In Plato’s “Republic”(柏拉图《理想国》), society comprises men of gold, who are fit to rule, men of silver, destined to be soldiers, and those of bronze, who become farmers. Since 1959 the world’s top teenage mathematicians (and, more recently, those of great ability in other fields) have tested their mettle(勇气；才能) in international competitions called Olympiads. Around 300 medals of gold, silver and bronze are awarded for maths annually. A smaller number are given for physics, chemistry and informatics(信息学) (ie, computing). From the ranks of the winners has emerged an elite unlike any in the history of capitalism.(从获奖者中崛起了一个资本主义历史上前所未有的精英群体。) Behold(看吧；瞧): Olympiad Man.
在柏拉图的《理想国》中，社会由三种人构成：适合统治的金质之人、注定成为士兵的银质之人，以及成为农民的铜质之人。自1959年起，全球顶尖的青少年数学家（以及后来在其他领域才华出众者）在国际奥林匹克竞赛中一较高下。数学每年颁发约300枚金、银、铜牌，物理、化学和信息学（即计算机）颁发的奖牌数量较少。从获奖者中崛起了一个资本主义历史上前所未有的精英群体。看吧：奥赛人。
The crisis over the safety of artificial intelligence is best understood as a crisis among Olympiad Men. Last year AI models managed gold-medal performances in maths. Relentless advances since have led a pair of researchers at Anthropic, who made up a third of Britain’s maths Olympiad team in 2017, to resign.(此后持续不断的进展，导致Anthropic的两名研究员辞职——他们2017年曾组成英国数学奥赛队的三分之一。) Anthropic(美国AI安全公司)’s boss, Dario Amodei, was once a member of the squad(队伍；小队), but not quite the starting line-up(首发阵容), of America’s physics side. OpenAI(美国人工智能研究公司) has responded by appointing Paul Christiano to its board(董事会). Mr Christiano has a long history in AI safety and a silver medal for maths.
人工智能安全危机，最好理解为奥赛人内部的危机。去年，AI模型在数学上取得了金牌级的表现。此后不断推进的进展，导致Anthropic的两名研究员辞职——他们2017年曾组成英国数学奥赛队的三分之一。Anthropic的老板达里奥·阿莫代伊曾是美国物理队成员，但并非首发阵容。OpenAI的回应是任命保罗·克里斯蒂亚诺进入董事会。克里斯蒂亚诺长期研究AI安全，并拥有数学银牌。
Davos Man(达沃斯人) cut his teeth(初试锋芒；开始职业生涯) at McKinsey(麦肯锡咨询公司) in his 20s, but Olympiad Man was acing maths competitions before his first drink. (Olympiad Woman is far rarer.) Very clever children often become very, very expensive adults. In 2024 Google paid $2.7bn to hire Noam Shazeer, who achieved a perfect maths score in 1994. He recently decamp(突然离开；跳槽)ed to OpenAI, whose head researcher has moonlight(兼职；从事第二职业)ed as head coach of America’s informatics team. In the 2010s Sheryl Sandberg(前Meta首席运营官), the archetypal(典型的；原型的) Davos Woman, was Meta’s best-paid executive; now it is probably Alexandr Wang, aged 29 and not long off America’s problem-set circuit(竞赛题海圈). AI startups counting Olympiad Men among their founders include Databricks(美国数据与AI公司) (worth $190bn), Cursor ($60bn), Cognition ($48bn) and Perplexity ($30bn).
达沃斯人二十多岁时在麦肯锡初试锋芒，而奥赛人在第一次喝酒之前就已在数学竞赛中叱咤风云。（奥赛女性要罕见得多。）非常聪明的孩子往往成为非常非常昂贵的成年人。2024年，谷歌斥资27亿美元聘请诺姆·沙泽尔，他在1994年数学竞赛中取得满分。他最近跳槽到OpenAI，而OpenAI的首席研究员曾兼职担任美国信息学队主教练。2010年代，典型的达沃斯女性谢丽尔·桑德伯格是Meta薪酬最高的高管；如今这一位置很可能属于29岁的亚历山大·王，他刚离开美国竞赛题海不久。创始团队中有奥赛人的AI初创公司包括Databricks（估值1900亿美元）、Cursor（600亿美元）、Cognition（480亿美元）和Perplexity（300亿美元）。
A gold medal is all you need
一块金牌就够了