That ability to simulate and answer counterfactuals is a recent arrival in the practice of A.I.

在AI实践中，这种模拟和回答反设事实的能力是最近才出现的。

Language can express contingencies, pose counterfactuals and talk about the future. Music's nuances are of a different order.

语言可以表述偶然事件、提出反事实，还能描绘未来，而音乐的细微差别有不同的形式。

" Hitler might have won the war" is a counterfactual that wonders what would have happened had Stalingrad gone differently, he explained.

他解释说，“希特勒可能已经赢得了这场战争”是一个反事实，如果斯大林格勒采取不同的方式，会发生什么。

So they also asked firms a counterfactual question: what decisions would they have taken had they been unable to get aid?

因此，他们也会向公司提出一个反事实的问题：如果无法获得政府援助，他们会做出什么样的决定？

The ability to reason about causality, and to explore counterfactual questions, is a threshold that users of artificial intelligence have long sought to cross.

推理因果关系，以及探究反设事实问题的能力，是AI用户长期以来一直寻求跨越的一道门槛。

And the counterfactual that it's a lot lower than it otherwise would have been is quite difficult to communicate as government.

而且，它比本来要低得多的反事实，作为政府很难沟通。