商业往事丨第78话：像扫地机器人一样学习

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像扫地机器人一样学习

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第一个扫地机器人叫「伦巴」。当伦巴第一天在你家工作的时候，它就像个醉汉，跌跌撞撞老是撞墙。可是别担心，它这是在熟悉你家的环境。一两天之后，它知道了你家的隔间规划，他就可以把地板扫得很干净了。

刚开始的时候，伦巴的设计工程师很苦恼，因为每个房间都有不同的尺寸和形状。有些房间是方形的，有些是L型的，有一些则是圆形的。几乎不可能帮伦巴设定规格。最后这些工程师放弃了帮它默认规格的想法。他们就让它去撞墙，然后记录这些房间的形状，让它自我修正。撞一次学乖一次，下次它就不会撞墙了。如果它犯了错，就记录下来，自动修正这些错误。没多久，伦巴就像个小狗在你家自由的移动扫地了。

我以前认为我是那种不擅于与机器和数学沟通的人。可是，有一次我和一个成绩很好的同学同一组做功课。我观察到他在算统计学上的资料，他是试了又试了，修改了又修改，直到最后找到了适当的答案。那时我才了解到，我没那么笨，我只是没有学习从失败中找到答案而已。

当IBM刚开始要发展语言翻译软件的时候，他们请了很多语言专家，希望这些语言专家可以帮翻译软件设立规则。可是语言太复杂了，每个句子的背景都不一样。最后这些工程师放弃了帮翻译软件预先设立规则的想法，他们就把大量的数据全部输入计算机里，让计算机自己去学习。

虽然现在的翻译软件所翻译的内容还不识很顺畅，但是已经比以前好很多了。至少许多人可以透过翻译软件了解这些外文的基本意思了。我们相信计算机的翻译软件很快地会越来越好，就像人类的翻译一样。

当小婴儿开始学走路的时候，他们通常只能踏出一两小步就跌倒了。但是他们会再站起来。这个过程他们会一再的重复，自我修正。最后，他们可以走很多步，很快的小孩子很快就学会顺利地走路，甚至会跑了。

这种情况与学习外语的方式非常相似。我们经常犯同样的错误一百次，而不是每次犯一百个不同的错误。在学习语言时犯错误不应该引起尴尬，这就是学习语言过程的必要的一部分。也就是说，我们必须犯错误才能学习语言。这就是我们学习的方式。在许多方面，这是最好的学习方式。不仅仅是学习语言，这种方式也适用于其他领域。

Learning is Like a Floor-Sweeping Robot

The first floor-sweeping robot was named Roomba. When Roomba starts to work in your home the first day, Roomba is like an intoxicated person who is always striking the wall. However, don’t worry about such behavior; Roomba is just becoming familiar with your home. In a day or two, Roomba will know the layout of your home and be able to clean it well.

The designers of Roomba were particularly challenged when they designed the Roomba because each room has a different size and shape. Some rooms are square, some rectangular, some L-shaped and some rooms are even circular. It is basically impossible to preset the navigation rules for Roomba in the design stage. Finally, the designers gave up on trying to pre-program Roomba’s movement patterns. They let Roomba learn by itself by programming it to roam around and strike the walls of a room the first time it moves about a room. Roomba will record the shape of the room such that it can clean it without striking the walls the next time. If it does make a mistake, it will learn from its mistake and automatically correct its record. In no time at all, Roomba will be like a small dog freely moving about your house.

I used to think that I was a man who was a poor communicator with machines and also poor at mathematics. However, once when I was placed on the same team with a good performing classmate, I observed his way of calculating statistical data. He tried and tried again to arrive at a solution, modifying his calculations repeatedly until he homed in on a solution. At that time, I realized something: I was not so inept at mathematics; I just didn’t know how to learn from my failures to find a good solution.

When IBM was developing a language translation software package, it hired many language experts. The software engineers hoped that these language experts could set many rules for the language translation package. However, language is too complicated to cover every scenario with a finite set of rules. Finally, the engineers gave up on this approach. Instead, they input a huge amount of language data into a computer to let the computer learn by itself. Although such language translation software cannot produce really smooth translations for now, it’s getting better all the time. And now, many people use such translation software to get a pretty good idea of what something means in a foreign language. And it is believed that translation software will become almost as good as a human translator a few years down the line.

These examples show us that learning is a trial-and-error process. The most important thing is to know how to review and correct our mistakes.

When a child takes his or her first steps, he or she usually can only take a step or two before tumbling to the floor. But such a child will stand up and try again. This process will repeat itself many times. And before you know it, the child can take many steps in a row. And soon, the child will learn how to walk smoothly and even run.

The situation is very similar to the way one learns a foreign language. We often make the same mistake a hundred times instead of making one hundred different mistakes one time each. Making mistakes when learning a language shouldn’t cause embarrassment and is a necessary part of the language-acquisition process. That is, we have to make mistakes in order to learn language. That’s how we learn. In many ways, that’s the best way to learn. And this applies to other fields, not just learning language.

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原文标题：商业往事丨第78话：像扫地机器人一样学习

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