Early in 2018, a mysterious press release landed in the inboxes of journalists. Black and white, stylized like the “game over” screen from a computer game, it read: “CREATIVITY IS NOT ONLY FOR HUMANS.” The makers were a French art group known as Obvious, and they announced that their artificial intelligence (AI) had managed to “create” art. It was the first of a stream of publicity that announced the auction of a novel portrait. Christie’s had been expecting less than $10,000. In the end, it fetched $430,000.
The portrait was the first piece of AI art to have been sold at auction. Panicked questions began to sound throughout Internet media: Was this art? Who is the artist and the owner here? Are machines now creative too?
All valid questions — but premature. While the event laid bare how confused the public is concerning AI and what it is capable of, today’s technology is nowhere near as advanced as Obvious is implying it is.
In fact, the portrait was just one of numerous similar artworks the AI could produce. It was the team behind Obvious that chose this one because, for whatever reason, they believed it was appropriate. And they intervened at other steps in the process, too. They first programmed the AI, and then they chose 15,000 existing portraits to train it. Signing the painting with a algorithm was a clever bit of marketing, but in no sense did the AI produce the painting on its own. At least, it is not what is called artificial general intelligence-the kind of machine we see in science-fiction movies which is sentient, goal-driven and thinks for itself.
Dozens of artists are using the same techniques as Obvious, but none of the artists are worried about being replaced. They build the machine and work with it every day. They know how limited it is. What interests them is co-creation: the way an AI can allow for them to go beyond their native abilities.
Artists also laugh at the idea that AI is creative. It certainly creates things, sometimes in new and effective ways, but it does so with no intention and with no sense of what is relevant. It is the human who interprets and carefully examines its output. “You make a fire and it produces interesting shapes, but in the end the fire is not creative. AI is a glorified campfire,” said one of the pioneers of using AI in art.
Rather than ask whether a machine can be creative, perhaps we should ask: What would it take for us to believe in the creativity of a machine? The more the machines achieve, the more we understand human creativity. “In the end, competition always forces us to get better,” said the pioneer, “to see what still makes us special as humans.”
1. What does the author think of the panicked questions that were being asked by Internet media?A.They didn’t make any sense. | B.They were too general to be helpful. |
C.They were too complicated to answer. | D.They might be meaningful in the future. |
A.The auction house overestimated the worth of the portrait that was later sold at auction. |
B.Some artists have long adopted AI technology to push the limits of their native abilities. |
C.Obvious will soon produce an AI which is sentient, goal-driven and can think for itself. |
D.Obvious chose just one artwork from among its 15,000 existing portraits to represent its first AI-created piece. |
A.a glorified campfire is creative and so is AI |
B.it is the human who makes a fire that is creative |
C.AI is nowhere near creative because it has no intention when “creating” |
D.we have to interpret and carefully examine AI’s output to decide whether it is creative or not |
A.Whether machines can be creative remains to be seen. |
B.Competition between machines and humans does good to both. |
C.Creativity is exactly what makes humans different from machines. |
D.Advancements of AI in art will help us to better understand human creativity. |
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【推荐1】Heart disease is one of the major killers in the world today. Many who suffer from it must have heart transplants (移植). However, it’s difficult to get a suitable heart donation, and even if a patient survives the wait, his or her body often rejects (排斥) the heart.
But there is now new hope for sufferers of heart disease. According to a study published in the journal Advanced Science, researchers from Israel’s Tel Aviv University printed a 3D human heart on April 15.
“This is the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart,” professor Tal Dvir told CNN.
Unlike the previous 3D-printed heart structure, the new heart is complete with cells, blood vessels (血管), chambers (心室) and other structures a heart needs to function normally. But scientists still have more to figure out before the 3D-printed heart can be fitted into the body. For one thing, the experimental heart is only the size of a thumb (拇指). And, although it can contract (收缩) like a muscle, it cannot pump out blood like a real one. At present, the heart prototype (样品) is like a tiny airplane that has all of the right parts, but can’t fly.
However, the development is still regarded as a major breakthrough in medicine.
In the experiment, the researchers turned human fat tissue (脂肪组织) into human heart tissue with stem cell (干细胞) technology. The tissue was then turned into “bio-ink” for a 3D printer to ensure that tissue in the heart came from the patients themselves. So ideally, if it were to be placed in the body of someone in need of a transplant, there would be less risk of organ rejection.
“Patients will no longer have to wait for transplants or take medications to prevent their rejection,” researchers told USA Today. “Instead, the needed heart will be printed, fully personalized (个性化的) for every patient.”
But the scientists think that 3D printing can be used to create other human organs. They foresee a time when the 3D printing of organs will be an everyday medical practice.
“Maybe, in 10 years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world and these procedures will be conducted routinely,” Dvir said.
1. Why is the 3D-printed heart important?A.It will be used on a patient. |
B.It is the first 3D-printed heart. |
C.It will replace a heart donation. |
D.It has a complete heart structure. |
A.They cost too much. | B.They are too small. |
C.They can’t contract. | D.They are hard to produce. |
A.It would be made with stem cell technology. |
B.It would be made from human fat tissue. |
C.It would come from a patient’s body. |
D.It would be printed according to the patient’s condition. |
A.Confident. | B.Doubtful. |
C.Worried. | D.Confused. |
【推荐2】If you could change your child's DNA in the future to protect them against diseases, would you? It could be possible because of technology known as CRISPR- Cas, or just CRISPR.
CRISPR involves a piece of RNA, a chemical messenger, designed to work on one part of DNA; it also uses an enzyme (If) that can take unwanted genes out and put new ones in, according to The Economist. There are other ways of editing DNA, but CRISPR will do it very simply, quickly, and exactly.
The uses of CRISPR could mean that cures are developed for everything from Alzheimer's to cancer to HIV. By allowing doctors to put just the right cancer-killing genes into a patient's immune system, the technology could help greatly.
In April scientists in China said they had tried using CRISPR to edit the genomes (基因组)of human embryos. Though the embryos would never turn into humans, this was the first time anyone had ever tried to edit DNA from human beings. With this in mind, the US' National Academy of Sciences plans to discuss questions about CRISPR s ethics(伦理问题).For example? CRISPR doesn't work properly yet. As well as cutting the DNA it is looking for, it often cuts other DNA, too. In addition, we currently seem to have too little understanding of what DNA gives people what qualities.
There are also moral questions around playing God”. Of course, medicine already stops natural things from happening-for example, it saves people from infections. The opportunities to treat diseases make it hard to say we shouldn't keep going.
A harder question is whether it is ever right to edit human germ-line(种系)cells and make changes that are passed on to children. This is banned in 40 countries and restricted in many others. However, CRISPR means that if genes can be edited out, they can also be edited back in. It may be up to us as a society to decide when and where editing the genome is wrong.
Also, according to The Economist, gene editing may mean that parents make choices that are not obviously in the best interests of their children: “Deaf parents may prefer their children to be deaf too; parents might want to make their children more intelligent at all costs.
In the end, more research is still needed to see what we can and can't do with CRISPR. “It's still a huge mystery how we work,” Craig Mello? a UMass Medical School biologist and Nobel Prize winner, told The Boston Globe, "We're just trying to figure out this amazingly complicated thing we call life.
1. What is the passage mainly about?A.What we can and can't do with CRISPR. |
B.How CRISPR was developed by scientists. |
C.The advantages of CRISPR and arguments about its ethics. |
D.Scientists' experiments of using CRISPR to edit human embryos. |
A.is very safe because it only cuts the DNA it is looking for |
B.is banned in most countries and restricted in many others |
C.could cause parents to make unwise choices for their children |
D.could help us discover the link between DNA and the qualities it gives people |
A.all diseases could probably be cured through the uses of CRISPR |
B.scientists had never edited genomes before CRISPR was invented |
C.CRISPR is a technology that uses an enzyme to work on RNA and DNA |
D.CRISPR has proven to be the most effective way to protect children against diseases |
A.Supportive. | B.Worried. | C.Negative. | D.Objective. |
【推荐3】Thanks to high-speed rail, the travel time between major cities in China has already been reduced to only a few hours, making travel within China much more convenient, both for Chinese citizens and travelers from overseas. This convenience in turn should accelerate development within China, as the time and expense of long-distance transportation has been greatly lowered. Without doubt, it will also bring the people of the country closer together, and in time bring about deep social changes, the full nature of which no one can fully guess.
Now that China has gained skill and knowledge in high-speed rail, it is seeking to export its technology to other countries. Its first venture on the international market was the development of a new high-speed rail line connecting Istanbul with Turkey’s capital, Ankara, 530 kilometers away. This was followed by projects in Saudi Arabia, Hungary and Serbia, Thailand, and Indonesia, among other countries. Perhaps its most ambitious project is a Trans-Asian network linking China with Europe, which is hoped to be completed by 2030 as a part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Already, China has agreed to build a 762-kilometer high-speed rail line in Russia linking Moscow to Kazan.
While rail travel between China and Europe has been possible for over a century with links to the Trans-Siberian Express, the lime involved has made it impractical. For instance, from Beijing to Moscow alone it takes more than a week traveling by train. However, using high-speed rail, the time from Beijing to London could potentially be cut to two or three days, making high-speed rail a fast and cost-efficient way to travel between China and Europe.
1. What directly makes traveling within China more convenient?A.Social changes. | B.High-speed rail. |
C.Lower expense. | D.Technology development. |
A.Promising. | B.Convenient. |
C.Impractical. | D.Adventurous. |
A.By giving examples. | B.By sharing experience. |
C.By making explanation. | D.By making comparison. |
A.Positive and content. | B.Indifferent and neutral. |
C.Favorable and confident. | D.Negative and concerned. |
【推荐1】Your first big-screen experience is likely to have been Disney productions --- whether we are talking about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Frozen --- that have long been considered safe, healthy choices for kids, and pictures that parents can feel they don’t need to screen in advance.
When you are a big person, a movie seen in a theatre is much larger than life; when you're a little person, it can be like a new entry opening in the universe. Those experiences matter, and Disney knows the power --- and the profit potential --- of what's in its values, which helps explain the studio's ongoing strategy of remaking its most popular animated films, often in live-action versions.
How do you feel about director's interpretation of these movies, a combination of live-action filmmaking techniques, virtual-reality methods and computer-generated imaginary, depends largely on how you feel about the original. The stories, even with a gently updated script, are roughly the same. If you've seen the original, you know how the rest of them go.
In the following years, we'll also watch other Disney’s remakes such as Mulan. Any children raised by Disney films would think that this is a great time to be alive. Right?
But judging by critics’ ratings of some live-action movies, it seems that the powerful studio has been unable to wow audiences.
So why more live actions?
The money
Let's face it: Walt Disney Pictures is all about generating more revenue. Even though it did not manage to capture critics, it still managed to catch the audience's hearts. And that is more than enough. After all, films are not made to entertain critics; it's all about creating an ultimate cinematic experience for casual moviegoers. And as long as they're entertained with new interpretations of beloved stories, why stop making live-action films?
Inclusion
When you spend your entire childhood dancing and singing along to these characters, it's beyond magical to see them again when you’re an adult and are the same age as them. That's one of the few magical effects of movies. Not to mention, Aladdin's South Asian cast is also a strong statement for the world. Perhaps this is also the reason why Disney wants Mulan to have an all Asian cast. Let's hope they're not the only ones and Disney is bringing more diverse stories to be told.
Nostalgia (怀旧)
All of these Disney remakes are designed to fuel the nostalgia of boomers, Gen X-ers and millennials, and many of the moviegoers who grew up with these movies, in particular, now have young kids of their own. Little wonder the studio is seeing big dollar signs in them.
1. Disney productions are parents' first choice for kids because they _______.A.promote children's overall health |
B.don't need booking in advance |
C.don't need a screen to enjoy them |
D.have been enjoying a good reputation |
A.the film-making technology |
B.the popularity of the films |
C.the familiarity with the story line |
D.the computer-generated imaginary |
A.It's trying its best to satisfy both critics and audience. |
B.It's sparing no efforts to earn as much revenue as possible. |
C.It's seeking and adding global elements to make diverse stories. |
D.It's bringing back those sweet memories to its loyal aging fans. |
【推荐2】Turtles have a habit of eating plastic objects floating in the sea, which may kill them. Many believe that it is because floating plastic bags look similar to jellyfish, which many types of turtles love to eat. However, lots of plastic objects that turtles eat do not look like jellyfish at all. Joseph Pfaller of the University of Florida doubts that the smell of sea micro-organisms(微生物) which live on floating plastic objects attract turtles to eat.
The kind of idea first appeared in 2016. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, noticed that certain chemicals, especially dimethyl sulphide(二甲基硫), which can be found on plastics where micro-organisms live, are those which many seabirds sniff(嗅)to find food. These birds are more likely to eat plastics.
Since turtles usually appear above the sea surface and sniff the air when going to their feeding areas, Dr. Pfaller believed that they are following these same chemicals like those seabirds and mistakenly think that floating plastic objects are edible.
To test that idea, he and his team did an experiment using loggerhead turtles. They exposed 15 turtles to four smells: the smell of clean water; the smell of turtle-feeding food; the smell of a clean plastic bottle; and the smell of a bottle that had been kept in the ocean for five weeks to allow micro-organisms to grow on it. When sniffing both the smell of turtle-feeding food and that of five-week-old bottles, turtles kept their noses out of the water more than three times as long, and took twice as many breaths as they did when sniffing the smell of fresh bottle-plastic or clean water.
Though they have not yet tested whether dimethyl sulphide on the five-week-old bottles cause turtles to eat plastic objects, Dr. Pfaller and his team think it is highly possible.
1. Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word "edible"?A.pleasing the eyes | B.suitable for use as food |
C.holding the attention | D.concerned with actual use |
A.Seabirds prefer the smell of the plastic bottles. |
B.Seabirds feed on the food similar to the turtles'. |
C.Seabirds produce a certain micro-organism. |
D.Seabirds break up the plastics without difficulty. |
A.To suggest a new way to study turtles. |
B.To stress the importance of sea protection. |
C.To introduce the findings on the cause of turtles' death. |
D.To discuss the overusę of the plastic bottles. |
A.Education. | B.Entertainment. |
C.Science. | D.Health. |
【推荐3】You want your children to do well in school. You want them to have nice friends and interesting hobbies and to not go out with strangers. You may even want them to be happy. But in this computer game, you can always start over with a new digital child if things don't work out as planned.
A new game in China puts players in control of those most fearsome of characters: Mom and Dad. The mission? Raise a son or daughter from kindergarten to college.
In a nation of famously demanding, scolding and, yes, sometimes loving mothers and fathers, the game, Chinese Parents, is a hit. Since its release in September, it has found a huge audience on Steam, an online marketplace run by the American game maker Valve Corporation. There are no official figures for how many people have downloaded the game but it has caused heated discussion online while earning tens of thousands of reviews.
Yang Gee Yelling, a founder of Moy wan Games, the independent studio that developed Chinese Parents, said he hoped to produce an English version this year. The success of the game, which costs $9. 99 to play, does not appear to be driven by people hoping to exact revenge for their own upbringings. Quite the opposite: Some fans have written that, by letting them experience childhood from their parents' perspective, it had moved them to tears.
"I used to not understand many things my mom made me do when I was little, "said Kang Shang hero, 19, a professional blogger in the northeastern city of Qinhuangdao. "But when I play the game and try to increase figures for my son so he can unlock more achievements and marry the prettiest girl in school, start to understand my parents more.
All the joys and trials of raising children are here. Players choose between pushing their digital generation to attain conventional success and allowing them some appearance of childhood innocence. They must give career guidance and tolerate (just barely) their teenager's first dates. Everything leads up to the gaokao, the highly competitive college entrance exam that decides the fortunes of so many young Chinese people.
1. What's the function of the first paragraph?A.To attract readers to the topic. | B.To present the parents' expectations. |
C.To arouse argument among readers. | D.To state clear fact. |
A.It is produced as expected. |
B.It has aroused heated discussions and received many comments online. |
C.Many parents have been engaged in playing this computer game. |
D.It is hoped that an English version of this computer game will come out this year. |
A.Pessimistic. | B.Cautious. |
C.Supportive. | D.Disgusted. |
A.To introduce the computer game Chinese Parents. |
B.To encourage children to play this computer game Chinese Parents. |
C.To persuade parents to be strict with their children. |
D.To let parents understand their children better. |