In the Pixar movie Up, a fun cartoon dog called Dug wears a magical collar which can detect and translate his barks and cries into fluent human speech. Humans have always been fascinated by the potential to communicate with the animals. This week, an article in the New York Times documented major efforts from a group of researchers using machine-learning algorithms (算法) to analyze the different calls of whales, chickens, bats, cats, and more.
There are several ways to train AI systems now. Typically, Al systems learn through training with labeled data of human language which can be well supplied by the Internet. But analyzing animal language is different. Scientists have to instruct software programs on what to look for, and how to organize the data. This process requires matching gained vocal (发声的) recordings with the visual social behaviors of animals. A group studying Egyptian fruit bats, for example, also used video cameras to record the bats themselves to provide context for the calls.
Many critics of this approach point out two weaknesses of current AI language models: being unable to truly understand the relationships between words and the objects in the real world, and scientists’ little understanding of animal societies. Al language models for humans rely on a computer mapping out the relationship between words and the contexts they could appear in. But these models have their own weak points, and can sometimes be a black box—researchers know what goes in and comes out, but don’t quite understand how the algorithm is arriving at the conclusion.
Another factor that researchers should take into account is that animal communications might not work at all like human communications. There might be unique elements to animal language due to physiological and behavioral differences.
Making a Translator for animals has been a popular project that’s been in the works for the last decade. Although some software has shown some success in identifying the basic vocabulary of certain animals, it’s still a far cry from understanding the complex animal languages.
1. Why do researchers use Al to analyze animals’ calls?| A．To tell the differences among animals. |
| B．To test Al’s ability of translating animal language. |
| C．To understand animal language better. |
| D．To explore the fun of communicating with animals. |
| A．The lack of labeled data for training Al systems. |
| B．The difficulty in relating human speech to real objects. |
| C．The need for sound recordings to provide context. |
| D．The matching of vocal recordings with their calls. |
| A．Al language models to study animal communication. |
| B．The researchers’ study on animal societies. |
| C．The relationship between words and context. |
| D．The method of Al algorithms to draw conclusions. |
| A．Al systems for animal language translation. |
| B．Limitations of current Al language models. |
| C．Unique aspects of detecting animal language. |
| D．Challenges in creating a translator for animals. |
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【推荐1】In 2019, more than 1. 4 million young people around the globe took part in the School Strikes for Climate Action protests that were largely prompted by a 17-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. The inspirational teenage is far from the first or last young person to fight for a better environmental future.
With the rise of social media in recent years, young people around the globe have easy access to surprising information about how we're currently failing to look after the Earth. Websites such as YouTube provide accessible coverage on ecological matters and links to new scientific information are easily shared between peers. But, it's not just online research that exposes the truth, and it's not a distant threat either. Climate change is around us. Our oceans are 30 percent more acidic(酸性的)due to carbon pollution, an increase of droughts and heatwaves means a loss of crop production and forest is cut down every second.
Of course, just because young people are now readily armed with statistics doesn't mean all adults will eagerly listen to them. Many write off young activists simply due to their age, and others still aren't willing to see the environmental challenges we face, but that doesn't mean a diligence can’t be made.
In fact, there are some advantages of being a young activist. A study on participants aged 16-24 in the UN climate negotiations revealed that adults perceived younger activists as being more trustworthy. Young activists not only aren't smudged (弄脏)by agendas being forced on them, they also have an untainted(未染污的)view of what's going on and, being free from politics, they often say what adults aren't willing to.
So, it seems achieving a carbon neutral world in the future might depend on young determined voices inspiring experienced adults who can make a difference. Preferably, young people wouldn't worry about the environment at all, but our civilization forced them into the conversation when their futures were put at stake, so their voices should be included in the solution.
1. What is the second paragraph mainly about?| A．The influence of social media. |
| B．The truth behind the statistics. |
| C．The different examples of Climate change effects. |
| D．Young people's easy exposure to climate problems. |
| A．Adults speak highly of the young people. |
| B．Adults look down upon the young people. |
| C．Adults show sympathy to the young people. |
| D．Adults regard young people as unimportant persons. |
| A．Taking a younger approach. | B．Protecting the globe. |
| C．Speaking out your voices. | D．Meeting environmental challenges. |
【推荐2】Human’s appetite for sand could increase 45 percent within four decades, according to researchers who say unchecked consumption risks environmental damage and shortages of a key material for urban expansion. Growing demand for building sand — which is used to make concrete, glass and other vital construction materials – has already seen the rise of sand pirates (盗贼) , with dozens of islands disappearing in Indonesia as a result of casual mining.
Xiaoyang Zhong at Leiden University and his colleagues have calculated that global building sand demand will jump from 3.2 billion tonnes a year in 2020 to 4.6 billion tonnes by 2060. The figure is based on a central situation of future population rises and economic growth, and modelled using estimates of concrete and glass consumption, and the floor area needed in buildings.But there is no reliable estimate for remaining sand reserves, so it is unclear if the world can bear such a big increase. “Sand, and the sand crisis (危机), has been overlooked, creating severe environmental and social consequences. If we don’t act now, we may not have enough sand to develop our cities,” says Zhong.
However, Zhong’s team found that about half the projected consumption in 2060 could be avoided if countries take a suit of measures, including extending the lifetime of buildings, reusing concrete, creating more lightweight building designs and using other materials, such as wooden frames. According to the model, the single biggest reduction in sand use could come from more efficient (有效的) use of space: distributing less floor space per person in buildings, sharing offices, and so on. “It’s hard to say how realistic these measures are. But we want this to happen,” says Zhong.
The research only looked at sand used for glass and concrete in buildings, so is an underestimate of total future demand. Granular data on sand consumption for the 26 world regions studied is also lacking, and not detailed enough for country-level breakdowns.
Failure to act will add existing environmental pressures on reserves of sand in lakes and rivers first, but absolute shortages shouldn't be overlooked, says Zhong. “It would be very questionable if this growing demand could be met,” he says.
1. What may cause the environmental and social effects according to Zhong?| A．Sand reserves are not enough. |
| B．The sand crisis is overestimated. |
| C．Sand crisis isn’t paid much attention to. |
| D．The construction industry is lack of sand. |
| A．By reusing he building materials. |
| B．By lengthening the building’s lifetime. |
| C．By making use of space more wisely. |
| D．By preventing sand use completely. |
| A．It only studied the sand use in 26 areas. |
| B．It didn’t show the detailed data on sand use. |
| C．It didn’t take realistic measures on sand use. |
| D．It overlooked the total sand need in the future. |
| A．How we will take action to stop it. |
| B．Why its shortages are overlooked in most countries. |
| C．Whether the increasing sand need may be satisfied. |
| D．What damage the environmental pressures do to rivers. |
【推荐3】The Strangest Jobs in the World
You may be tired of a 9-to-5 job. Or you may be looking for something different to do.
You won’t believe what some of these people do for a living. Check out these strangest jobs and tell us if you could handle doing any of them.
Watching Paint Dry
This may be one of the most boring jobs in the world. The paint company hires people to watch paint dry. They need to take note of the changing colors and have to examine the changes under a microscope(显微镜) as well as on the walls.
Iceberg(冰山) Mover
This job appeared after the Titanic tragedy( 悲 剧) in 1912. Iceberg movers remove icebergs and prevent any further accidents. Using satellites and airplanes, the movers search the seas for icebergs. And if any are found, they pull the iceberg to an area where it won’t be in the way. Pulling an iceberg can take up to 72 hours. This is because the boat needs ten hours to reach a speed of just one mile per hour.
Luggage Organizer
There are many camp activities for children in New York. Mothers are now inviting luggage organizers to pack their kids’ bags. To hire an organizer costs around US $250 an hour. It can take up to four hours to be fully packed and ready. US $1,000 to pay somebody to pack your kids’ bags, is it worth it?
1. What kind of job is the job of watching paint dry?| A．It is very boring and needs patience. |
| B．Its salary is higher than other jobs. |
| C．The employees only need to watch the colors. |
| D．Many creatures are examined under a microscope. |
| A．To be in memory of the movie Titanic. |
| B．To test the speed of boats pulling icebergs. |
| C．To do a search for life in the sea. |
| D．To prevent any more accidents on the sea. |
| A．It is suitable for children to do. | B．It is an easy job. |
| C．It is a full-time job. | D．It is expensive to hire one organizer. |
【推荐1】To make artificial intelligence that can reason and apply knowledge flexibly, many researchers are focused on fresh ideas from neuroscience (神经科学). Should they be looking to psychology too? Researchers are working to develop new AI systems that can figure out simple abstract relations between objects and the reason behind them as effortlessly as a human brain.
Artificial intelligence has come a long way. In recent years, smart machines inspired by the human brain have shown superhuman abilities in games like chess and Go, proved remarkably expert at imitating some of our language skills. But with various other aspects of what we might reasonably call human intelligence — reasoning, understanding causality (因果关系), applying knowledge flexibly, to name a few — AIs still struggle. They are also inefficient learners, requiring large amounts of data where humans need only a few examples.
Some researchers think all we need to bridge the gap is ever larger AIs, while others want to turn back to nature’s blueprint. One path is to double down on efforts to copy the brain, better replicating (复制) the intricacies of real brain cells and the ways their activity is arranged. But the brain is the most complex object in the known universe and it is far from clear how much of its complexity we need to replicate to reproduce its capabilities.
That’s why some believe more abstract ideas about how intelligence works can provide shortcuts. Their claim is that to really accelerate the progress of AI towards something that we can say thinks like a human, we need to imitate not the brain — but the mind. “In some sense, they’re just different ways of looking at the same thing, but sometimes it’s profitable to do that,” says Gary Marcus at New York University and start-up Robust AI. “You don’t want a replica, what you want is to learn the principles that allow the brain to be as effective as it is.”
1. What do we know about the current AI?| A．They are good at reasoning. | B．They have amazing learning ability. |
| C．They can't understand complex information. | D．They lack some elements of real intelligence. |
| A．People fail to understand the complexity of the brain. |
| B．Scientists need to focus on the structure of the brain. |
| C．The attempt to copy the brain might be unrealistic. |
| D．Scientists are doubtful about the future of AI. |
| A．Make AI more creative. | B．Teach more principles to AI. |
| C．Study how intelligence works. | D．Update their knowledge constantly. |
| A．Are the Smart Machines Intelligent Enough? |
| B．Make Machine Minds That Really Think Like Us |
| C．What to Expect with the Future of AI Technology? |
| D．The Future of AI? Psychology May Provide Fresh Ideas |
【推荐2】OpenAI’s automated AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT has taken the internet by storm, but not without creating a few issues on the way. With writers, marketers, and seemingly everyone else in between using ChatGPT to generate content, companies worldwide are staring down a tsunami of AI-generated content, With issues of safety and stolen contents constantly swirling around ChatGPT and its output, OpenAI has now released GPT-Classifier, a tool designed to detect whether the text you’re reading was generated by ChatGPT or one of its other GPT tools.
GPT-Classifier attempts to figure out if a given piece of text was human-written or the work of an Al-generator. While ChatGPT and other GPT models are trained extensively on all manners of text input, the GPT-Classifier tool is fine-tuned on a dataset of pairs of human-written text and AI-written text on the same topic. In other words, the GPT-Classifier attempts to compare similarities between known human text and known AI text to find inconsistency that reveal the source writer.
While the idea of easily spotting AI-generated text will be music to the ears of editors and educators, OpenAI has warned that its classifier is not fully reliable.
A test of the GPT-Classifier spotted a human-generated example and marked it very unlikely to be AI-generated, and also correctly indicated that a ChatGPT-generated piece on USB issues was possibly AI generated. Currently, GPT-Classifier correctly identifies 26%of AI-written text while labeling 9%of human text as AI-written. OpenAI also notes that the tool’s accuracy typically improves as the length of the input text increases. For now, although GPT-Classifier is up and running and available for testing, it’s best to take its labeling with a pinch of salt
Even with the GPT-Classifier’s limitations, the demand for reliable ChatGPT detection is likely to see many people turn to this tool. OpenAI’s commitment to building and releasing a free GPT detection tool is important because as more students, Writers, programmers, and others use AI-text generation tools, understanding and detecting this input will become vital.
1. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．GPT-Classifier’s components. | B．GPT-Classifier’s vast datasets. |
| C．GPT-Classifier’s high productivity. | D．GPT-Classifier’s working principle |
| A．Accept with certain doubt. | B．Reform with sufficient testing. |
| C．Judge with reasonable grounds. | D．Classify with multiple attempts. |
| A．GPT-Classifier wipes out users’ belief in AI. |
| B．GPT-Classifier demands more students’ trust. |
| C．GPT-Classifier meets diverse growing needs. |
| D．GPT-Classifier has a limited range of services. |
| A．Critical. | B．Opposing. | C．Tolerant. | D．Approving. |
【推荐3】AI could make it less necessary to learn foreign languages. That is good news for travelers, bad news for soulful connection.
Travel has long been a motivator for study — unless people start to feel AI tools offer a good-enough service. Some are concerned that apps are turning language acquisition into a dwindling pursuit. Douglas Hofstadter, a writer, has argued that something important will disappear when people talk through machines. He describes giving a hesitant, difficult speech in Mandarin, which required a lot of work but offered a sense of achievement at the end. Who would show off taking a plane to the top of Mount Everest?
Others are less worried. Most people do not move abroad or have the kind of sustained contact with a foreign culture that requires them to put in the work to become fluent. Nor do most people learn languages for the purpose of humanizing themselves or training their brains. On their holiday, they just want a beer and pizza.
As AI translation becomes a more popular labour-saving tool, people will divide into two groups. There will be those who want to challenge their minds, put themselves in other cultures or force their thinking into new pathways. This lot will still take on language study, often aided by technology. Others will look at learning a new language with a mix of admiration and confusion, as they might with extreme endurance (忍耐力) sports: “Good for you, if that’s your thing, but a bit painful for my taste.”
But a focus on the learner alone misses the fundamentally social nature of language. It is a bit like analyzing the benefits of close relationships to heart health but overlooking the inner value of those bonds themselves. When you try to ask directions in broken Japanese or make a joke in hesitant German, you are making direct contact with someone. And when you speak a language well enough to tell a story with perfect timing or put subtle (微妙的) shading on an argument, that connection is still deeper.
1. What does the word “dwindling” mean in paragraph 2?| A．Growing. | B．Lasting. | C．Declining. | D．Challenging. |
| A．Using AI tools to do the translation. |
| B．Doing the work that gives you satisfaction. |
| C．Making effort to learn a new language. |
| D．Studying a language aided by technology. |
| A．People should stretch their minds in life. |
| B．AI translation tools offer a good service. |
| C．Extreme endurance sports are worth trying. |
| D．Language learning builds deep connection. |
| A．Language learning benefits learners alone. |
| B．Language learning is of value to human health. |
| C．We should reflect on language learning methods. |
| D．We should adopt a new angle on language learning. |
