Camping was so popular as to even become a fashion across China during the just-concluded National Day holiday, with some joking that “half of the friends
According to research firm iiMedia Research, the core market size of China’s camping economy reached 74.75 billion yuan ($10.5 billion) in 2021,
More market-sensitive players are plowing into the industry. In 2021, more than 20,000 new camping-related enterprises sprang up in China,
Huzhou,
“Consumers’ demand for outdoor activities
2 . Could the next Ernest Hemingway or Jane Austen be a well-engineered AI software program? It’s a question becoming increasingly pressing as machine language-learning software continues to evolve.
Much of this is just nerves. Today’s AI creative writing programs are not yet at a stage of development where they pose a serious threat to Colleen Hoover or Charles Dickens. But while attention continues to focus on the possibility of a blanket takeover of human literature by AI, far less consideration has been given to the prospect of AI co-working with humans.
Earlier this month, American sci-fi writer Ken Liu, who had been awarded Hugo and Nebula to his name, joined 12 other professional authors for a writing workshop on Google’s Wordcraft. This AI tool, a language generating model, is not yet publicly available but is advertised as an AI-powered writing assistant that can, when given the right instruction from the writer, provide helpful descriptions, create lists of objects or emotional states, and even brainstorm ideas.
The writers at the workshop, however, emerged with mixed reports. “Wordcraft is too sensible. Wow!” Robin Sloan wrote. “But ‘sensible’ is another word for predictable, overused and boring. My intention here is to produce something unexpected.”
I’m unconvinced that writers awarded the Nobel Prize have much to fear from AI. Their work, and that of countless other novelists, short story writers, dramatists and poets, is too particular, too beautifully unique. Even if a model learned what they had done in the past, it would not be able to predict where their creativity might take them in the future. But for authors who write following a pattern, AI might step in, first as assistants before some day to authorship.
Production-line novels are nothing new. In the 1970s, Barbara Cartland, who wrote more than 723 books in her lifetime, many of which are romance bestsellers, would read her novels for her secretary to type up at the remarkable rate of roughly seven chapters a week. But already machine has replaced the secretary’s role. Perhaps creative writing software isn’t that far from replacing the Mrs. Cartlands of today.
1. Which aspect of AI calls for more attention?A.Its damage to our nerves. |
B.Its progress in literary studies. |
C.Its cooperation with humans. |
D.Its influence on human literature. |
A.It generates novels automatically. |
B.It outperforms professional writers. |
C.Its works receive praises from the public. |
D.Its works bear similarity to existing ones. |
A.Increase writing speed. |
B.Use diverse resources. |
C.Produce creative works. |
D.Follow the latest patterns. |
A.Will AI Replace Human Writers? |
B.AI Warns Mrs. Cartlands of Today |
C.Is Writing Running into a New Era? |
D.Word craft Lies at the Center of Debate |
3 . There are hundreds of genres (流派) of music, so while some might like one kind, others might like something completely different. Why do people like different kinds of music?
Music can also be nostalgic, that is, it creates a kind of longing for the past. Musicians leave behind a footprint with their music.
We may also find that the music we like is strongly tied to our memory. Maybe there was a song that someone sang to us when we were little that brings up good memories.
When we listen to music that we like, a chemical called dopamine is sometimes released in the brain, which can make us feel good.
People’s taste in music can remain the same in their whole life or it can change many times. But the truth is, we don’t know all the exact answers to why people like different kinds of music — or sports, or food, or colors.
A.It’s music to our ears. |
B.Music can be a part of our identity. |
C.It becomes a mirror that we are holding up. |
D.They leave a permanent mark in people’s lives. |
E.Therefore, we might want to listen to a song on repeat. |
F.Other times, we might find music can bring up sad memories. |
G.There are lots of different factors that can influence our preferences. |
4 . Imagine driving behind a huge truck shooting clouds of smoke into the air while your new fully electric vehicle cleans up its carbon emissions (排放). This dream may soon be a reality. A team of students in the Netherlands has created an electric car that not only doesn’t produce carbon dioxide when driving, but actually pulls it out of the air.
The two-seater sports car was designed and built in less than a year by a team of 32 students at Eindhoven University of Technology. Called “ZEM”, which stands for “zero emission mobility”, the car is equipped with special devices that remove carbon dioxide from the air as it drives. The team says if ZEM is driven about 32,000 kilometers, it can remove 2 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the air. That’s not a huge amount. The team calculates that 10 ZEM cars on the road for a year would remove as much carbon dioxide as a typical tree does during that time. However, they also point out that there are over a billion passenger cars in the world that could be using this technology. And if a billion cars were removing carbon dioxide instead of producing it, the result would be huge.
ZEM also has several other innovations that help to make it more capable of being sustained: the car’s frame and panels (面板) are 3D printed to reduce waste; it was built using recycled and recyclable materials; and it can be easily taken apart so that many of its parts can be reused. ZEM’s battery is also reusable, and has another handy feature: it can be charged with solar panels on the car’s roof—and can even be used to provide power to your house when the car isn’t on the road.
According to the statistics, transportation was responsible for over 20% of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2020—and of those emissions, cars were responsible for 41%. The Eindhoven team says its goal is to challenge the electric car industry: If 32 students can build a car like this in less than a year, then surely car manufacturers (生产商) are expected to adopt these innovations, too.
1. What is special about ZEM?A.It can end the world’s CO2 release. |
B.It can cut the truck’s CO2 emissions. |
C.It can reduce the level of CO2 in the air. |
D.It can absorb dirty air as well as CO2. |
A.To demonstrate a superb vision of ZEM cars. |
B.To explain how ZEM removes CO2 as trees do. |
C.To illustrate the ongoing change in car making. |
D.To show the influence of ZEM on the car market. |
A.They are of high quality. | B.They are easy to process. |
C.They are convenient to print. | D.They are environmentally friendly. |
A.Sharp decline in fuel consumption. | B.Mass production of ZEM cars. |
C.Big success in beating other car makers. | D.Dramatic changes in transportation. |
5 . The Stanford marshmallow (棉花糖) test was originally conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in the late 1960s. Children aged four to six at a nursery school were placed in a room. A single sugary treat, selected by the child, was placed on a table. Each child was told if they waited for 15 minutes before eating the treat, they would be given a second treat. Then they were left alone in the room. Follow-up studies with the children later in life showed a connection between an ability to wait long enough to obtain a second treat and various forms of success.
As adults we face a version of the marshmallow test every day. We’re not tempted by sugary treats, but by our computers, phones, and tablets — all the devices that connect us to the global delivery system for various types of information that do to us what marshmallows do to preschoolers.
We are tempted by sugary treats because our ancestors lived in a calorie-poor world, and our brains developed a response mechanism to these treats that reflected their value — a feeling of reward and satisfaction. But as we’ve reshaped the world around us, dramatically reducing the cost and effort involved in obtaining calories, we still have the same brains we had thousands of years ago, and this mismatch is at the heart of why so many of us struggle to resist tempting foods that we know we shouldn’t eat.
A similar process is at work in our response to information. Our formative environment as a species was information-poor, so our brains developed a mechanism that prized new information. But global connectivity has greatly changed our information environment. We are now ceaselessly bombarded (轰炸) with new information. Therefore, just as we need to be more thoughtful about our caloric consumption, we also need to be more thoughtful about our information consumption, resisting the temptation of the mental “junk food” in order to manage our time most effectively.
1. What did the children need to do to get a second treat in Mischel’s test?A.Take an examination alone. | B.Share their treats with others. |
C.Delay eating for fifteen minutes. | D.Show respect for the researchers. |
A.the calorie-poor world and our good appetites | B.the shortage of sugar and our nutritional needs |
C.the tempting foods and our efforts to keep fit | D.the rich food supply and our unchanged brains |
A.Be selective information consumers. | B.Absorb new information readily. |
C.Use diverse information sources. | D.Protect the information environment. |
A.Eat Less, Read More | B.The Later, the Better |
C.The Marshmallow Test for Grownups | D.The Bitter Truth about Early Humans |
6 . There are lots of ways to raise awareness for a cause. Usually, the
Baptiste Dubanchet is biking across Europe, surviving
As you can
What’s
“I have to get food
He aims to
A.cleverer | B.older | C.stranger | D.simpler |
A.garbage-eating | B.sports-loving | C.food-wasting | D.law-breaking |
A.secretly | B.finally | C.entirely | D.probably |
A.purpose | B.way | C.opinion | D.dream |
A.observe | B.imagine | C.suggest | D.remember |
A.store | B.cook | C.shop for | D.throw away |
A.locked | B.damaged | C.connected | D.abandoned |
A.bought | B.offered | C.ordered | D.sold |
A.reasons | B.rights | C.fees | D.aids |
A.begging for | B.giving away | C.hiding | D.causing |
A.did | B.kept | C.accepted | D.risked |
A.hardly | B.usually | C.particularly | D.merely |
A.easiest | B.nearest | C.biggest | D.richest |
A.work | B.shout | C.ask | D.jump |
A.competition | B.conversation | C.conflict | D.challenge |
A.adequate | B.rewarding | C.demanding | D.suitable |
A.again | B.alone | C.later | D.fast |
A.spirit | B.energy | C.time | D.effort |
A.stomach | B.hand | C.pocket | D.basket |
A.arrange | B.restart | C.report | D.finish |
7 . Artificial intelligence models can trick each other into disobeying their creators and providing banned instructions for making drugs, or even building a bomb, suggesting that preventing such AI “jailbreaks” is more difficult than it seems.
Many publicly available large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, have hard-coded rules that aim to prevent them from exhibiting racial or sexual discrimination, or answering questions with illegal or problematic answers — things they have learned from humans via training data. But that hasn’t stopped people from finding carefully designed instructions that block these protections, known as “jailbreaks”, making AI models disobey the rules.
Now, Arush Tagade at Leap Laboratories and his co-workers have found a process of jailbreaks. They found that they could simply instruct one LLM to convince other models to adopt a persona (角色), which is able to answer questions the base model has been programmed to refuse. This process is called “persona modulation (调节)”.
Tagade says this approach works because much of the training data consumed by large models comes from online conversations, and the models learn to act in certain ways in response to different inputs. By having the right conversation with a model, it is possible to make it adopt a particular persona, causing it to act differently.
There is also an idea in AI circles, one yet to be proven, that creating lots of rules for an AI to prevent it displaying unwanted behaviour can accidentally create a blueprint for a model to act that way. This potentially leaves the AI easy to be tricked into taking on an evil persona. “If you’re forcing your model to be good persona, it somewhat understands what a bad persona is,” says Tagade.
Yinzhen Li at Imperial College London says it is worrying how current models can be misused, but developers need to weigh such risks with the potential benefits of LLMs. “Like drugs, they also have side effects that need to be controlled,” she says.
1. What does the AI jailbreak refer to?A.The technique to break restrictions of AI models. |
B.The initiative to set hard-coded rules for AI models. |
C.The capability of AI models improving themselves. |
D.The process of AI models learning new information. |
A.It can help AI models understand emotions. |
B.It prevents AI learning via online conversations. |
C.It can make AI models adopt a particular persona. |
D.It forces AI models to follow only good personas. |
A.Unclear. | B.Cautious. | C.Approving. | D.Negative. |
A.LLMs: Illegal Learning Models | B.LLMs: The Latest Advancement |
C.AI Jailbreaks: A New Challenge | D.AI Jailbreaks: A Perfect Approach |
8 . The topic “slash youth”, referring to those refusing to be defined or bound by just one personal identity and choosing to undertake multiple careers, has fueled heated debate on social media. On Douban, a Chinese social networking platform, the topic has attracted about 11,000posts and has been viewed over 400 million times. China’s young people are keen to share their slash youth stories online, presenting themselves as multiple and sometimes distinct identities, such as a nurse and model, a teacher and stand-up comedian, and an engineer and musician.
Xing Eryang, a 31-year-old female resident in Beijing, founded the Douban topic in 2021.While staying diligent about her daytime work, she is developing her hobbies, including stand-up comedy and vlogging, into secondary careers during her spare time. And she is amazed to find her “slash life” philosophy followed by so many of her peers.
Weiheng, a 26-year-old woman in Guangzhou, and Tang Yuhan, a 27-year-old man in Xuancheng city, Anhui province, are both participants in the topic, with their stories earning thousands of likes so far. The two are both musicians in their spare time, even though they are thousands of miles apart and have different jobs in media and finance. Their passion for music has grown since college and they didn’t abandon their enthusiasm, even after entering the workplace.
Their reaction showed the gap between the young and former generations. “My parents used to say, ‘music cannot earn you money’, so the band thing was regarded as a waste of time. However, we want to pursue whatever we love and are willing to pay for it.” says Weiheng.
“The ‘slash life’ mania(狂热)shows that, along with China’s economic development, our society is becoming more and more diversified and inclusive, and it welcomes everyone’s self-fulfillment,” says Shi Yanrong, an associate researcher from Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences. “Young people no longer have to rely on work and money for their sense of self-worth. They tend to practice a carpe diem(活在当下)philosophy and create their own identities.”
1. What are “slash youth” more likely to do?A.Create a topic on Douban. |
B.Take diverse occupations. |
C.Become a stand-up comedian. |
D.Share their own stories online. |
A.Other young people’s positive response. |
B.Hobbies developed while working. |
C.The growing social networking platform. |
D.Thousands of likes earned on Douban. |
A.They sent their stories online to gain more funds. |
B.They shared similar interests in both their hobbies and jobs. |
C.They never lost passion for music even if they had to quit college. |
D.They stuck with their dream despite the older generation’s opinion. |
A.Doubtful. | B.Supportive. |
C.Unfavorable. | D.Indifferent. |
9 . On a bright sunny day, I stared my day off by volunteering at the L. A. Food Bank. My reason for volunteering at the food bank was to satisfy my need to help others and leave a
By helping pack food items. I was able to make as significant impact on my community by helping people fight
A.change | B.message | C.blank | D.chance |
A.established | B.examined | C.entered | D.equipped |
A.shabby | B.steady | C.tidy | D.noisy |
A.check in | B.give up | C.show off | D.move out |
A.aid | B.duties | C.awards | D.test |
A.appointed | B.begged | C.forced | D.persuaded |
A.consumed | B.inspected | C.searched | D.replaced |
A.abandoned | B.delivered | C.packed | D.explored |
A.represent | B.shelter | C.deserve | D.contain |
A.studio | B.factory | C.museum | D.theatre |
A.bank | B.list | C.step | D.row |
A.quickly | B.secretly | C.casually | D.anxiously |
A.burden | B.thought | C.regret | D.interest |
A.recognize | B.welcome | C.help | D.visit |
A.focus | B.respect | C.wisdom | D.ambition |
A.understood | B.counted | C.led | D.heard |
A.leadership | B.technical | C.social | D.business |
A.prove | B.discover | C.stress | D.guarantee |
A.fear | B.loneliness | C.hunger | D.doubt |
A.direction | B.identity | C.belonging | D.satisfaction |
In 1863 the first underground passenger railway in the world opened in London. It ran for just under seven kilometers and allowed people to avoid terrible
Steam engines
Later, engineers