Siri is an artificial intelligence (AI) that you can carry around in the pocket, where it waits patiently to be told what to do. In the week we spend together, my AI assistant has performed admirably in finding me restaurants, or the location of the nearest coffee shop.
A typical command might be: “Reserve a table for two at a good French restaurant in San Francisco.” Siri responds by presenting a list of top-rated restaurants that can be booked on OpenTable.com. If you say which time you want, it can book you a table without your lifting a finger. In some ways Siri is just a fancy program to the 35 websites it can connect to, from taxi booking websites to movie review databases (数据库). But what’s new is the way it can analyze the intentions of its users and use those sites to put them into action.
Siri attaches possibilities to the explanation of each word and compare your location with other data, some of which you must provide yourself. To send email reminders, Siri obviously needs to know your email address. To “find me the flower shop closest to work”, it needs to know where you work. To pay bills or buy airline tickets, it would need to be linked to your credit card.
That raises the question of how far we are willing to trust a piece of software that can go and do things for us based on what it “thinks” we mean. Siri may be simple, and always shows its explanation of a command before carrying it out. But it gives users a preview of a new balance between privacy, trust and convenience that the expansion of AI into everyday life is likely to develop.
1. What is Siri?| A．A digital e-book reader. |
| B．A music-sharing software. |
| C．A voice-controlled website. |
| D．An artificial intelligence software. |
| A．The list of umbrella shops. |
| B．The local weather forecast. |
| C．The list of umbrella makers. |
| D．The local climate conditions. |
| A．to connect a lot of websites |
| B．to understand what you speak |
| C．to give a variety of commands |
| D．to create computerized database |
| A．Can I trust you, Siri? | B．Will Siri be popular? |
| C．Is Siri simple for use? | D．Does Siri think itself? |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Pumpkins (南瓜) have all shapes and sizes, and have colors of golden orange, white and green. Cooked in a pie, they are symbols of autumn that are grown in every county of Washington.
U.S. farmers grow more than a billion pounds of pumpkins every year, and many farmers use sheets (膜) of plastic blocking the grass and preventing water loss to make their plants grow well. In the country, farmers use about a billion pounds of plastic every year. Unfortunately, that plastic is thrown away finally, and in some areas, burned in the fields.
For several years, Carol Miles has studied a new product the soil-biodegradable (土壤生物降解的) plastic cover that can be left in the ground after harvest, then broken down by things in the soil. “You don’t need to pull it out of the field and throw it away every autumn, saving time and money,” Miles said.
Most pumpkins grow along vines (藤蔓) that spread through the grass-blocking cover, and Miles wanted to see how pumpkin fruit performed over the plastic cover. That brought a challenge: the soil-biodegradable cover stuck to the bottom of the fruit.
“We have a lot of dew (露水) in the morning, and we found that if we let the fruit dry after harvest, the cover would stick more strongly to the pumpkins,” Miles said. “Nobody wants plastic stuck to pumpkins, even if it's biodegradable. But if you wipe the fruit before the dew dries, the plastic comes right off.”
Farmers who grow plants that don’t set fruit on plastic covers won’t meet this challenge. For those who do, it means an extra step that they”ll have to weigh against advantages and disadvantages for the development.
“Challenges aside, working with this crop can bring on a happy picture,” the farmer Tymon said. “Pumpkins are great. They have bright colors, and are really fun to work with.”
1. What’s the biggest problem of the old pumpkin growing skill?| A．Pumpkins have simple types. | B．Pumpkins have a low output. |
| C．Farmers waste a lot of plastic. | D．Farmers can’t avoid the water loss. |
| A．It’s easy to use. | B．It’s cheap to buy. |
| C．It’s environment-friendly. | D．It’s good for most plants. |
| A．Wait till the plastic is broken down. | B．Wipe the dew from the plastic cover. |
| C．Replace the plastic with other sheets. | D．Clean the pumpkins when they’re wet. |
| A．New growing skills will be created. | B．A new kind of plastic was invented. |
| C．Plastic influences the growth of pumpkins. | D．U.S. farmers develop their favorite pumpkins. |
【推荐2】Migratory (迁移的) birds are specially adapted to find their way over extreme distances. Now, the new research of Kaspar Delhey and other researchers has discovered an unexpected way that migratory birds keep their cool during such backbreaking journeys: lighter-colored feathers (羽毛).
“We found across nearly all species of birds, migratory species tend to be lighter colored than non-migratory species,” said Delhey. “We think that lighter feather coloration is selected in migratory species because it reduces the risk of overheating when exposed to sunshine. Lighter surfaces absorb less heat than darker ones, as anybody wearing dark clothes on a sunny day can demonstrate! This would be particularly important for long-distance migrants that undertake extensive flights during which they cannot stop to rest in the shade.”
Delhey and his coworkers had been studying the effects of climate on bird coloration. Their earlier studies showed that, in general, lighter colored birds are found where temperatures are high and there is little shade. That’s in part because the birds’ lighter feathers help to keep them cooler in the hot sun. Then the researchers came across studies by others showing that some birds fly higher during the day compared to at night.
“Because flying higher is likely costly, these changes require an explanation,” Delhey says. “One possibility was that flying higher, where it is colder, would offset the heat absorbed by the feathers when the sun was shining.”
If so, they realized, another way to reduce the risk of overheating would be to absorb less solar radiation in the first place. It raised a question: have migratory species evolved (进化) lighter feathers?
To find out, they did much research. Their findings show bird species get increasingly lighter as they migrate more. So, resident birds tend to be darker than short-distance migrants. Short-distance migrants are darker than bird species that travel farther. Delhey said the effect suited different types of birds. The same held true in waterbirds and ground-living birds, too.
The findings are another reminder of the important role of temperature and climate factors more broadly in the evolution of shaping the coloration of animals. They also help better understand the impacts of global warming and underlying adaptive evolutionary responses.
1. Why is “dark clothes” mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．To present a fact. | B．To analyze a reason. |
| C．To clarify a point. | D．To make a comparison. |
| A．Cancel out. | B．Add to. | C．Give rise to. | D．Take advantage of. |
| A．The habitats of migratory birds. |
| B．The categories of migratory birds. |
| C．A flying pattern of migratory birds. |
| D．A physical characteristic of migratory birds. |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Science. | C．Travel. | D．Education. |
【推荐3】The good news is that more people bought electric cars in 2020. The bad news is that SUVs continued to grow in popularity, too. The fall in oil consumption due to the first trend was completely cancelled out by the second, say Laura Cozzi and Apostolos Petropoulos at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in France.
The growing popularity of SUVs is making it even harder to cut carbon dioxide emissions（排放）and meet climate goals. “Policy-makers need to find ways to persuade consumers to choose smaller and more efficient cars,” says Petropoulos.
Oil consumption by conventional cars – not including SUVs – is estimated to have fallen 10 percent in 2020, or by more than 1.8 million barrels（桶）a day, Cozzi and Petropoulos say in a commentary published by the IEA on 15 January. Most of this fall was due to reduced travel and is likely to be temporary.
But a small part of the drop, around 40,000 barrels a day, was as a result of the increased share of electric vehicles (EVs). “We have seen a skyrocketing of global electric car sales in 2020,” says Petropoulos. Unfortunately, the number of SUVs increased as well. While overall car sales fell in 2020, 42 percent of buyers chose SUVs, up around three percentage points from 2019.
Globally, there are now more than 280 million SUVs being driven, up from fewer than 50 million in 2010. On average, SUVs consume 20 percent more energy per kilometre than a medium-sized car.
The increase in SUVs in 2020 led to a rise in oil consumption that cancelled out the effect of electric cars, says Petropoulos. Much the same is true over the past decade. Between 2010 and 2020, global CO2 emissions from conventional cars fell by nearly 350 megatonnes, due to factors such as fuel efficiency improvements as well as the switch to electric cars. Emissions from SUVs rose by more than 500 megatonnes.
“While the growth in EVs is encouraging, the increase in SUVs is heart-breaking,” says Glen Peters at the CICERO climate research centre in Norway.
There are many reasons for the growing popularity of SUVs, says Petropoulos. Rising prosperity（繁荣）in many countries means more people are able to afford them, for instance. Some people see them as a symbol of social position. SUVs are also heavily advertised by car-makers, he says, whose profits are higher on these vehicles.
There are now some electric SUVs available. “Hopefully, in time, you will see electric vehicles entering the SUV market,” says Peters.
Even if it happens, switching to electric SUVs isn’t an ideal solution. Due to their size and bigger batteries, it takes more resources to build electric SUVs, and they consume around 15 percent more electricity. Higher electricity demand makes it harder to green the electricity supply.
1. Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?| A．The SUVs driven in 2019 reached up to 280 million. |
| B．Electric cars appeared a sharp decline in sales in 2020. |
| C．Buyers of SUVs in 2020 increased 42 percent than those in 2019. |
| D．Global SUVs being driven now are over five times as many as those in 2010. |
| A．it could have harmful consequences for the air quality |
| B．the oil consumption will increase and the price will fall |
| C．people all over the world are getting wealthier than before |
| D．the car-makers think it’s unnecessary to advertise any more |
| A．The purchases of SUVs should be reduced. |
| B．The SUVs should be discontinued immediately. |
| C．The awareness of using electric cars needs to be improved. |
| D．Increasing electric cars can solve the problem of oil consumption. |
| A．Unconcerned. | B．Disapproving. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Uncertain. |
【推荐1】All the hard work that you’ve spent making strong passwords, combining pet names with numbers, symbols and birthdates could all soon be for nothing as a new artificial intelligence (AI) model achieves a 95% accuracy of understanding keystrokes (按键).
At least that’s the extreme view of a team of British researchers. Using a deep learning model, they were able to steal data from a laptop’s keyboard using a microphone to understand what is being typed. This, in theory, would allow hackers who were able to gain access to your laptop to obtain what is being typed including messages and passwords.
The first step for this attack to work is by recording the keystrokes on someone’s keyboard. This is needed to train the algorithm (计算程序). While this could be done from the laptop’s microphone, it could equally be achieved by placing a smartphone near the computer. By pressing 36 keys on a modern MacBook Pro 25 times each and recording the sounds produced, the researchers gained a full set of training data. This information is turned into waveforms to show identifiable differences between each key. With this information in hand, they could then build a machine-learning model to understand which of these waveforms lines up with which key.
“If you get enough data, a model can be built pretty easily,” Oli Buckley, a professor of Internet security. “If it works on one keyboard, it will likely work on the next. The MacBook has a nice, quiet keyboard, so the idea is that if it works on something quiet, it will have a wide-reaching ability on louder keyboards”.
While this all sounds pretty scary, not to mention a new form of hacking (侵入) to look out for, it isn’t quite as worrying as it sounds.
“A good sample of data is needed for it to work, so this changes if you’re using a Dell, a MacBook or an external keyboard. Also, factors change. Some people type louder and harder, or my keyboards full of cat hair so that impacts things slightly”, says Buckley.
1. What is paragraph 3 mainly about?| A．Why protective steps are needed. |
| B．Why a set of training data is vital. |
| C．How you document secret information. |
| D．How hackers gain data from targeted computers. |
| A．The keyboard. | B．The model. | C．The waveform. | D．The computer. |
| A．AI understands exactly what you’re typing. |
| B．Purchasing expensive computer is necessary. |
| C．Cats play an important role in privacy protection. |
| D．Building an accurate dataset through keystrokes is not easy. |
| A．A scary danger is on the way. |
| B．A new form of hacking troubles us. |
| C．AI can transform the digital world in a big way. |
| D．AI can discover passwords by listening to you type. |
【推荐2】For more than 25 years, search engines have been the Internet’s front door. AltaVista, the first site to allow searches of the full text of the web, was swiftly replaced by Google, which has dominated the field ever since. Google’s search engine, still the heart of its business, has made its parent, Alphabet, one of the world’s most valuable companies.
But nothing lasts forever, particularly in technology. Just ask IBM, which once ruled business computing, or Nokia, once the leader in mobile phones. Both were defeated because they missed big technological transitions (革新). Now tech firms are excited about an innovation that might bring a similar shift and a similar opportunity. Chatbots (聊天机器人) powered by artificial intelligence (AI) let users gather information via typed conversations. Leading the field is ChatGPT, made by OpenAI, a startup. By the end of January, two months after its launch, ChatGPT was being used by more than 100m people, making it the fastest- growing consumer application in history, according to UBS, a bank.
AI is already used behind the scenes in many products, but ChatGPT has put it center stage, by letting people chat with an Al directly. ChatGPT can write essays in various styles, explain complex concepts, summarize text and answer various questions. It can even pass legal and medical exams. And it can synthesise knowledge from the web: for example, listing holiday spots that match certain criteria, or suggesting menus. If asked, it can explain its reasoning and provide detail. Many things that people use search engines for today, in short, can be done better with chatbots.
On February 7th, Microsoft, which has invested more than $11bn in OpenAI, revealed a new version of Bing, its search engine, which includes ChatGPT. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’ s boss, sees this as his chance to challenge Google. For its part, Google has announced Bard, its own chatbot, as a companion to its search engine. The share price of Baidu, known as the Google of China, jumped when it said it would release its chatbot, called Ernie, in March.
But can chatbots be trusted? Can tech firms make money from this? Only time will tell.
1. Why does the author mention IBM and Nokia in the second paragraph?| A．To prove his idea. |
| B．To show their popularity. |
| C．To introduce them to readers. |
| D．To emphasize the value of them. |
| A．Spread. |
| B．Combine. |
| C．Stress. |
| D．Advance. |
| A．Comprehend meaning. |
| B．Write essays. |
| C．Replace doctors. |
| D．Chat with people. |
| A．Will ChatGPT be popular? |
| B．Will AI replace human beings? |
| C．Will Microsoft defeat Google? |
| D．Will ChatGPT eat Google’s lunch? |
【推荐3】The Impact of AI on Smart Homes
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is surely changing the way we live and work, and smart homes are no exception. With AI, smart homes will become even more automated and responsive.
Smart homes can learn about the people living in it. With special sensors and AI, the home can see which rooms people are in. Then the home can change things like the temperature, lights and other things in that room to make people comfortable.
Smart homes can save energy and help the environment. With AI, the home can sense when people are not using things like lights. Then the lights will turn off by themselves to conserve power.
AI has improved home safety a lot. It uses motion sensors and cameras around the home to watch out for things automatically. Security systems with AI can tell if something strange is happening. It will send alarms to owners on their phones.
All in all, with the increasing adoption of AI technology, smart homes are becoming more innovative, energy-efficient, safe, and convenient.
| A．Other smart devices help keep homes safe too. |
| B．We should use less air conditioning in summer. |
| C．Watches helps a lot in monitoring people’s health. |
| D．Here are some ways AI is impacting smart homes. |
| E．AI will help connect smart homes to people’s health. |
| F．AI also helps homes use energy better in other ways. |
| G．The home can also use sensors to understand what people want. |
