中国的树洞救援队志愿者们利用AI技术，挽救了多条生命，BBC专访进行了报道，在推特上也获得了众多网友的点赞。感谢各位志愿者的付出，也呼吁社会正视抑郁症。如果读者有抑郁症甚至轻生的想法，请一定要勇敢寻求专业人士的帮助。
The Chinese suicides prevented by AI from afar
人工智能在中国远程阻止自杀行为
Li Fan, a 21-year-old student, attempted suicide after posting a brief message on the Chinese Twitter-like platform Weibo just after Valentine's Day.
21岁的学生李帆情人节当天在微博上发了条消息后便尝试自杀
"I can't go on anymore. I'm going to give up," he wrote. Soon after, he lost consciousness.
他在微博写道：“我坚持不下去了，只能放弃”。发完之后很快他便失去了意识。
He was in debt, had fallen out with his mother and was suffering from severe depression.
李负债累累，与母亲不和，还患有严重的抑郁症。
Some 8,000km (5,000 miles) away from his university in Nanjing, his post was detected by a program running on a computer in Amsterdam.
但距离他在南京的学校8000多公里之外，他的微博被阿姆斯特丹一台电脑上运行的程序检查到了。
It flagged the message, prompting volunteers from different parts of China into action.
程序对这条微博进行了标记，让身处中国不同地方的志愿者们能够行动起来。
When they were unable to rouse Mr Li from afar, they reported their concerns to local police, who eventually saved him.
虽然无法在远程唤醒李，但他们向当地警方报案，警察最终拯救了他。
It might sound extraordinary but this was just one of many such success for the Tree Hole Rescue team.
听起来有点不可思议，但这仅仅是树洞救援队成功发起的多次救援中的一起。
The initiative's founder is Huang Zhisheng, a senior artificial intelligence (AI) researcher at the Free University Amsterdam.
这个活动的发起人叫黄智生，是阿姆斯特丹自由大学的一名资深人工智能研究员。
In the past 18 months, his program has been used by 600 volunteers across China, who in turn say they have rescued nearly 700 people.
"If you hesitate for a second, a lot of life will be lost," Mr Huang told BBC News. "Every week, we can save around 10 people."
在过去的18个月里，中国各地有600多名志愿者利用了他的这个程序挽救了据说将近700人的生命。
“如果你犹豫了哪怕是一秒钟，很多人都可能失去生命。每周我们大约能救10个人。”黄在接受BBC采访时说。
The first rescue operation was on 29 April 2018. A 22-year-old college student, Tao Yue, in northern China's Shandong province, wrote on Weibo she planned to kill herself two days later.
第一次拯救行动发生咋2018年4月29日。中国山东省的一位22岁大学生陶月发微博说她打算两天后自杀。
Peng Ling, a volunteer from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and several others reacted.
中国科学院的一名志愿者彭玲和其他一些人行动起来了。
Ms Peng told BBC News they had found a phone number for one of student's friends via an earlier post and passed the information to the college.
彭告诉BBC新闻她们通过陶早些时候发的微博找到了她一位朋友的电话号码，并将（准备自杀的）信息告知了校方。
"I tried to message her before sleep and told her that I could pick her up," she said. "She added me as a friend on [Chinese app] WeChat and gradually calmed down. Since then, I have kept check on her to see if she is eating. We also buy her a bunch of flowers through the internet once a week."
彭说：“我在睡前给她发消息，告诉她我会帮助她。她同意在微信上加我好友并逐渐冷静了下来。此后我会经常看看她是否在进食，也会每周一次在网上下单送她一束鲜花。”
After this success, the team rescued a man who had tried to jump off a bridge and saved a woman who had tried to kill herself after being sexually abused.
这次成功之后，他们还挽救了一个试图跳桥自杀的男性，以及一名在被性侵后准备自杀的女性。
"Rescues need both luck and experience," said Li Hong, a Beijing psychologist who has been involved for about a year.
李虹是北京的一名心理医生，参与救援差不多1年了。她认为救援既需要运气，还需要经验。
She recalled how she and her colleagues had visited eight hotels in Chengdu, in order to locate a suicidal woman they had known had booked a room in the city.
她还记得之前和同事一起为了找到一名在成都订了房间准备自杀的女性，跑了当地8家酒店的事情。
"All the receptionists said they didn't know the woman," Ms Li said. "But one of them hesitated for a moment. We assumed it must be that hotel - and it was."
“所有的前台接待都说她们不认识那个女的，但有一个人犹疑了一下，我们怀疑就是那个酒店，结果证明如此。”
So how does the system work? The Java-based program monitors several "tree holes" on Weibo and analyses the messages posted there.
那么这个系统是如何工作的呢？这个JAVA程序会实时监控数个“树洞”微博，并对在这些树洞微博上发布的留言消息进行分析。
A "tree hole" is the Chinese name for places on the net where people post secrets for others to read. The name is inspired by an Irish tale about a man who confided his secrets to a tree.
“树洞”是中国网民对在网上发布个人秘密让其它人看到的场所的称呼。这个词来源于一则爱尔兰通童话，描述了一个向树吐露自己秘密的男人的故事。
One example is a post by Zou Fan, a 23-year old Chinese student who wrote a message on Weibo before killing herself, in 2012.
例如2012年的时候，一名23岁的女学生‘走饭’（网名）在自杀前发了一条微博。
After her death, tens of thousands of other users added comments to her post, writing about their own troubles, thus turning the original message into a "tree hole".
在她去世后，数万名网友在这条微博下评论，倾诉自己遇到的困难，将这条微博变成了一个“树洞”。
The AI program automatically ranks the posts it finds from one to 10.
AI程序能自动将检测到的消息从一到十进行分级。
A nine means there is a strong belief a suicide attempt will be made shortly. A 10 means it is likely to be already under way.
例如，九级表示大概率会在短期内进行自杀，而十级则表示很可能自杀行为已经在进行当中。
In these cases, volunteers try to call the police directly and/or contact the person involved's relatives and friends.
出现这种情况时，志愿者们会直接联系当地警方，并/或联系可能自杀者的亲属或朋友。
But if the ranking is below six - meaning only negative words have been detected - the volunteers normally do not intervene.
如果等级低于六级，也即只检测到负面词汇时，志愿者们通常不会进行干预。
One of the issues commonly encountered by the team is a belief among older relatives that depression is not a "big deal."
志愿者团队经常遇到的一个问题是可能自杀者的长辈亲属通常认为抑郁不是什么“大问题”。
"I knew I had depression when I was in high school but my mother told me that it was 'absolutely impossible - don't think about it anymore'," Mr Li told BBC News.
李接受BBC新闻采访时也提到：“我高中时期知道自己有抑郁症，但我母亲缺对我说‘不可能，别想那么多’。”
The AI program also found a post from a young woman, saying: "I will kill myself when New Year comes."
AI程序发现一名年轻女性发帖说“我在来临的时候会自杀。”
But when the volunteers contacted her mother, they said she had sneered and said: "My daughter was very happy just now. How dare you say she is planning suicide."
但当志愿者联系到她母亲的时候，她母亲却嘲笑了志愿者，并说“我女儿刚才还很开心，你们竟然有胆子说她想自杀。”
Even after the volunteers showed evidence of her daughter's depression, the mother did not take the matter seriously.
即使志愿者们向这位母亲展示了她女儿抑郁的证明，她仍然没有把它当一回事。
It was only after an incident in which the police had to stop the youngster jumping off a rooftop that the mother changed her mind.
直到发生一起警方阻止年轻女生跳楼的事件后，这位母亲的看法才开始改变。
Long journey 前路漫漫
Despite its successes, Mr Huang acknowledges the limits of his project.
虽然取得了不少成功，但黄认为他的项目仍有局限。
"Because Weibo limits the use of web crawlers, we can only gather around 3,000 entries every day," he said. "So we can only save one or two a day on average and we choose to focus on the most urgent cases."
“因为微博限制了网络爬虫功能，我们每天只能收集录入3000条信息。我们每天只能挽救一到两人，所以我们选择主要关注那些最紧急的情况。”
Another issue is that some of those rescued require a long-term commitment.
另一方面，被救援的人也需要长期的关注。
"Most of my life now is occupied by these rescued people," Ms Li said. "Sometimes I get very tired." She said she was currently in contact with eight people who had been rescued.
李就说到现在她的生活大多被那些被挽救的人占据，有时会觉得很疲惫。她目前同时与八名被挽救的人进行联系。
"I have to reply [to] them soon after they send me a message," she said. Some team members also try to provide help offline.
她说每次收到他们的消息后都必须尽快回复。其他的一些团队成员也会在网上提供一些帮助。
For example, one AI professor is said to have found a data-labelling job for one person found to have a social-anxiety disorder.
例如，据说一位AI教授为一个发现患有社交焦虑症的人找到了一份对数据进行标记的工作。
There is also the issue that suicidal thoughts can return.
自杀的念头也可能反复出现，这也是个问题。
Ms Peng gave the example of one youngster who had "looked better each day" after being rescued but then killed herself.
彭女士就提到过一个案例，有一个年轻女生在被救援后“看起来一天天好起来”，但最后还是自杀了。
"She was talking to me about getting a new photo portrait on Friday," Ms Peng said, adding that two days later the woman was dead. "It's a big shock to me that a person you got along with over a long time suddenly isn't there."
“她之前还跟我说打算那周五去拍照片，但两天后却收到了她死亡的消息。习惯了和她的长期相处后，突然发现有天她不在了，对我来说真的很震惊。”
By contrast, Mr Li remains healthy and now works at a hotel.
与此形成对比的是，文章开头提到的李帆目前仍然状态良好，在一家酒店工作。
"I like this job because I can communicate with many different people," he said. He added while he was very appreciative of the rescue team's efforts, ultimately it was up to each individual to achieve a long-term solution.
"Different people's joys and sorrows are not completely interlinked," he said.
"You must redeem yourself."
他说：“我喜欢这份工作，因为可以和不同的人打交道。非常感激救援队的努力，但更重要的是每个被救援的人需要自己找到一个长远的解决方案。每个人的开心或伤心并非相同，只有你自己才能挽救你自己。”
At the request of the interviewees, the names of the rescued people involved have been changed.
经受访人要求，报道内所有涉及的被救援人士都采用了化名。
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