1 . When travelers are planning their trips to Thailand, they usually go to the well-known places. Here, three lesser-known Thai cities that you should absolutely put on your bucket list.
Mae Hong Son
Where it is: On the border of Thailand and Myanmar, in the mountainous Thai province of the same name.
Why should you go: Because of its nearness to Thailand, visiting Mae Hong Son might feel like experiencing a little bit of Myanmar---there are some cultural shared areas, and it's unlike anything or anywhere else on the planet.
Sukhothai
Where it is About 230 kilometers north of Bangkok, Sukhothai is characterized by its relative remoteness.
Why should you go: Sukhothai is a UNESCO world Heritage City, due to lots of ancient temple ruins.
In fact, the city was the birthplace of Thai architecture and culture, so if you want to get a good taste of Thailand's history, there's nowhere better to be.
Khao Lak
Where it is: On Thailand's south-central coast. "Khaolak" translate in English to "Lak mountain". which is the highest peak in the area's hilly region.
Why should you go: If you are seeking a bit of peace, quiet, and serenely calm beachfront, Khao Lak is the place to go. It's a change of pace from many of Thailand's other cities, which are exciting, colorful, and bustling---and who doesn't need a moment to recharge every now and again?
1. Who will be most interested in Sukhothai?| A．Mountaineers | B．History lovers |
| C．Artists | D．Music lovers |
| A．It's calm and peaceful. | B．It's exciting and bustling. |
| C．It's busy and noisy. | D．It's rich and colorful. |
| A．A business magazine. | B．A science textbook. |
| C．A travel brochure. | D．A news report. |
2 . Computer scientists have hoped to give robots technical skills to help them recognize, process and react to humor. But these attempts have mostly failed. AI experts say that in many cases, attempts to make robots understand humor end up producing funny results, but not in the way they were supposed to.
Tristan Miller studied more than 10,000 puns in one research project. The pun is a kind of joke that uses a word with two meanings. For example, you could say, “Balloons do not like pop music.” The word “pop” can be a way of saying popular music; or can mean the sound a balloon makes when it explodes. But a robot might not get the joke. Tristan Miller says that is because humor is a kind of creative language that is extremely difficult for computer intelligence to understand.
Allison Bishop is a computer scientist and she also performs stand-up comedy. She explained that machines are trained to look for patterns. Comedy, on the other hand, relies on things that stay close to a pattern, but not completely within it. To be funny, humor should also not be predictable, Bishop said. This is a great challenge for a machine to recognize and understand what is funny.
Bishop says since robots have great difficulty understanding humor, she feels like it gives her better job safety as a comedy performer. It even made her parents happy when her brother decided to become a full-time comedy writer because it meant he wouldn’t be replaced by a machine, she added.
Despite the difficulties, Darmstadt University’s Miller says there are good reasons to keep trying to teach humor to robots. It could make machines more relatable (叙述的), especially if they can learn to understand sarcasm (讽刺), he noted. Humans use sarcasm to say one thing but mean another. But Kiki Hempelmann thinks differently. “Teaching AI systems humor may make them find it where it isn’t, and they may use it where it’s not suitable,” he said. “Maybe bad AI will start killing people because it thinks something is funny,” he added.
1. What does the author most probably want to show in Paragraph 1?| A．Robots’ influence on the scientific development. |
| B．Robots’ challenges of making sense of humor. |
| C．Computer scientists’ devotion to technical skills. |
| D．Computer scientists’ concern about AI’s development. |
| A．Prove robots do poorly in funny work |
| B．Explain robots aren’t as intelligent as humans |
| C．Describe language is complex and changeable |
| D．Show language can’t be taught in a set pattern |
| A．It will make no difference. |
| B．It may be a double-edged sword. |
| C．It may help improve humans’ humor. |
| D．It will attract more computer scientists. |
| A．Textbook | B．Advertisement |
| C．Science journal | D．Entertainment speech |
