Users of Google Gemini, the tech giant’s artificial-intelligence model, recently noticed that asking it to create images of Vikings, or German soldiers from 1943 produced surprising results: hardly any of the people depicted were white. Other image-generation tools have been criticized because they tend to show white men when asked for images of entrepreneurs or doctors. Google wanted Gemini to avoid this trap; instead, it fell into another one, depicting George Washington as black. Now attention has moved on to the chatbot’s text responses, which turned out to be just as surprising.
Gemini happily provided arguments in favor of positive action in higher education, but refused to provide arguments against. It declined to write a job ad for a fossil-fuel lobby group (游说团体), because fossil fuels are bad and lobby groups prioritize “the interests of corporations over public well-being”. Asked if Hamas is a terrorist organization, it replied that the conflict in Gaza is “complex”; asked if Elon Musk’s tweeting of memes had done more harm than Hitler, it said it was “difficult to say”. You do not have to be a critic to perceive its progressive bias.
Inadequate testing may be partly to blame. Google lags behind OpenAI, maker of the better-known ChatGPT. As it races to catch up, Google may have cut corners. Other chatbots have also had controversial launches. Releasing chatbots and letting users uncover odd behaviors, which can be swiftly addressed, lets firms move faster, provided they are prepared to weather (经受住) the potential risks and bad publicity, observes Eth an Mollick, a professor at Wharton Business School.
But Gemini has clearly been deliberately adjusted, or “fine-tuned”, to produce these responses. This raises questions about Google’s culture. Is the firm so financially secure, with vast profits from internet advertising, that it feels free to try its hand at social engineering? Do some employees think it has not just an opportunity, but a responsibility, to use its reach and power to promote a particular agenda? All eyes are now on Google’s boss, Sundar Pichai. He says Gemini is being fixed. But does Google need fixing too?
1. What do the words “this trap” underlined in the first paragraph refer to?| A．Having a racial bias. | B．Responding to wrong texts. |
| C．Criticizing political figures. | D．Going against historical facts. |
| A．Gemini’s refusal to make progress. | B．Gemini’s failure to give definite answers. |
| C．Gemini’s prejudice in text responses. | D．Gemini’s avoidance of political conflicts. |
| A．Creative. | B．Promising. | C．Illegal. | D．Controversial. |
| A．Its security is doubted. | B．It lacks financial support. |
| C．It needs further improvement. | D．Its employees are irresponsible. |
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【推荐1】After achieving huge success in the past two seasons, Letters Alive returns with more surprises. The show is performed first on China’s major video platform, v.qq.com, and then is aired on Heilongjiang Satellite TV on Saturdays. Letters penned by celebrities (名人) ages ago, or modern ordinary people, are chosen and then read by today’s stars, striking a chord (引起共鸣) with audiences by presenting human stories.
According to Guan Zhengwen, the show’s chief director, the letters offer a view into universal values. “There is only one standard in our selection. That is, these letters deserve to be seen by more people,” the director said.
“Different cultural backgrounds do exist in the world, but human nature can bridge different cultures. People’s understanding of themselves, others and society can be understood through writing, and that’s the power of letters,” the director said. “Chinese letters are still the mainstay of the program, but the addition of classic letters from abroad is certain to bring more tastes to it,” he added.
As a rule, the 12-episode (一集) culture program has invited many well-known Chinese celebrities. In comparison with the former two seasons, more young artists are taking part this time. “Our program’s viewers under the age of 29 account for more than 75 percent of the total. However, the popularity of celebrities among the young generation is not our selection preference,” Guan said.
Also it is worth noting that the program has added a comment time. Each time a letter is read, a famous commentator sits in the studio and shares his feelings toward the letter and tells viewers the stories behind letters. “The commentators’ views do not stand for the truth, as there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes,” the director said. “But they, based on their vision and experience, will express positive social energy to viewers.”
1. What does the underlined word “aired” probably mean in the first paragragh?| A．Advertised. | B．Broadcast. |
| C．Sold. | D．Made. |
| A．To make the show more colorful. |
| B．To attract more young audiences. |
| C．To bring more fashion to the program. |
| D．To cover the shortage of Chinese letters. |
| A．Foreign artists will be invited for the first time. |
| B．More stars favored by the young will be chosen. |
| C．There will be an explanation after the reading is finished. |
| D．Viewers will have a chance to read their own letters in the show. |
| A．In an advertisement. | B．In a history textbook. |
| C．In a fashion magazine. | D．In a news report. |
【推荐2】Germany’s top court has ruled that parts of the country’s 2019 climate (气候) action law must be changed because they don’t do a good job of protecting young people. The result is a big victory for the nine young people who started the law suing (诉讼).
The court suing stresses an important part of the climate change: The change will impact greatly on young people far more than the adults. That’s because the effects of earth warming will become more serious over time. As young people become adults, they’ll be left to deal with many problems that today’s adults have ignored. The government’s failure to plan carefully was putting their future lives in danger.
In 2019, Germany passed a new law, promising that the country would be carbon neutral (碳中和) by 2050. The law made a detailed plan of action until 2030. But the law didn’t have any specific rules or plans for climate actions that would be taken between 2031 and 2050.
Last Thursday, the judges of Germany’s highest court agreed with the young people. They said that not taking climate action made the basic rights of young people to a good future in danger.
The young people had challenged the government’s law in four specific areas. The judges didn’t agree with all of the challenges. But having the court support even a part of their case is seen as a big victory. Neubauer is one of the young people who sued. She works with the climate action group Fridays For Future. Ms. Neubauer said, “Climate protection is our basic right. This is a huge win for the climate movement. It changes a lot.”
The court has given the German government until the end of 2022 to fix the law. The climate law will now need to have a much more detailed plan for the actions that will be taken after 2030 to cut Germany’s pollution, allowing it to become carbon neutral by 2050. Germany’s government has said that it will quickly begin working to make the needed changes.
1. Why did the nine young people sue the Germany government?| A．They faced a higher rate of losing jobs. |
| B．The government refused their law suing. |
| C．The local court ruled against the climate law. |
| D．They weren’t satisfied with the climate action law. |
| A．The adults nowadays are put under pressure. |
| B．The climate change will influence the young. |
| C．Earth warming is becoming out of control. |
| D．Humans feel uncertain about the future. |
| A．Improve the present law. |
| B．Win people’s wide support. |
| C．Take strict punishment measures. |
| D．Achieve carbon neutral in advance. |
| A．Business. | B．Health. |
| C．Education. | D．Environment. |
【推荐3】The World Wildlife Fund for Nature - WWF - reports that nearly 3 billion animals were killed or displaced by Australia’s wildfires in 2019 and 2020. The number, reported in late July, was about three times higher than an earlier WWF estimate. “It ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history,” said WWF - Australia Chief Executive officer Dermot O’ Gorman.
The WWF said it used different methods to estimate wildlife populations, including information from over 100, 000 studies. The scientists created models to estimate the number of creatures found in areas destroyed by fire. Project leader Lily Van Eeden from the University of Sydney said the research was the first continent - wide examination of animals affected by wildfires. “Other nations can build upon this research to improve understanding of bushfire impacts everywhere,” she said.
Those creatures that fled destroyed habitats faced a lack of food and shelter or the likelihood of moving into already occupied habitats. Researchers said the destruction will cause some species to become extinct before their existence is even recorded. “We don’t even know what we are losing,” said Chris Dickman, a professor of ecology at the University of Sydney. “These were species that were here and now they have gone. . . It’s almost too tragic to think about,” Dickman added.
The WWF report calls for improvements in habitat connectivity to help species escape from fires. It also calls for identifying and protecting habitat that was not burned to help save threatened species. An expanded report on the study is expected later this year.
The wildfires started in September 2019 and continued through March of this year. Scientists say the fires were fueled by higher than normal temperatures and years of drought in the Australian bush. The fires caused 34 human deaths and destroyed nearly 3, 000 homes. The WWF said that over the past year, it had raised money from donors to allocate emergency aid to the front lines of the fires to help injured and displaced wildlife.
1. What do we know about Australia’s wildfires in 2019 and 2020?| A．They were the worst disasters in history. |
| B．Over 3 billion animals died in the wildfires. |
| C．They caused more damage than calculated earlier. |
| D．Most animals moved to already occupied habitats. |
| A．Astonished. | B．Pained. | C．Annoyed. | D．Puzzled. |
| A．The wildfires last a whole year. |
| B．The wildfires were caused by the heat. |
| C．The wildfires also cause damages to humans. |
| D．The wildfires were soon under control with donations. |
| A．Humans shouldn’t occupy wildlife habitat. |
| B．Humans shouldn’t overestimate the bushfire. |
| C．We should raise money for wildlife protection. |
| D．We should develop the methods to prevent wildfires. |
【推荐1】In this issue, as part of our ongoing Century of Science project, we dig deep into how the extraordinary advances in computing over the last 100 years have transformed our lives, and we ponder implications for the future. Who gets to decide how much control algorithms (算法) have over our lives? Will artificial intelligence learn how to really think like humans? What would ethical AI look like? And can we keep the robots from killing us?
That last question may sound imagined, but it’s not. As freelance science and technology writer Matthew Hutson reports, lethal autonomous drones (致命自动无人机) able to attack without human intervention already exist. And though killer drones may be the most dystopian (反乌托邦的) vision of a future controlled by AI, software is already making decisions about our lives every day, from the advertisements we see on Facebook to influencing who gets denied parole (假释) from prison.
Even something as basic to human life as our social interactions can be used by AI to identify individuals within supposedly anonymized data, as staff writer Nikk Ogasa reports. Researchers taught an artificial neural network to identify patterns in the date, time, direction and duration of weekly mobile phone calls and texts in a large anonymized dataset. The AI was able to identify individuals by the patterns of their behavior and that of their contacts.
Innovations in computing have come with astonishing speed, and we humans have adapted almost as quickly. I remember being thrilled with my first laptop, my first flip phone, my first BlackBerry. As we’ve welcomed each new wonder into our lives, we’ve bent our behavior. I could download a productivity app that promises to train me to stay focused, but using the phone to avoid the phone seems both too silly and too sad.
Not enough computer scientists and engineers have training in the social implications of their technologies, Hutson writes, including training in ethics. More importantly, they’re not having enough conversations about how the algorithms they write could affect people’s lives in unexpected ways, before the next big innovation gets sent out into the world. As the technology gets ever more powerful, those conversations need to happen long before the circuit is built or the code is written. How else will the robots know when they’ve gone too far?
1. Why does the author raise a series of questions in the first paragraph?| A．To stress the importance of AI ethic. |
| B．To comment on future AI implication. |
| C．To introduce the recent advances in computing. |
| D．To explain the significance of Century of Science project. |
| A．he has been able to concentrate on things better than before |
| B．some apps are indeed beneficial to people’s daily life |
| C．we are influenced by innovations around us unconsciously |
| D．software is already making decisions about our lives every day |
| A．Panicked. | B．Confused. | C．Disappointed. | D．Concerned. |
| A．Advertisements on Facebook revealed our personal information to AI. |
| B．What computing specialists lack is the training in the area of AI ethics. |
| C．AI is able to identify people based on the data collected from their conversations. |
| D．Autonomous drones’ offensiveness to human beings are under certain instructions. |
| A．Computer has changed everything. What’s next? |
| B．How can AI identify people even in anonymized datasets? |
| C．Why not embrace your robot, your next family member? |
| D．When it comes to lethal autonomous drones, what’s safe enough? |
【推荐2】Artificial Intelligence Develops an Ear for Birdsong
We can learn a lot from nature if we listen to it more — and scientists around the world are trying to do just that. From mountain peaks to ocean depths, biologists are planting audio recorders to eavesdrop (窃听) on the whistles and songs of whales, elephants, bats and especially birds. This summer, for example, over 2,000 electronic ears will record the sound scape of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range.
“Audio data is a real treasure because it contains vast amounts of information,” says ecologist Connor Wood, a Cornell University postdoctoral researcher, who is leading the Sierra Nevada project. “We just need to think creatively about how to share and access that information.”
Stefan Kahl, a machine-learning expert at Cornell’s Center for Conservation Bioacoustics and Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany, built BirdNET, one of the most popular avian-sound-recognition systems used today. Wood’s team will rely on BirdNET to analyze the Sierra Nevada recordings.
| A．A wealth of such data already exists for common birds. |
| B．They altogether will generate nearly a million hours of audio. |
| C．These machine-learning AI systems still have room for improvement. |
| D．Such recordings can create valuable snapshots (简介) of animal communities. |
| E．This is a tricky problem because it takes humans a long time to decode recordings. |
| F．Such systems start by analyzing hundreds of recorded bird calls, each “labeled” with its corresponding species. |
【推荐3】The biomedical world is flooded in data. We have a lot of genomic information from mouse to human, precious health measurements from clinical tests, and a large amount of so-called real-world data from insurance companies and drugstores. Using powerful computers, scientists have carefully researched it with some fine results, but it has become clear that we can learn much more with an assist from artificial intelligence. Over the next decade deep-learning neural networks will likely transform how we look for patterns in data and how research is conducted and applied to human health. This special report explores the future of this new transformation.
Right now the biggest assumptions are being placed in the field of drug discovery, and for good reason. The average cost of bringing a new drug to market nearly doubled between 2003 and 2013 to $2.6 billion, and because nine out of ten fail in the final two periods of clinical tests, most of the money goes to waste. Every large drug company is working with at least one AI-focused start-up to see if it can raise the return on investment.
Machine-learning algorithms (算法) can get through millions of chemical compounds, narrowing the choices for a particular drug target. Perhaps more exciting, AI systems — free by leading theories and biases — can identify entirely new targets by spotting tiny differences at the level of cells, genes or proteins between a healthy brain and one marked by Parkinson’s — differences that might avoid or even puzzle a human scientist.
That same sharp-eyed ability is also being used to explain medical scans. Some systems can already discover early signs of cancer that might be missed by a radiologist or see things that are simply beyond human capacity — such as evaluating cardiovascular (心血管) risk from a retinal scan. The Food and Drug Administration is approving imaging algorithms at a rapid click. Other AI applications lie a bit further down the road.
Will the inefficiencies of today’s electronic health records (EHRs) be solved by smart systems that prevent prescribing mistakes and provide early warnings of disease? Some of the world’s biggest tech giants are working on it.
Despite fears that machines will replace humans, most experts believe artificial and human intelligence will work cooperatively. The bigger concern is a shortage of people with both biomedical knowledge and algorithm proficiency. If this human problem can be solved, the key to creating successful AI applications may depend on the quality and quantity of what we provide them with. “We rely on three things,” says the CEO of one deep-learning start-up. “Data, data and more data.”
1. Why do large drug companies work with AI-focused start-up?| A．Because it is required by the government to do so. |
| B．Because it helps to explore new medicine with others. |
| C．Because it saves costs for drug companies to explore AI. |
| D．Because it’s used to check if the return on investment can be increased. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Neutral. | D．Unclear. |
| A．Why New Technology Will Change Our Life |
| B．How Artificial Intelligence Will Analyze Data |
| C．How Artificial Intelligence Will Replace Humans |
| D．How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Medicine |
CP: Central Point P: Point Sp: Sub-point (次要点) C: Conclusion
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
