Tech Titans Accelerate Investment Into A.I. 科技巨頭加碼 押寶人工智慧不手軟


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2025/12/26 第569期 訂閱/退訂看歷史報份
 
 
紐時周報精選 Tech Titans Accelerate Investment Into A.I. 科技巨頭加碼 押寶人工智慧不手軟
Maryland Sues FBI Over Relocation of Headquarters 馬里蘭州提告FBI總部遷址變卦
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Tech Titans Accelerate Investment Into A.I. 科技巨頭加碼 押寶人工智慧不手軟
文/Karen Weise
譯/羅方妤

科技巨頭加碼 押寶人工智慧不手軟

Four of the tech industry's wealthiest companies made it clear this week that their spending on artificial intelligence was not about to slow down.

4大科技巨頭本周明確表態,對人工智慧的投資不會減速。

But the outlays from Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon — which all raised their spending by billions of dollars, saying they needed to meet demand for AI — are increasingly feeding concerns that the tech industry is heading toward a dangerous bubble.

然而,這一波由谷歌、Meta、微軟和亞馬遜領頭的「花錢競賽」也引發市場擔憂:當各家動輒追加數十億美元投資以追趕AI潮流時,科技產業恐正走向一場危險的泡沫。

AI remains an unproven and expensive technology that could take years to fully develop. How much companies will ultimately get back in return from AI products like chatbots is unclear. And smaller companies pursuing AI gold, financial analysts pointed out, are not nearly as wealthy.

AI仍屬昂貴且未被完全驗證的技術,距離成熟商用可能還需數年。各家公司能否從聊天機器人等AI產品回收巨額投資仍不明朗,報酬率甚至可能遠低於預期。金融分析師提醒,許多追逐AI淘金夢的中小企業財力有限。

Last week, the Bank of England wrote that while the building of data centers, which provide computing power for AI, had so far largely come from the cash produced by the biggest companies, it would increasingly involve more debt. If AI underwhelms — or the systems ultimately require far less computing — there could be growing risk.

英國央行上周警告,支撐AI運算力的資料中心建設目前主要靠大型企業自有資金,但未來勢必仰賴更多舉債。一旦AI成效不如預期,或所需算力低於預估,企業債務風險恐持續上升。

"This is a fast-evolving topic, and the future is highly uncertain," the bank wrote.

央行總結指出:「這是一個快速演變的領域,未來仍極度不確定。」

Concerns mushroomed this week after a series of earnings reports. On Wednesday, Google said it was increasing what it planned to spend on AI data center projects this year by $6 billion, after dropping nearly $64 billion on them over the past nine months.

一系列財報發布後,市場疑慮急遽升溫。谷歌周三宣布,過去9個月在AI數據中心專案已經投入近640億美元,今年計畫再投資60億美元。

Microsoft said it had spent $35 billion in its latest quarter, $5 billion more than what it had told investors to expect just a few months ago. And Meta raised its spending forecast to at least $70 billion by the end of the year, which would be nearly double what it spent last year.

微軟表示,他們在最新季度已支出350億美元,比前幾個月告知投資人的預期支出多了50億美元。Meta將今年度支出預測提高到至少700億美元,幾乎是去年的2倍。

On Thursday, Amazon also said it would be "very aggressive" in adding more data centers and would spend $125 billion this year on capital expenditures — and even more next year.

亞馬遜周四表示將「積極擴建」資料中心,今年資本支出達1250億美元,明年更高。

Google, Microsoft and Amazon, which are the three largest providers of cloud computing in the United States, said they did not have enough computing power to meet customer demand. That's despite those three and Meta shelling out a combined $112 billion in just the past three months on capital expenditures, which included construction of data centers. Over the past 12 months, the four spent a total of more than $360 billion in capital expenditures.

美國3大雲端運算服務供應商谷歌、微軟和亞馬遜均坦言,雲端運算需求超出可供應量。4大巨頭近3個月合計撒幣1120億美元,過去12個月總投資突破3600億美元。

 
Maryland Sues FBI Over Relocation of Headquarters 馬里蘭州提告FBI總部遷址變卦
文/Glenn Thrush
譯/羅方妤

馬里蘭州提告FBI總部遷址變卦

Maryland sued the Trump administration Thursday for ditching a Biden-era agreement to move the FBI from its crumbling headquarters in Washington to Prince George's County, accusing the White House of defying congressional approval of the deal.

馬里蘭州周四對川普政府提起訴訟,指控他們拋棄拜登時代將聯邦調查局從華府破舊的總部,遷往喬治王子郡的協議,違抗國會批准的遷建計畫。

The Maryland attorney general, Anthony G. Brown, and county officials claimed that Trump appointees at the FBI, Justice Department and General Services Administration violated a legal requirement to consult with them before scrapping the plan, according to a filing in federal court in Maryland.

根據遞交馬里蘭州聯邦法院的訴狀,州檢察長布朗與郡官員主張,川普政府任命的FBI、司法部與總務署官員,在廢止該計畫前未依法諮詢地方當局,已違反法定程序。

In the 30-page filing, the state and county accused the administration of seeking to "unlawfully" divert about $1 billion allocated by Congress for a vacant lot in Greenbelt, Maryland, saying it had illegally selected an alternative site in downtown Washington, the Ronald Reagan Building. That building, once occupied by the U.S. Agency for International Development, is not far from its current headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

在這份30頁的訴狀中,州與郡指控川普政府「非法」挪用國會撥給馬里蘭州格林貝爾特一處空地的約10億美元資金,改將新總部選址於華盛頓市中心的雷根大樓。該棟大樓先前為美國國際開發署使用,距現有的胡佛大樓總部不遠。

The move prolongs the dispute over the FBI's headquarters, an aging colossus veiled in netting to keep concrete from falling on passersby.

此舉讓關於FBI總部去留爭議持續延燒,這座老舊的龐然大物被網子籠罩,防止水泥剝落砸中經過的民眾。

"The Greenbelt FBI headquarters project thus grew out of more than a decade of deliberation, planning and collaboration with Congress and state and local authorities," Brown and the other plaintiffs wrote in the lawsuit.

布朗與其他原告在訴狀中指出:「格林貝爾特FBI總部計畫源自逾10年的討論、規畫與國會及州、地方政府的協調合作。」

"The FBI and the GSA announced they were casting all that aside," they added.

他們補充說:「但FBI與總務署宣布將這一切全盤推翻。」

Brown said at a news conference in Largo, Maryland, on Thursday that his state had been chosen after thorough vetting.

布朗周四在馬里蘭州拉戈召開記者會時表示,該州是經過嚴格審查後才獲選為新址。

"Maryland earned the new FBI headquarters through a fair and transparent selection process that took more than 10 years — a rigorous evaluation that identified Greenbelt as the site best suited to meet the FBI's security, operational space and mission needs," he said.

他說:「馬里蘭州經過超過10年的公平透明評選過程,憑實力取得新FBI總部的資格。嚴謹的評估結果顯示,格林貝爾特最能符合FBI在安全、空間與任務上的需求。」

Trump has long opposed the move to Maryland. Since the start of his second term, he has made it clear that he would ignore a 2023 pact negotiated by the Biden administration that would relocate the bureau to a campus near the Greenbelt Metro station in a county with one of the nation's highest concentrations of middle-class and affluent Black residents.

川普長期反對FBI總部遷往馬里蘭州。自他第二任期開始以來,便明言將無視拜登政府2023年所達成的協議—該協議計畫把FBI遷至格林貝爾特地鐵站附近的園區,該區所在的喬治王子郡是美國中產階級與富裕非裔居民密度最高的郡之一。

"They were going to build an FBI headquarters three hours away in Maryland, a liberal state. We're going to stop it,"Trump said in March, exaggerating the time needed to commute to a Washington suburb with access to the city's Metro train system.

川普3月時曾說:「他們打算把FBI總部蓋在馬里蘭,一個自由派州,離這裡要3個小時,我們要阻止它。」這番話誇大了通勤時間,實際上該郊區可透過華府地鐵系統直達市中心。

 
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