The resounding win by a Google artificial intelligence program over a champion in the complex board game Go last month was a statement — not so much to professional game players as to Google's competitors.

Many of the tech industry's biggest companies, like Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft, are jockeying to become the go-to company for AI. In the industry's lingo, the companies are engaged in a "platform war."

Google人工智慧系統上個月在複雜的圍棋賽中大敗一位棋王是一項宣示──向Google競爭對手宣示的成分多過向職業棋手。

科技業許多規最大的公司，如亞馬遜、Google、IBM和微軟，正競相成為人工智慧的最頂尖公司。用業界的行話，這些公司正在進行「平台戰爭」。

A platform, in technology, is essentially a piece of software that other companies build on and that consumers cannot do without. Become the platform and huge profits will follow. Microsoft dominated personal computers because its Windows software became the center of the consumer software world. Google has come to dominate the Internet through its ubiquitous search bar.

If true believers in AI are correct that this long-promised technology is ready for the mainstream, the company that controls AI could steer the tech industry for years to come.

科技的平台，基本上是做為其他公司的發展基礎，且為消費者所不可或缺的一件軟體。一旦成為平台，龐大的利益也就隨之而來。微軟宰制個人電腦，是因為「視窗」軟體成了消費者軟體世界的中心。Google則巳透過無所不在的搜尋欄，宰制著網際網路。

如果人工智慧的真正信仰者說對了，此一長期被看好的科技已準備成為主流，能掌控人工智慧的公司，就能主導未來的科技產業。

"Whoever wins this race will dominate the next stage of the information age," said Pedro Domingos, a machine learning specialist and the author of "The Master Algorithm," a 2015 book that contends that AI and big-data technology will remake the world.

At the University of Toronto, IBM pursued a startup called Ross Intelligence that makes a smart legal assistant, and extended a free offer to use its AI software, called Watson. For IBM, the financial payoff would come if startups like Ross generated sales, followed by a revenue-sharing arrangement. "No upfront costs at all," said Andrew Arruda, chief executive of the startup, which moved to Silicon Valley last year.

機器學習專家佩德羅．多明哥斯說：「誰能贏得這場競賽，誰就能主宰資訊時代的下一個階段。」他也是「大師級演算法」的作者，這本2015年出版的書主張，人工智慧和大數據科技將重塑世界。

在多倫多大學，IBM追求做出智慧法律助理的新創公司「羅斯智慧」，並提供它的「華生」（Watson）人工智慧軟體供免費使用。對IBM而言，像羅斯之類的新創公司若能有營收，藉由雙方的營收分享合約，IBM將在財務上獲取回報。這家新創公司去年搬到了矽谷，執行長安德魯．阿魯達說：「完全沒有前置成本。」

For years, tech companies have used man-versus-machine competitions to show they are making progress on AI. In 1997, an IBM computer beat the chess champion Garry Kasparov.

Now, Google's AI program is drawing additional attention and pointing to a consolidation among tech's biggest companies.

多年來，科技公司利用人與機器的競賽來展示他們在人工智慧方面的進展。1997年，IBM的電腦打敗了西洋棋王加里．卡斯帕羅夫。

現在，Google的人工智慧程式吸引了更大的注意，也顯示科技業各大公司將進行整合。

By 2020, the market for machine learning applications will reach $40 billion, IDC, a market research firm, estimates. And 60 percent of those applications, the firm predicts, will run on the platform software of four companies — Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft.

Intelligent software applications will become commonplace, said Jeff Dean, a computer scientist who oversees Google's AI development. "And machine learning will touch every industry."

市場研究公司IDC估計，到2020年時，機器學習應用軟體市場將達到400億美元。這家公司預測，這些應用程式的60%將在四家公司──亞馬遜、Google、IBM和微軟的平台軟體上跑。

督導Google人工智慧發展的電腦科學家傑夫．狄恩說，智慧軟體應用將很普及，「而機器學習將觸及每個產業」。