文章大意:本文是一篇说明文。文章介绍一项新的研究揭示了蜜蜂如何在快速做出判断的同时尽量减少危险。研究发现,蜜蜂的决策速度和准确性超过了人类,并且构建了一个模拟蜜蜂决策过程的计算机模型。研究人员认为,人工智能研究者可以从蜜蜂等“简单”动物身上学到很多。
A recent study, led by Professor Andrew Barron, Dr. HaDi MaBouDi, and Professor James Marshall, illustrates how evolution has fine-tuned honey bees to make quick judgments while minimizing danger.
“Animal lives are full of decisions,” says Professor Barron. “A honey bee has a brain smaller than a sesame (芝麻) seed. And yet it can make decisions faster and more accurately than’ we can. A robot programmed to do a bee’s job would need the backup of a supercomputer.”
Bees need to work quickly and efficiently. They need to make decisions. Which flower will have a sweet liquid? While they’re flying, they face threats from the air. While landing, they’re vulnerable to potential hunter, some of which pretend to look like flowers.
Researchers trained 20 bees to associate each of the five different colored “flower disks” with their visit history of reward and punishment. Blue flowers always had sugar juice. Green flowers always had a type of liquid with a bitter taste for bees. Other colors sometimes had glucose (葡萄糖). “Then we introduced each bee to a ‘garden’ with artificial ‘flowers’. We filmed each bee and timed their decision-making process,” says Dr. MaBouDi. “If the bees were confident that a flower would have food, they quickly decided to land on it, taking an average of 0.6 seconds. If they were confident that a flower wouldn’t have food, they made a decision just as quickly. If unsure, they took on average 1.4 seconds, and the time reflected the probability that a flower had food.”
The team then built a computer model mirroring the bees’ decision-making process. They found the structure of the model looked very similar to the physical layout of a bee brain. “AI researchers can learn much from bees and other ‘simple’ animals. Millions of years of evolution has led to incredibly efficient brains with very low power requirements,” says Professor Marshall who co-founded a company that uses insect brain patterns to enable machines to move autonomously, like nature.
8. Why does Professor Andrew Barron mention “a supercomputer”?
A.To illustrate how a honey bee’s brain resemble each other. |
B.To explain how animals arrive at informed decisions fast. |
C.To demonstrate how a robot could finish a honey bee’s job. |
D.To emphasize how honey bees make decisions remarkably. |
9. Which of the following can best replace “vulnerable to” underlined in paragraph 3?
A.Easily harmed by. | B.Highly sensitive to. |
C.Deeply critical to. | D.Closely followed by. |
10. What influenced the speed of trained bees in making decisions?
A.Their judgments about reward and punishment. |
B.Their preference for the colors of flower disks. |
C.Their confirmation of food’s presence and absence. |
D.Their ability to tell real flowers from artificial ones. |
11. What message does Professor James Marshall want to give us?
A.The power of bee brains is underestimated. | B.Biology can inspire future AI. |
C.Autonomous machines are changing nature. | D.AI should be far more efficient. |