Machines might one day replace human laborers in a number of professions, but surely they won’t ever replace human artists. Right?
Think again. Not even our artists will be safe from the inevitable machine takeover, if a new development in artificial intelligence by a team of researchers from Rutgers University and Facebook’s A.I. lab offers a clue of what’s to come. They have designed an A.I. capable of not only producing art, but actually inventing whole new aesthetic styles similar to movements like impressionism or abstract expressionism, reports. The idea, according to researcher Marian Mazzone, was to make art that is “novel, but not too novel.”
The model used in this project involved a generator network, which produces the images, and a discriminator network, which “judges” whether it’s art. Once the generator learns how to produce work that the distributor recognizes as art, it’s given an additional directive: to produce art that doesn’t match any known aesthetic styles.
“You want to have something really creative and striking — but at the same time not go too far and make something that isn’t aesthetically (美学地) pleasing,” explained Ahmed Elgammal.
The art that was generated by the system was then presented to human judges alongside human-produced art without showing which was which. To the researchers’ surprise, the machine-made art scored slightly higher overall than the human-produced art.
Of course, machines can’t yet replace the meaning that’s infused in works by human artists, but this project shows that artist skill sets certainly seem duplicatable by machines.
What will it take for machines to produce content that’s infused with meaning? That might be the last A.I. frontier. Human artists can at least hang their hats in that field...for now.
“Imagine having people over for a dinner party and they ask, ‘Who is that by?’ And you say, ‘Well, it’s a machine actually’. That would be an interesting conversation starter,” said Kevin Walker.
1. What is implied in the first paragraph?| A．Artists won’t be replaced by AI. |
| B．AI can produce new styles of art. |
| C．AI is totally at a loss about impressionism. |
| D．AI fails to reflect abstract expressionism. |
| A．AI can copy the skills of artists. |
| B．AI can combine content with meaning. |
| C．AI can make art aesthetically unpleasant. |
| D．AI can please human judges with its art. |
| A．Discover. | B．Hold. |
| C．Struggle. | D．Survive. |
| A．she uses machines to cook for a party | B．she likes to join in a dinner party |
| C．she expects the arrival of AI | D．she cares about the starter of a chat |
相似题推荐
Yellow Robot deliver snacks to your home
A robot makes its way back to a supermarket after making a delivery during a demonstration in Beijing.
Along a street on the outer edges of Beijing, a yellow and black cube about the size of a small washing machine moves leisurely to its destination. This “little yellow horse” is a delivery robot, transporting daily essentials like drinks, fruit and snacks from the local store to the residents. Equipped with GPS system, cameras and radar, the robot is seen by its creator as the future of logistics(物流) in China.
“The weak point is that it can’t deliver directly to the door like a human.” said one customer, who does not live on the ground floor. “But it is still quite practical. The robot delivers relatively quickly.”
The robot takes off for Chinese customers’ love of cashless payments and smartphone shopping. China is the world’s biggest online shopping market with more than half of its population making at least one smartphone purchase per month, according to professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Whether buying electronics, toilet paper or clothes, Chinese customers are used to simply tapping a button on their smartphone and getting a home delivery.
To get a delivery via the “little yellow horse”, customers select the desired products, tap in the address and pay via their phone. Then, the supermarket staff place the items in the robot.
Liu Zhiyong, founder and CEO of Zhen Robotics, which manufactures the robot, sees a bright future for his creation. “At the moment, there are 100 million packages delivered every day in China. It will be one billion in the future,” Liu said. “ There will not be enough humans to make the deliveries. We need more and more robots to fill this gap and reduce costs.” These costs are especially high in the last kilometer of a delivery.
1. What is the yellow robot equipped with? (no more than 8 words)2. What is the weak point of the yellow robot? (no more than 12 words)
3. Why is the robot popular with Chinese people? (no more than 12 words)
4. What does the underlined word “manufactures” mean in the passage? (no more than 1 words)
5. What do you think of the invention of the yellow robot? Why? (no more than 20words)
【推荐2】To successfully voyage along the northernmost part of the world, travelers need the best technology science has to offer.
Icebreakers are the most obvious example of Arctic technology. They are specially designed ships that can bear the great power of Arctic floating ice. Any nation with an interest in exploring the Arctic has at least one icebreaker in their possession. For example, China has two polar research vessels ( 轮 船 ): the Xuelong and the Xuelong 2. The Xuelong 2 was launched in October 2019 and is the country’s first domestically-built icebreaker.
Sweden has one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers. Knowns as Oden, it is one of the premier platforms for research in polar oceans. The US also has two icebreakers by the names of Polar Star and Healy, which can break through 6.4 and 2.4 meters of ice, respectively.
Drones (无人机) and other unmanned vehicles are quickly becoming some of the most promising tools in the melting Arctic for scientific research, military purposes and the search for natural resources. An autonomous underwater vehicle called Klavesin-2R-PM is currently in development in Russia, according to Robotics Business Review. It reportedly has a speed of 50 kilometers an hour and operates at depths of 6 kilometers. In the US, the Navy is developing a drone to operate in the Arctic Ocean to monitor how fast the ice is melting. Meanwhile, Canada, Norway and Denmark are all taking steps to launch Arctic drones.
The Arctic also houses an important resource deep in the ice mountains of Svalbard. It’s called the Global Seed Vault (保存库), which is basically a safety storage box holding the planet’s largest number of agricultural biodiversity. “Inside this building is 13,000 years of agricultural history,” said Brian Lainoff, lead partnerships coordinator of the Crop Trust, which manages the vault, in a interview with Time magazine. The vault is built 150 meters deep into the side of a mountain. The seeds are stocked in floor-to-ceiling shelves and potentially hold the key to the future of Earth’s food security.
In pursuit of the Arctic’s abundance of resources, nations will continue to develop the most cutting-edge technology in order to explore all the Arctic has offer.
1. What does Paragraph 2 mainly talk about?| A．Difficulties in building icebreakers. |
| B．Reasons for developing icebreakers. |
| C．Countries need to join hands to build icebreakers. |
| D．Countries make efforts to develop their own icebreakers. |
| A．It operates according to people’s orders. | B．It is used to monitor melting ice. |
| C．It may be able to operate in deep water. | D．It has been used in Arctic exploration. |
| A．It keeps some food for future use. | B．It may help ensure the Earth’s food security. |
| C．It holds the most plant seeds on Earth. | D．It shows humans’ history of exploring the Arctic. |
| A．Voyage in Polar Region | B．Tech Aids Earth Food Security |
| C．Icebreakers in the Icy North | D．Exploring Icy Regions with Tech |
【推荐3】Having a microchip implanted (植入) in a man’s brain may be common in sci-fi movie plots, but it may soon become an act ual possibility.
Elon musk, founder of Space X and co-founder of electric car maker Tesla— has been working on this technology. On Aug 28, Musk gave display of the chip, which was implanted into the head of a pignamed Gertrude.
The chip, developed by Musk’s company, is the size of a coin. But don’t let its size fool you. Thetiny chip has over 3,000 electrodes attached to flexible threads, which can monitor about 1,000 neurons (神经元). It collects neural signals from an area of the brain, and then transmits(传送) those signals wirelessly to nearby computers. That enabled researchers to monitor Gertrude’s brain activity while she was walking around in the display.
Though the technology is still in its early stage, it is encouraging for humans. This technologywould solve a lot of brain injuries, which will allow the human brain to combine with an artificial intelligence.
When the device can be applied to humans, its main goal will be to help those who have mobility(行走的能力) issues. Musk hopes this technology can also be used to help those with hearing andeyesight issues and one day lead to a cure for epilepsy(癫痫).
Although such a device could, in principle, repair those problems, putting it into practice is by nomeans a piece of cake. There are many obstacles to overcome. Currently, the device can transmit signals from about 500 neurons in the pig’s brain. Compared to 80 billion neurons in a human brain, this number is tiny. And to cover the whole human brain also means the electrodes have to be much smaller. Also, implanting the chip into the brain poses a potential danger. There is a risk of the immune system attacking this foreign body.
Right now, the hope of controlling the brain via controlling a few neurons seems overly optimistic.“There are some potential risks and many technological challenges remain to be overcome before thecompany can put its devices to the purposes. It still has a long way to go.”Yuan Lanfeng, an associate professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, told Chin a Daily.
1. What do we know about Elon Musk’s microchip according to the first three paragraphs?| A．It was inspired by sci-fi movie plots. | B．It is able to collect wireless signals. |
| C．It is tiny in size but powerful in function. | D．It has been implanted into a human’s brain. |
| A．The operation of the chip in Gertrude’s brain. |
| B．The attachment of electrodes to flexible threads. |
| C．The development of neurons inside Gertrude’s brain. |
| D．The transmission of signals from a nearby computer. |
| A．To monitor animals’ brain activity. | B．To help people who have difficulty in moving freely. |
| C．To develop a cure for epilepsy. | D．To contribute to the research on Al technologies. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Excited. |
| C．Optimistic. | D．Cautious. |
【推荐1】A songbird jumps around in the woods near Washington, D. C. On its back it carries a very small, lightweight electronic device called a tag (标签). Ecologist Emily Williams watches from behind a bush. On this clear spring day, she says, “Now I’m watching to see whether he’s found a mate.” The bird has moved to a nearby tree where there is another robin. When the bird leaves, this new device it carries will send data about its position to a special satellite, then back to Williams’ computer.
The Georgetown University researchers have been attaching tracking (跟踪) tags on birds and animals for many years. But, the International Space Station and the involved satellite now provide new ways to receive the information sent by the tags. The new system permits scientists to watch songbird movements from a faraway place in much greater detail than before.
“We’re in a sort of golden age for bird research,” said Adriaan Dokter, an ecologist at Cornell University, adding that the technology is improving as the tags are made smaller and smaller. “We can track a robin by satellite with smaller and smaller chips. The device that the robin wears can report its immediate place on Earth, within about 10 meters. Ten years ago, that was unthinkable,” said the scientist, who is not involved in Williams’ study.
A second new device, for only the heaviest robins, provides more information about the bird’s movements; future versions may also measure the humidity and barometric pressure of the space the bird occupies. The devices are known as ICARUS tags.
Martin Wikelski is director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. His scientific team is working to improve the ICARUS technology. He hopes that more and better devices could help develop what he called “an Internet of animals”—a collection of sensors around the world giving us a better picture of the movement of life on the planet.
1. What is Emily Williams doing in the woods?| A．Trying to catch a songbird. |
| B．Observing a bird with a new device. |
| C．Playing a bird game on the computer. |
| D．Taking an adventure trip in the nature. |
| A．Find the exact place of the robins quickly. |
| B．Take control of the robins easily. |
| C．Collect all the information from the satellite. |
| D．Communicate with the robin in a faraway place. |
| A．By explaining the reasons. | B．By making a comparison. |
| C．By listing two new devices. | D．By analyzing the data. |
| A．People can use more devices to keep healthy. |
| B．Technology can give better ways to track animals. |
| C．Human beings and animals can live in harmony. |
| D．People will know more about animals from the Internet. |
【推荐2】Our life will probably be very different in 2050. First of all, it seems that TV channels will have vanished by 2050. Instead, people will choose a program from a “menu”, and the computer will send the program directly to the television. By 2050, music, films, programs, newspapers and books will come to us in the similar way.
In many places, agriculture is developing quickly and people are growing fruit and vegetables for export. This uses a lot of water. Therefore, there could be serious shortages of water. Some scientists predict that water shortage could lead to more severe problems if we don’t act now.
In the future, cars will run on new clean fuels, and they will go very fast. Cars will have computers to control the speed. Today many cars have computers that tell drivers exactly where they are. By 2050, the computer will control the car and drive it to your destination. Also, by 2050, space planes will fly people from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just two hours.
Some big companies now prefer to use robots that do not ask for pay rises or go on strike and work 24 hours a day. They are also easy to control. And they never argue with people. They can be easily used in a variety of places—factories, schools, hospitals, shops and homes.
Scientists will have discovered how to control genes. Scientists have already produced clones of animals. By 2050, scientists will be able to produce clones of people and decide how they look and how they behave. Scientists will be able to do these things. But should they?
1. What does the word “vanished” underlined in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Disappeared. | B．Spread. | C．Settled. | D．Reduced. |
| A．They are controllable. | B．They have much to be improved. |
| C．They can work in different places. | D．They can work for humans without complaining. |
| A．The author may want to use cloning technology. |
| B．The author probably disagrees with the idea of human cloning. |
| C．The scientists have already discovered how to control genes till now. |
| D．The scientists will face many difficulties of controlling animal genes. |
| A．High tech Cars | B．Robots | C．Cloning, Good or Not? | D．Life in the Future |
【推荐3】Dubai has opened the dreamlike world of its new Museum of the Future. The rounded structure rises almost 70 meters. It is held up by an unusual network of supports. Light flows in through the many windows around the building. The windows are shaped in beautiful forms of Arabic letters.
The museum presents an idea of what the world could look like 50 years from now. The imagined future shows the UAE's 50 years of development from a small, sea-based community to a center of oil and gas riches.
The museum deals with the idea of a sustainable (可持续的) future. It invites visitors to reconnect with their senses and disconnect from their phones. However, digital screens and similar media also play a big part in many areas. The museum’s digital screens urge visitors to think about the planet’s health und biological mix in a city that celebrates riches, high-cost living and material goods.
The museum’s goal is to get people to think about what is possible and to turn that into real world action. Visitors to the Museum of the Future hear about a future of lying taxis, windfarms and a world powered from space. Some projects would capture the sun’s energy and send it to the moon. The moon would be covered with solar collectors that would direct energy toward devices on Earth.
The centerpiece of the museum is a darkened mirrored space lit by tall columns of small glass shapes. The shapes hold the imaginary DNA of animals and plants that disappeared from existence.
In this idea of the future, the health of the planet is observed much like a person’s heartbeat and temperature.
The building’s designers, UAE — based Killa Design, said the building has been awarded LEED Platinum status. The rating is given to building designs that use energy as efficiently as possible and meet other environmental goals.
1. What is the museum intended to do?| A．Present the country’s scientific achievements. |
| B．Inspire people to turn creative ideas into reality. |
| C．Show the world how the country has developed. |
| D．Encourage people to have confidence in the future. |
| A．It is a high-cost one. | B．It is free from phones. |
| C．It is fair to everyone. | D．It is environmentally friendly. |
| A．Regretful. | B．Puzzled. | C．Proud. | D．Curious. |
| A．Dreamlike Museum of the Future Opens |
| B．High Technology Will Fill the Future Life |
| C．Today’s Ideas Affect Tomorrow's Realities |
| D．Museum Shows the Future Threat to Mankind |
【推荐1】A better early warning system for tsunamis may soon be possible with the help of artificial intelligence. AI technology can detect very small disturbances in satellite signals when a tsunami’s waves begin to form, which could bring felicity to coastal communities, providing warnings long before the tsunami hits.
“There is no global network for detecting tsunami waves, and setting up physical hardware, like buoy-based systems, is expensive,” says Valentino Constantinou at Teran Orbital Corporation, a satellite manufacturing company based in Florida. “But we know that small satellites are just increasing rapidly everywhere.”
Those GPS satellites are important because they constantly exchange radio signals with ground stations. Crucially, the speed of the radio signals is affected by the density (密度) of charged particles (带电粒子) in an area of Earth’s ionosphere (电离层). Tsunami-caused shock waves travelling up into the atmosphere affect the density of these particles, generating small but measurable changes in the satellite radio signals.
Constantinou and his colleagues developed a computer program to measure changes in the density of these charged particles caused by the formation of a tsunami and then transformed the data into images that can be analysed by AI models. They then tasked the AI with identifying tsunami-related features within the images.
The researchers trained and tested the AI on data from three earthquake-caused tsunamis: one that struck Chile in 2010, a 2011 event in Japan and an event that occurred off Canada’s west coast in 2012. They then confirmed the AI’s performance on data from a fourth tsunami, which was caused by the 2015 Ⅲapel earthquake off the coast of Chile. This showed how well the AI could distinguish tsunami-related disturbances from normal variations in the ionosphere.
But Constantinou says it remains to be seen if performance based on data from four tsunami events can lead to accurate detection of a more diverse set of tsunamis and the rarity of huge tsunamis makes it challenging to analyse and predict such events. A truly effective tsunami detection system would also require international cooperation to share data from satellite stations.
1. What does the underlined word “felicity” probably mean in Paragraph 1?| A．Challenge. | B．Welfare. | C．Qualification. | D．Freedom. |
| A．They stay steady in extreme weather conditions. |
| B．They can predict the exact location of a coming tsunami. |
| C．Their signals can directly pass through Earth’s ionosphere. |
| D．Their signals can reflect charged particle density changes. |
| A．Showing the damage brought by tsunamis. |
| B．Proving the accuracy of the AI’s performance. |
| C．Helping the AI analyse tsunami information. |
| D．Offering basic information on tsunami detection skills. |
| A．AI can spot early signs of a tsunami |
| B．A tsunami warning system is on the way |
| C．Satellites play a key role in global cooperation |
| D．Tsunamis won’t be a threat to humans in the future |
【推荐2】Predicting extreme weather events is a tricky business. Changing climate conditions have increased the frequency of severe storms, floods, and heatwaves, along with larger wildfires. As a result, scientists are using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for more accurate forecasts that help to minimize damage and save lives.
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have worked together with meteorologists (气象学家) to analyze more than 50,000 weather satellite images to quickly identify storms. They found comma-shaped cloud formations that often lead to severe weather such as hail, blizzards, high winds, and thunderstorms.
Computers were then taught using computer vision and machine learning to automatically detect these clouds from satellite images, with almost 100 percent accuracy, in less than a minute. By refocusing meteorologists’ attention on potential storm cloud formation the AI tool helped predict 64 percent of severe weather events and beat established detection systems.
Expensive supercomputers are often used to process vast amounts of data needed for accurate weather prediction. But powerful AI methods can run on smaller computers. Climate risk and planning company ClimateAI uses a technique to downscale global weather forecasts to a local scale, cutting down on costs and computing power.
It uses a machine learning technique that pits two neural networks against each other. The neural networks - designed to work like neurons connected in the brain - fight and train each other using global weather data until they get a result.
Using this method ClimateAI researchers generate highly accurate and inexpensive local forecasts for hours or days ahead. And because it is not as costly, it allows poorer countries affected by climate change to use forecasts to change the way they farm, build bridges, roads, or homes, and adapt to extreme weather.
Average costs associated with extreme weather events in the United States have increased steadily since 1980. These have costly impacts on cities’ basic services, infrastructure, housing, human livelihoods, and health. AI helps us to calculate that risk and can be used as a preventive measure.
1. What can be inferred from Para.1?| A．Inaccurate forecasts minimize the destruction. |
| B．AI enhances accuracy in making weather prediction. |
| C．Less natural disasters are caused by climate change. |
| D．Changeable climate decreased the frequency of serious storms. |
| A．Being steadier. | B．Being cheaper. |
| C．Being quicker. | D．Being more precise. |
| A．To explain how Climate AI works. |
| B．To introduce why AI methods are used. |
| C．To show where ClimateAI can be applied. |
| D．To identify what effects of the AI tool has. |
| A．Critical. | B．Approving. | C．Objective. | D．Indifferent. |
【推荐3】Why Human Translation Is Better Than Machine?
Will AI take the place of human translators?
[1]. Machines cannot express feelings and emotions like humans
Nowadays, soft skills like communication and relationship building are more important at work than technical skills. AI systems are indeed fast, rational, and accurate.
[2].
Only a human translator can match and reproduce the style and tone of the source document accurately. With a machine translation, the intended tone and intricate nuances of the original document often get lost. This results in a rather flat and soulless end result. Translating some texts, such as poems and argumentative essays, is challenging for machines. Robots are unable to convey the feeling of the text, resulting in a flat translation.
[3]. Machines can’t keep up with language changes
Machine translation software has to be constantly updated to keep up with these changes. Updating these programs is challenging because they are based on a sophisticated algorithmic system. Human translators, on the other hand, do not have to deal with such difficulties. As we all know, humans are much more adaptable.
[4]. Machines don’t understand complex human cultures
When it comes to cultural translations, some words may have a specific meaning in one culture but a completely different meaning in another. In fact, in some occasions, even human translators have difficulty achieving a perfect translation, let alone a machine translator.
| A．Style and tone may be beyond a machine’s ability |
| B．A translation cannot be complete without the human touch |
| C．There’s no denying the importance of machine translation |
| D．Simply put, there is no replacement for human translation |
| E．Nevertheless, they are not insightful, empathetic, or culturally sensitive |
| F．A machine translator can never match the intelligence of a human being |
| G．Hence they can keep up with language changes faster than any AI program |
