们开始探寻美国的弱点。从地缘政治角度来看，关税加剧了信任危机。北约盟友怀疑美国的承诺，东南亚国家对北京采取避险措施，而全球南方国家则探索美元的替代方案。这种模糊性持续的时间越长，世界就越适应美国不再是全球经济支柱的现实。
这些关税之所以格外危险，是因为它们扮演着“可变性、不稳定性、不稳定性”（VUCA）乘数的角色。它们不仅制造波动，还会将波动锁定。不确定性不会消退，而是会不断扩散。复杂性未得到解决，反而成为新常态。模糊性未得到澄清，反而被当作武器。结果形成了一个自我强化的循环：关税引发报复，加剧通胀，给央行带来压力，令投资者感到恐慌，最终迫使保护主义抬头。与此同时，美元的主导地位受到削弱，供应链分裂，企业对长期规划失去信心。

AI as the VUCA force multiplier
When the first round of tariffs was imposed by Washington DC, traditional economic models anticipated familiar disruptions in the form of market corrections, supply chain adjustments, and eventual equilibrium. What these models missed was the presence of a new wildcard – AI systems that don’t just respond to volatility but can amplify it. Algorithmic trading platforms and predictive logistics tools, operating on assumptions of continuity, struggled to adapt to the sudden, chaotic shifts introduced by trade barriers. In some sectors, this has led to mismatches between inventory and demand, not because of human misjudgement, but due to machine learning models which are ill-equipped to handle the cascading effects of cross-sectoral VUCA.
AI is indeed accelerating the fragmentation of the global economic order. As nations implement competing AI systems to manage trade flows, we may see the emergence of parallel digital realities. One country’s customs AI might classify a product as tariff-free while another’s system slaps it with prohibitive duties. This isn’t just bureaucratic confusion; it represents the breakdown of shared frxworks that have enabled global commerce for decades. We used to worry about trade wars between nations; now we should worry about conflicts between the machines built to manage them. In a hypothetical future, trade wars will be fought by rival AI systems fighting proxy battles through markets, logistics, and information. Personally, I doubt this planet has scope for another crisis beyond this one, as Albert Einstein’s adage that WW4 will be fought with “sticks and stones” comes to mind.

人工智能作为VUCA力量倍增器
当华盛顿特区实施第一轮关税时，传统的经济模型预测会出现一些常见的市场调整、供应链调整以及最终的均衡。这些模型忽略了一个新的不确定因素——人工智能系统，它不仅能应对波动，还能放大波动。基于连续性假设的算法交易平台和预测物流工具难以适应贸易壁垒带来的突发性混乱变化。在某些行业，这导致了库存与需求之间的错配，这并非人为误判，而是由于机器学习模型无法应对跨行业VUCA的连锁效应。
人工智能确实正在加速全球经济秩序的碎片化。随着各国纷纷采用相互竞争的人工智能系统来管理贸易流动，我们可能会看到平行的数字现实的出现。一个国家的海关人工智能可能将某种产品归类为免关税，而另一个国家的系统则对其征收高额关税。这不仅仅是官僚主义的混乱，它代表着数十年来支撑全球贸易的共享框架的崩溃。我们过去常常担心国家之间的贸易战；现在，我们应该担心那些为管理贸易而生的机器之间的冲突。假设未来，贸易战将由相互竞争的人工智能系统通过市场、物流和信息进行代理战。我个人怀疑，除了这场危机之外，这个星球是否还能再承受一场危机，这让我想起了阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的名言：第四次世界大战将用“棍棒和石头”来打。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


In the midst of the ongoing VUCA torrent, many clueless bureaucrats and executives have quietly turned to AI, particularly GPTs, to make sense of the myriad crises facing their nations and institutions. Many flawed decisions may have been made and sums allocated for “future-proofing.” Let me tell you why this is a recipe for disaster: one prominent GPT model gave me not one but five (5) erroneous and wholly-fictitious examples of how AI had messed up the post-Liberation Day geo-economic landscape. And here is the scary part: only those well-versed in complex systems, global risks and AI would have discerned those flaws. Otherwise, the scenarios generated by the GPT model were generally more accurate than most of those voiced by pundits on prime time television.
Why did the GPT model make such mistakes? I am convinced that AI is being surreptitiously used to sift out the gullible from the indispensable, perhaps in preparation for a post-VUCA world. But that remains a relatively optimistic theory!

在持续不断的VUCA洪流中，许多一无所知的官僚和高管悄悄地转向人工智能，尤其是通用技术（GPT），以理解他们国家和机构面临的无数危机。他们可能做出了许多错误的决策，并拨出大量资金用于“未来防患于未然”。让我来告诉你为什么这会导致灾难：一个著名的GPT模型给了我不止一个，而是五个完全虚构的错误例子，说明人工智能如何扰乱了解放日后的地缘经济格局。可怕的是：只有那些精通复杂系统、全球风险和人工智能的人才能辨别出这些缺陷。否则，GPT模型生成的情景通常比黄金时段电视上大多数专家提出的情景更准确。
为什么GPT模型会犯这样的错误？我确信，人工智能正被暗中用来筛选那些容易上当的人和不可或缺的人，或许是为了为后VUCA时代做准备。但这仍然是一个相对乐观的理论！

Mass unemployment ahead?
AI and VUCA are rapidly converging to create the preconditions for the worst unemployment crisis since the Industrial Revolution. Back then, the West could resort to new markets in the form of colonies. This time, however, there are no new territories left to colonize – only the continued cannibalization of societies themselves. The accelerating spiral of global wealth inequality is not an anomaly; it is the clearest symptom of this internalized exploitation.
The world is not merely staring at job losses in specific sectors. No, this is about the simultaneous breakdown of multiple stabilizing mechanisms that have historically absorbed economic shocks.
Russia’s Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadaev recently claimed that half of his nation’s civil servants could be replaced by AI. Shadaev, however, noted that certain professions, such as doctors and teachers, cannot be replaced. Bill Gates thinks otherwise. He predicts that AI will swiftly replace humans in nearly every professional sphere, including teaching and medicine. For once, I wholly agree with Gates.
So, what do we do with the “excess humans”? Institute a CBDC-mediated rationing system as a stop-gap measure?

大规模失业即将来临？
人工智能和VUCA正在迅速融合，为工业革命以来最严重的失业危机创造先决条件。当时，西方可以以殖民地的形式开拓新市场。然而，这一次，没有新的领土可供殖民——只有社会自身持续的蚕食。全球贫富差距的加速螺旋并非异常现象；它是这种内化剥削最明显的症状。
世界不仅仅是盯着特定行业的失业。不，这是关于历史上吸收经济冲击的多个稳定机制同时崩溃的问题。
俄罗斯数字发展部长马克苏特·沙达耶夫最近声称，该国一半的公务员可能会被人工智能取代。然而，沙达耶夫指出，某些职业，例如医生和教师，是无法被取代的。比尔·盖茨却不这么认为。他预测，人工智能将在几乎所有专业领域迅速取代人类，包括教学和医学。这一次，我完全同意盖茨的观点。
那么，我们该如何处理这些“过剩人口”呢？建立一个由CBDC介导的配给制度作为权宜之计吗？

Culmination of systemic global corruption
The VUCA-AI quagmire unfolding today is the consequence of decades of entrenched patronage systems that were perfected in the West and subsequently exported to the Third World. These were intrinsically corrupt systems that rewarded compliant mediocrity over critical thought. In sidelining genuine thinkers, these structures forfeited any real chance of forging a balanced, intelligent response to the collision between VUCA dynamics and artificial intelligence.
In the end, we are left with a world designed by clowns and supervised by monkeys, to borrow a phrase from a disillusioned Boeing pilot. Many Third World pundits and policymakers, themselves products of the West’s neocolonial machinery, are now advocating a wholesale pivot towards the BRICS bloc. Like courtiers in a globalist brothel suddenly desperate for new clientele, these elites now decry the very “inequalities” that once elevated them to cushy posts – at the expense of the citizens they claim to represent.
As far back as 1970, the Nobel Laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi had warned of the consequences of the “terrible strain of idiots who govern the world.” Szent-Györgyi, who bagged the Nobel Prize in Medicine (1937) for discovering Vitamin C had however hoped that the youth of the future would save humanity from a gerontocracy that cannot “assimilate new ideas.”

全球系统性腐败的顶峰
如今正在上演的VUCA-AI泥潭，是数十年来根深蒂固的庇护体系的后果。这种体系在西方完善后，随后被输出到第三世界。这些体系本质上是腐败的，它奖励的是顺从的平庸之辈，而非批判性思考。由于将真正的思考者边缘化，这些体系丧失了任何真正构建平衡、智慧的应对VUCA动力与人工智能碰撞的机会。
最终，我们只剩下一个由小丑设计、由猴子监督的世界——借用一位失望的波音飞行员的话来说。许多第三世界的专家和政策制定者，本身就是西方新殖民主义机器的产物，如今却鼓吹全面转向金砖国家集团。就像全球主义妓院里的朝臣突然渴望新的客户一样，这些精英们现在谴责那些曾经将他们推上舒适职位的“不平等”——而牺牲的却是他们声称代表的公民。
早在1970年，诺贝尔奖得主阿尔伯特·圣捷尔吉就曾警告过“统治世界的可怕白痴”所带来的后果。圣捷尔吉因发现维生素C而荣获1937年诺贝尔医学奖，但他也曾希望未来的年轻人能够拯救人类，使其免于无法“吸收新思想”的老人政治。

Little did he know that the same gerontocracy had already hatched a plan to create a new breed of “young global leaders” – even children – who were more feckless and pliant than their predecessors. This may have been the real raison d’etre behind the World Economic Forum. Personally, I can find no other justification behind the founding of this institution.
In the end, individuals with real ideas – both young and old – have largely abandoned a system that no longer rewards insight, only compliance. Their views no longer appear on search engines as Big Tech had employed a variety of pretexts to shadowban their viewpoints.
However, the day may come when the phones of ideators may start ringing again in the quest for “solutions”. It will be too late by then.

他根本不知道，同样的老人政治已经制定了一项计划，要打造一批新一代的“年轻全球领袖”——甚至包括孩子——他们比他们的前辈更加软弱无能、唯命是从。这或许才是世界经济论坛存在的真正理由。就我个人而言，我实在找不到成立这个机构的其他理由。
最终，拥有真正想法的人——无论老少——基本上已经放弃了这个不再奖励洞察力、只奖励顺从的体系。他们的观点不再出现在搜索引擎上，因为大型科技公司已经用各种借口对他们的观点进行暗中屏蔽。
然而，或许有一天，思想家们的电话会再次响起，寻求“解决方案”。到那时就太晚了。