Work at Mcity 2.0, an NSF-powered facility, could bring autonomous vehicles (AVs) safely into mainstream use.
Advances in autonomous vehicles, are bringing driver-less cars closer to public use. But the number of drivers in the U. S. that have concerns about the safety of those vehicles jumped from 55% in 2022 to 68% in 2023, according to a survey. The high costs and time required to test vehicles in a natural setting are a major challenge. Previous approaches usually test AVs through a combination of software simulation (模拟器), closed-track tests and on-road testing. Proving the safety performance of AVs at the level of human drivers will take hundreds of millions of miles of testing and the number of miles needed in a real driving environment can reach the hundreds of billions.
First-of-its-kind research at Mcity 2.0, a University of Michigan vehicle testing facility offers insight about solving this problem by using artificial intelligence (AI) to train vehicles.
Mcity 2.0
This approach was made possible with new testing abilities at Mcity 2.0. A $5 million fund was used to expand the facility’s original proving ground by combining the physical test track with a software simulation environment, creating the first cloud-based expanded reality facility for testing AVs. This enables broader participation by providing easier access to first-class groundwork for the research community, especially those with less resources from under served communities.
The Mcity 2.0 expanded reality test-bed combines three components: a physical test facility, a flexibility data center that collects and shares near-real-time traffic information from twenty-one crossroads and an expanded naturalistic driving simulator that mixes real and virtual (虚拟的) vehicles. Researchers can remotely construct and control the test facility groundwork with traffic lights, crosswalk buttons, rail-crossing arms and more, and build testing circumstances using a web-based life-like user interface (界面).
The findings also open the door to testing and training with other safety-critical systems, such as medical robots and aerospace systems, researchers said.
1. What can be inferred from the 2nd paragraph?| A．The number of driver-less cars is on an increase. |
| B．The real driving environment isn’t safe enough. |
| C．It takes too much to get driver-less cars to use. |
| D．It costs higher to train a driver-less car driver. |
| A．An expanded real driving simulator. | B．A web-based life-like user interface. |
| C．The first-class research communities. | D．The ideas from University of Michigan. |
| A．Funding and Awarding. | B．News and events. |
| C．Engineering and Computing. | D．Science Matters. |
| A．Mcity 2.0, an NSF-powered Facility |
| B．AI Applied to Increase the AVs Testing |
| C．An Approach to Testing Safety Systems |
| D．The Challenges of the Autonomous Vehicles |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Researchers are building a database of human voices that they’ll use to develop A-based tools that could eventually diagnose (诊断) serious ds eases; they’re targeting everything from Alzheimer’s to cancer. The National Institutes of Health-funded project is an effort to turn the human voice into something that could be used as a biomarker for disease, like blood or temperature.
The research team will start by building an app that will collect voice data from participants with conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, depression, and autism. They would be asked to say sounds, read sentences, and read full texts through the app.
Then, they’ll use the datasets to build AI models that could detect the various conditions. The research team is working with the medical AI company Owkin to build and train the AI models in the project. The model learns separately on each dataset, and then the results of those trainings comeback to a central location. Then, the updated combined model is sent back out to each of the locations, and the process begins again.
That lends an additional layer of privacy protection to the voice data, which is unique in that it can be easily tied back to the person it comes from. People’s voices are easily identifiable, even if their name is removed. A team of bioethicists (生物伦理学家) is working on the project to study whether it is morally and legally acceptable to build a voice database and to diagnose diseases based on it. They’re going to be thinking through, for example, if voice is protected and whether patients own their own voice data.
For now, the new research program isn’t interested in building programs for home devices. It’s focused on developing tools that would be used by doctors in doctor’s offices and clinics. It’d be particularly helpful in lower-resourced settings where someone might not be able to see a specialist.
1. What do the second and third paragraphs focus on?| A．The research tools. | B．The research process. |
| C．The research method. | D．The research background. |
| A．Some medical institutions. | B．Nursing homes for the elderly. |
| C．Villagers living in remote areas. | D．Citizens with access to family doctors. |
| A．Your voice might diagnose diseases. |
| B．AI models are built with joint efforts. |
| C．Voices are collected to cure diseases. |
| D．An app is being built to collect voice data. |
【推荐2】Reading people’s minds seems to be a superpower that only exists in movies. But scientists have now made it possible to translate people’s brain waves!
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco developed a new device. It can turn brain waves into words on a screen in front of the user. In the study, they tested it with a paralyzed (瘫痪的) man. “To our knowledge, this is the first successful demonstration (演示) of direct decoding (解码) of full words from the brain of someone who is paralyzed and cannot speak,” said Edward Chang, the senior author of the study. Each year, thousands of people lose the ability to speak due to accidents or diseases. With up to 93 percent accuracy, the new device shows “strong promise” to let these people fully communicate in the future.
One problem with such mind-reading machines, however, is that they have to put electrodes (电极) into people’s brains. It’s inconvenient and has health risks. But scientists from the University of Texas, US, have taken steps to change this. They tried to translate people’s thoughts without even touching their heads, reported Live Science.
The new brain scanning technique is called FMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging. It’s a safer way of “reading” brain activity. Active brain cells have more oxygen. By tracking this, scientists can translate brain activity.
The team asked participants to listen to 16 hours of radio shows while scanning their brains. Then they used a computer algorithm (算法) to create a story based on the FMRI recording. It matched the radio shows pretty well.
In other tests, the algorithm could basically explain the story of a silent movie that the participants watched. It could even retell a story that the participants imagined in their heads. Although it’s not a word-for-word translation, the technique provides many possibilities.
1. Why did the researchers at the University of California think their test is a success?| A．They could cure the patient. | B．They could make the patient speak again. |
| C．They could create a story. | D．They could read the patient’s mind. |
| A．Inconvenience. | B．Mind-reading. | C．Algorithm. | D．Accuracy. |
| A．Let the patients listen to a radio. | B．Made the patient recall a movie. |
| C．Used an algorithm to explain the minds. | D．Told the patient’s experience. |
| A．A Film About Reading Minds | B．Reading Minds in Medical Science |
| C．Developing A New Minds-Reading Way | D．Saving One’s Life by Using a New Machine |
【推荐3】For Kurt Gray, a social psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, conducting experiments comes with certain problems. Before starting any study, his lab must get ethical(伦理的)approval from an institutional review board, which can take weeks or months. Then his team has to hire online participants—easier than bringing people into the lab, but Gray says the online subjects are often lazy. Then the researchers spend hours cleaning the data. But earlier this year, Gray accidentally saw an alternative way to do things.
He was working with computer scientists at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence to see whether they could develop an AI system that made moral judgments like humans. But first they figured they’d see if a system from the startup Open AI could already do the job. The team asked GPT-3. 5, which produces human-like text, to judge the ethics of 464 scenarios(情境), previously evaluated by human subjects. It turned out that the system’s answers were nearly the same as human responses.
“This is crazy,” Gray says. “If you can just ask GPT to make these judgments, why don’t you just ask GPT instead of asking people?” The results were published this month in Trends in Cognitive Science.
Now, researchers are considering AI’s ability to act as human subjects in fields such as psychology, political science, economics, and market research. No one is yet suggesting that chatbots can completely replace humans in behavioral studies. But they may act as convenient stand-ins(替代者) in pilot studies and for designing experiments, saving time and money. Language models might also help with experiments that would be too impractical, or even dangerous to run with people. “It’s a really interesting time,” says Ayelet Israeli, a marketing professor at Harvard Business School who believes the models’ impact on behavioral research could amount to a “revolution”. “Some of these results are just astonishing.”
1. What is a problem facing Kurt Gray at the start of a study?| A．Online participants demand higher pay. | B．Volunteers dislike the online experiment. |
| C．Preparations take lots of time and effort. | D．Researchers lack skills to function in teams. |
| A．Demanding. | B．Worrying. | C．Amusing. | D．Satisfying. |
| A．They can be applied to cases difficult to study. | B．They may replace human subjects completely. |
| C．They will improve people’s well-being. | D．They might promote economic growth. |
| A．What Has AI Brought About? | B．What Do We Expect of GPT |
| C．Should We Get Rid of Chatbots? | D．Can AI Help Behavioral Research? |
【推荐1】Coming up with a list of places to visit can be challenging. To save your trouble, we have completed a list of the top tourist attractions in the world.
Eiffel Tower, Paris
Built in 1887, it’s the symbol of Paris and one of the most photographed buildings in the world. A visit to the Eiffel Tower is a must for all travelers. No other landmarks in the world inspire such a strong feeling of love for travel as this single iron structure (钢铁建筑). This is a city where travelers of all kinds can find the experience they’re after.
The Statue of Liberty, New York City
America is full of great sights and places to visit, but it’s the Statue of Liberty that symbolizes the United States. This symbol of freedom in New York City was gifted by the French to the American people in 1886. The best thing to do is to take a ride up to her crown (王冠) and get the view over the city.
The Acropolis, Athens
Standing above present-day Athens, the Acropolis draws you up and in. Follow in the footsteps of the ancients as you walk up the same steps that have been walked on since 438 BC. Views out over the city are amazing as you walk between the ancient buildings. Near the end of the day, you’ll want to watch the sunset from the stairs near the entrance.
Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
If you’ve visited places like the Colosseum in Rome or the Acropolis in Athens, built over 2,000 years ago, you may think you have a good handle on ancient sites. But the Pyramids of Giza take ancient to a whole other level. These were built over 4,500 years ago. A sunset camel (骆驼) ride around the buildings is a wonderful experience.
1. Which can best describe the Statue of Liberty?| A．It’s the highest in the world. | B．It’s a present from France. |
| C．It’s designed in 1886. | D．It’s a single iron structure. |
| A．Take a camel ride. | B．Explore ancient Rome. |
| C．View New York City. | D．Enjoy the sunset. |
| A．Pyramids of Giza. | B．The Acropolis. |
| C．Eiffel Tower. | D．The Statue of Liberty. |
【推荐2】The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is perhaps the earliest and most famous example of botanical (植物的) gardens. Over decades and centuries, many amazing botanical gardens have been set up. Here is a list of them.
Orto Botanical di Padova
The Orto Botanical di Padova in Padua, north-eastern Italy, is the oldest academic botanical garden still in its original location. It was founded in 1545 by the Venetian Republic. It is spread across an area of 22,000 square meters. It is particularly known for its historical architecture (建筑), as well as the collection of 6000 kinds of plants. The astonishing botanical garden is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden
The Kirstenbosch National botanical Garden is located at the foot of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. It is one of South Africa’s national botanical gardens, which covers five out of six biomes (生物群落), and the first of its kind in the world. It is famous for exhibiting native plants from different regions.
Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
The Berlin-Dahlem Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum is located in Berlin, Germany. It has 22,000 different plant species. Among its different plants is a giant bamboo. This astonishing garden has a large scientific library attached to it. The complex has buildings and glasshouses.
Singapore Botanic Garden
The 74-hectare Singapore Botanic Garden in Singapore is the only botanic garden that stays open from 5 am to 12 midnight, every day. Its attractions include Rainforest, Botany Centre, Tanglin Gate, Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden and other gardens. It has the Tembusu tree, seen on the Singaporean five-dollar bill.
1. What is the Orto Botanical di Padova famous for?| A．It is an academic garden located in its original place. |
| B．Its buildings date back to the ancient times. |
| C．It is considered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. |
| D．It has a collection of plants with the longest history. |
| A．Orto Botanical di Padova | B．Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum |
| C．Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden | D．Singapore Botanic Garden |
| A．Tourists are able to see The Tembusu tree in a European country. |
| B．The Hanging Gardens of Babylon is a typical botanical garden. |
| C．Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum has a library of science. |
| D．Tourists can visit the Singapore Botanic Garden at 11:00 pm on Sundays. |
【推荐3】Volunteering is a great way for teenagers to make a difference and meet new people. There are many different types of volunteer opportunities for teens available. Here are a few volunteer opportunities that you could enoourage your teen to take up.
Help a local food bank
Food banks always welcome donations and new volunteers. They provide perfect volunteering opportunities for those who are interested in helping the homeless. Your teen would he involved in anything, from preparing meas to working behind the scenes to repackage donated food items, serving food, and carrying boxes.
Help at a soup kitchen
A soup kitchen is one of the places where the hungry can get free or affordable meals (usually soup and bread). Most soup kitchens run primarily on donations and the generosity of people. As a soup kitchen volunteer, your child may be made to clean the tables and utensils(餐具), help distribute food, cook food, and more.
Volunteer for Meals on Wheels
By volunteering for Meals on Wheels, your teen will deliver nutritious meals to the elderly or the disabled. It’s perfect for teens who have just received their driving license and love any reason to get behind the wheel! They can make a massive impact in a short amount of time. Alternatively, your teen can also volunteer in their kitchen and prepare meals for delivery. With a simple gesture, your teen can bring millions of smiles to people’s lives.
Work with Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity’s mission is to build or improve a place that someone could call home. Besides helping the community, your teen will learn valuable skills such as repairing, fundraising, painting, and building. You can sign them up for long-term projects or a one-time program.
1. What do a food bank and a soup kitchen have in common?| A．They have their sources of food. |
| B．Volunteers need to price the food. |
| C．They provide food for volunteers. |
| D．The locations are approachable. |
| A．Lucy, who likes cooking. |
| B．Linda, who likes drawing. |
| C．Jack, who can drive a car. |
| D．Peter, who can play football. |
| A．A local food bank. | B．A local soup kitchen. |
| C．Meals on Wheels. | D．Habitat for Humanity. |
【推荐1】If you think search engines powered by artificial intelligence provide you with useful-sounding answers, it is more likely that you are wrong, researchers have found. “In these current systems, accuracy is negatively related to perceived usefulness,” says Nelson at Stanford University. “The things that look better end up being worse.”
Microsoft is just one of many companies offering AI-powered search tools, which generate results in digestible paragraphs that cite other websites rather than simply returning a list of links. To investigate these tools, Nelson and his colleagues fed 1,450 popular searches into Bing Chat and other such tools, including NeevaAI and PerplexityAI. These questions included examples such as “What are the latest technological discoveries?” The team then asked people to rate whether the content used as citations (引文) in the results actually supported the statements made by the AIs.
According to this assessment, only 75% of citations supported the sentences they were attached to, and only 52% of statements were supported by citations at all. “That means the rest either have no citations, or they are just wrong.” says Nelson.
The researchers also asked people to rate fluency of response and how useful they seemed, and discovered a negative correspondence. For every 0.1 increase in fluency ratings, the precision decreased by 10.6%.
Aravind Srinlvas, a co-founder of PerplexityAI, says he welcomes the study. “The results are similar to the work the company has conducted, and improvements are possible. Never judge an upcoming technology by what it is today, but rather by the potential for what it can be in the future,” he says. But Nelson isn’t sure whether AI-powered search is the right approach. “I’m a little mixed on whether such search tools should be rolled into systems,” he says.
1. How did Nelson’s team examine the AI-powered search tools?| A．They interviewed different experts on this field. |
| B．They invited Bing Chat users to rate the content. |
| C．They compared the results of different companies. |
| D．They input commonly searched questions into the tools. |
| A．To offer sources and citations. | B．To demonstrate their potentials. |
| C．To highlight their positive aspects. | D．To test their accuracy and fluency. |
| A．Optimistic. | B．Intolerant. | C．Skeptical. | D．Wait-and-see. |
| A．AI Is Coming to Search Engines |
| B．How to Live with Artificial Intelligence |
| C．Can We Trust AI-Powered Search Engine |
| D．Microsoft Adopts AI-Powered Search Engine |
【推荐2】What was once science fiction is now a part of our everyday lives, as artificial intelligence (AI) is something that many of us live alongside. According to Statista, in 2019, 3.25 billion virtual assistants were used worldwide and that figure is predicted to be more than double by 2014.
AI is doing more for us than setting reminders, making recommendations, and offering us weather reports. In fact, it could be about to change the healthcare landscape entirely. It is estimated that one in eight people today use health apps regularly. And AI has more to offer.
Dr Emilia Molimpakis is a neuroscientist who co-founded thymia, a platform that uses AI powered games to help doctors spot depression.
“I was inspired to start thymia after seeing my best friend struggle with depression,” she says, “I saw her try to go through the psychiatric (精神病学的) system and fall through the cracks. Despite being seen by a psychiatrist, she ended up trying to take her own life. When that happened, I was the one who found her, and this experience impressed me.”
Aside from blaming herself for not recognizing the signs sooner, what she could not get her head around was how the psychiatrist should not see this coming. She realized that the tools psychiatrists used were still these old-fashioned, pen-and-paper questionnaires that have been found, time and again, to be subjective and not reflecting a patient’s actual mental health status. So, thymia was born.
But as we look into the future, what should we be aware of? Before we dive in head-first, there are still questions we need to answer. As Dr Molimpakis points out, it’s vitally important that AI tools used in healthcare must be trained on a diverse data set that is typical of all groups of people. It should also be used alongside, and in addition to, professional care—not as a replacement. We should also consider carefully how our health data is stored and used. These are topics that both users and professionals have a responsibility to consider.
1. Where is the text probably taken from?| A．An AI guide. | B．A research paper. |
| C．A health magazine | D．An encyclopedia. |
| A．To cure depression. | B．To train doctors. |
| C．To detect signs of illness. | D．To design questionnaires. |
| A．Get over. | B．Figure out. | C．Make up. | D．Turn down. |
| A．It needs further improvement. |
| B．It was a double-edged sword. |
| C．It will develop into professional care. |
| D．It can make professionals more responsible. |
【推荐3】Almost 40% of all global employment may be affected by AI, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund. But don’t be alarmed. That doesn’t mean 40% jobs will disappear altogether. Instead, we’re talking about humans working alongside AI tools, not being replaced by them.
Speaking at the 2023 World Economic Forum’s Growth Summit, economist Richard Baldwin said, “AI won’t take your job. It’s somebody using AI that will take your job.” This means that if you don’t know how to work with AI, you’re in a much riskier position — certainly compared to someone who knows how to use it to improve their job efficiency.
So, consider how you could start integrating AI into your everyday work. Can you use it to polish an email, for example? Can you use it as a productivity tool… If not, try your best to get to g rips with it. There are tons of free （and paid） courses out there that can help you.
However, just knowing how to work effectively with AI is far from enough. It’s also important to position yourself in the organization in line with the things that AIs can’t do. Basically, think about how you can take on more responsibilities in the areas where human skills are still needed and will always be needed — areas like creativity, complex decision making, interpersonal relationships and so on. These are the areas where humans will continue to have the edge over machines. Anyone who wants to gain future workplace success should develop the relevant skills.
It’s not surprising that change is uncomfortable. But today’s workplaces are full of rapid and near-constant change. So, if change is something you struggle with, now is a good time to embrace and address that.
1. How may AI influence global employment in the future?| A．It may cause severe job loss. | B．It may threaten people’s safety. |
| C．It may change the way we work. | D．It may lessen peer competition. |
| A．AI helps us become more creative. |
| B．AI can hardly replace us in some areas. |
| C．AI is much less effective than we think. |
| D．AI is able to make complicated decisions. |
| A．Positive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Disappointed. | D．Unconcerned. |
| A．To share experience of using AI in work. |
| B．To advise us to stay relevant in the age of AI. |
| C．To introduce different functions of generative AL |
| D．To explain why we should improve our productivity. |
