1 . Our future selves used to be a riddle. Now, thanks to social media filters (滤镜), we can stare them right in the face. People fell in love with TikTok this month to share themselves “aging” in real time using a filter “time travel”. Set to a sad song, the effect shows the user’s face slowly getting older, complete with wrinkles (皱纹) and sunspots.
Camera filters that age you have been around for years. But advancements in AI are making the results more real. Doctor Aleksandra Brown said the TikTok time travel filter does well in guessing how a given face would age.
As we get older, our facial skin thins, fat dissolves (溶解) and gravity pulls everything downward. Not everyone is pleased about this. One of Brown’s friends didn’t like watching time fly past. She couldn’t stand watching herself age 50 years in 15 seconds-could life really go by that fast? Brown cried herself after using the aging effect on her own young daughter. She won’t live to see her daughter get that old, she pointed out.
For other people, the time travel filter brought up unexpected positive feelings. Actor Jonathan Bennett shared a video saying his own filtered face recalled happy memories of his late father. Nicole Loehle, a 24-year-old in New Jersey, tested the effect with her boyfriend. It gave her a new viewpoint, she said, she could imagine the relationship lasting into their old age.
There’s no correct way to age. But it’s important to remember that no one can stop time or undo its effects. “I keep trying to view aging as a gift.” Brown said, “Some people don’t get to age, unfortunately?”
1. What can people do with the filter “time travel”?| A．Find their partners. | B．See their aging faces. |
| C．Experience others’ lives. | D．Guess their future success. |
| A．Reminders of the good old days. | B．Reasons for using the aging effect. |
| C．Reflections on close personal relationships. | D．Responses to the aging effect of “time travel”. |
| A．It’s good to watch time fly past. | B．The “time travel” needs advancements. |
| C．Not everyone is fortunate enough to get old. | D．TickTok invented the first app with aging effect. |
| A．TikTok’s “time travel”: slowly or quickly | B．TikTok’s “time travel”: backward or forward |
| C．TikTok’s “time travel”: to enjoy or to suffer | D．TikTok’s “time travel”: to develop or to drop |
2 . It’s a typical day at school. You’re playing soccer with your friends. One of them kicks you the ball and you run for it. You trip. You fly through the air. You land—hard, right on your face! The next moment, you’re in the nurse’s office. Your bleeding nose is being checked by laser sensors (激光传感器) that coming out of a...robot? Has the nurse’s office been taken over by sci-fi aliens (外星人) from outer space?
No. You’ve just been pushed forward 15 years into the future. And it’s a future that Susan Epstein, a computer science professor who teaches artificial intelligence, is really excited to think about. “I am crazy about this kind of thing! You could go up to the robot, put your nose in, and the machine would decide whether you needed to be treated, and how.”
Aside from being cool, an AI nurse has other advantages. It doesn’t need to take vacations. It doesn’t need to get paid a salary. And it might figure out what’s wrong with your nose faster than a human would. There are all kinds of ways that AI could be used to help make us healthier and researchers are studying how to use AI to diagnose (诊断) lung disease, cancer, and more.
Our robot nurse isn’t meant to completely take the place of humans, though. “It would work with real, live nurses and doctors,” says Epstein, “there are things humans are good at, like building trust among members of our own species or comforting someone who’s hurt or sick. A big part of medicine is the relationship between a doctor and a patient.”
Epstein points out that AI programs will never be perfect—no matter how much we might want them to be. But if AI can diagnose a deadly disease more precisely even 10 percent of the time, think of how many lives it could save. “Besides”, says Epstein, “I think there are probably patients who might prefer to have a machine for a doctor!” Would you?
1. What’s the function of para 1?| A．To introduce a scientific study. |
| B．To lead to the topic of the text. |
| C．To describe an experience of the writer. |
| D．To give an example to support an argument. |
| A．Humans are better at treating patients than AI doctors. |
| B．AI doctors alone can cure patients of most of the diseases. |
| C．Patients’ trust in doctors may affect their treatments positively. |
| D．Patients may receive as much comfort from AI doctors as from humans. |
| A．They are better at trust-building. |
| B．They will take over humans. |
| C．Their biggest strength is being cool. |
| D．They are life-saving if properly used. |
| A．Negative. | B．Favorable. | C．Doubtful. | D．Unclear. |
3 . My future happiness
When I imagine my future, I see myself as an adult who is confident in my abilities, doing a job I love and living my life responsibly. When I grow up, I will be enjoying more convenience brought by the advances in technology, with more time to pursue hobbies and enjoy the company of family and friends.
I will feel the happiest in the future because I will learn more about life and develop into the best person I can be.
Thanks to new technology, my future life is sure to improve in various ways. Homes will become smarter to the extent that they might be programmed to learn about our needs and monitor our health and activity. I can imagine hearing an AI voice remind me to buy groceries or do more exercise! There will also be enormous advancements in transport options. I will be riding in a self-driving car, and other new means of transport may be developed in the future.
My development into a mature adult and access to advanced technology will provide me with more free-time opportunities.
| A．I might be able to ride a flying bike to quickly meet up with my friends. |
| B．I will become more knowledgeable about the world and myself. |
| C．When I think about the future, I realize my happiest days are still ahead of me. |
| D．For these reasons, I look forward to the future as the happiest moment in my life. |
| E．With less work-related stress, I will also have more time and energy to do volunteer projects. |
| F．The working day will be only four hours long thanks to robots. |
| G．Technological advances will guarantee that I will be in good health and find true happiness. |
4 . “Demographics are our fate”, which suggests much of the future is determined by the very simple trend lines of populations. Of course, demographics can’t spot pandemics or other crises. But as shocking as they feel at the moment, such events are rare. One aspect of the future that demographics can’t help predict are technological discoveries. But even technological discoveries have a slower impact on the daily life than we sometimes perceive. Peter Thiel famously said in 2013, “We wanted flying cars. Instead, we got nothing but 140 characters.”
So what comes next? If you woke up 20 years from now in 2042, what would be different? Here are some ideas based on numbers that don’t require a crystal ball. About 70 percent of the world population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050, according to data from the United Nations. That means most cities are going to need more improvements. Roads, public transportation and waste management will need large-scale expansion and upgrades. The average person produces 4.9 pounds of waste a day, up from 3.66 pounds in 1980. But here’s a trend going in the other direction as a result of technology: Paper and paperboard declined from 87.7 million tons in 2000 to 67.4 million tons in 2018, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
And we’ll be older. In the United States, we’re likely to live until 82.4 years old, compared with 79.1 years old today, the United Nations predicts. That’s a good thing for health care companies and others that satisfy the needs of older people. But living three extra years is going to be more expensive, which will have an influence on both working and saving.
Businesspersons, industry leaders and policymakers are already at work solving some of the problems that demographic data suggest are ahead of us. They are trying to figure out how to inspire farmers to sequester carbon and use green machines to reduce the energy consumption.
What about the metaverse? Or robots taking our jobs? Or AI taking over everything? Demographics can’t answer those questions. All of those things may happen, but life in 2042 may also look a lot like it does today maybe with the exception of those flying cars.
1. How does the author understand “Demographics are our fate.” in Paragraph 1?| A．The trend lines of populations can decide the future of the world. |
| B．Demographics can’t determine all the things in the future. |
| C．Demographics can help recognize pandemics or other rises in the future. |
| D．Demographics can decide how quickly we make new technological discoveries. |
| A．Much more paper will be produced. |
| B．The environment will be polluted seriously. |
| C．People will produce much more waste than before. |
| D．Urban areas are going to need more improvements. |
| A．increase | B．avoid | C．generate | D．encounter |
| A．Are flying cars popular in 20years? | B．What is the fate of the car industry? |
| C．What will the world be like in 20 years? | D．What effect do the Demographics have? |
5 . The future of the city is here. Sidewalk Labs, a company owned by Alphabet(which also owns Google), won a competition to design a neighborhood by Lake Ontario, Canada. The competition was held as a way to improve the building, public spaces, and transportation in the area .
The city of Toronto has promised $1.25 billion for roads, sidewalks, electricity, water, and so on. Sidewalk Labs has already put $50 million into the project.
The neighborhood has already been given the name "Quayside. "When finished, it will include many high-tech and environmentally friendly designs. These include heated sidewalks and cycle tracks to melt（融化）snow and self-driving buses. There will also be narrower street with less car and more room for public spaces like parks. The buildings will be made of plastic to make them more affordable and easier to change. Underground passages will be used for rubbish collection and for repair.
There will also be environmentally friendly energy use, changeable traffic lights, and continuous improvement through data (数据) collection and studies. This data will come from sensors(传感器) collecting information about traffic or noise levels, energy use, waste output, etc.
There are, of course, some worries about the project. One is that there is already a housing shortage in Toronto, and making an expensive, high-tech neighborhood won't help with that. It is important for Quayside to be used by the elderly, the disabled, the poor and people of different races, not only by people who work at tech companies.
Another worry is about data collection and people' s privacy. Dan Dctoroff, the CEO of Sidewalk Labs, said that the data collection will only be used to improve people's life in Quayside. He added that privacy can be put into every part of the neighborhood.
Since this kind of neighborhood is new, no doubt there will be many problems, and new laws will have to be made for this kind of high-tech housing. But hopefully, we will be able to see such a futuristic neighborhood soon.
1. How will Sidewalk Labs carry out its project?| A．By developing advanced technology |
| B．By cooperating with the city of Toronto |
| C．By collecting enough money. |
| D．By calling on people to take part in it. |
| A．Details of upcoming neighborhood. |
| B．Technologies offered by project |
| C．High-tech designs of Quayside |
| D．Equipment in the unique neighborhood |
| A．Because they have to spend much time on it |
| B．Because Quayside is only available to the elderly, the disable and the poor |
| C．Because they fear their privacy will be probably given away |
| D．Because not all people want to live in such a neighborhood. |
| A．Positive | B．Negative. | C．Worried | D．Doubtful |
6 . The Google Brain team has been working on computing systems called “neural networks”—systems that were designed based on how neurons work in the human brain.
This time, they gave a mission to three of the neural networks, which they named Alice, Bob and Eve. Each of the networks had its own job—Alice sent messages to Bob, Eve tried to “eavesdrop”(偷听) and find out the messages, and Alice and Bob had to figure out a way to hide the messages from Eve. All the help that Alice and Bob got from the researchers before the mission began was made up of a set of numbers, which Eve didn’t have access to.
At first, Alice was not very good at sending secret messages. But slowly it worked on a way to encrypt(加密) them—putting information into a special code so that others could not understand it if they got the information—using he numbers given by researchers. And after practice, Bob also came to be able to decrypt(解密) Alice’s messages. Without the numbers or keys, Eve failed to understand Alice’s “speech” most of the time.
This test is considered a big step in the development of computers’ learning skills. “Computing with neural networks on this scale has only become possible in the last few years, so we truly are at the beginning of what’s possible, ” Joe Sturonas of US encryption company PKWARE told New Scientist magazine.
Unfortunately, the test happened only one week after UK physicist Stephen Hawking, While speaking at Cambridge University, warned how AI(artificial intelligence)could develop a will of its own. This could be “either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to human being”, he said.
But just as Sturonas pointed out, no matter what the possibilities of computers are in the future, they are just starting out. We still have plenty of time to work out a solution before they get anywhere near becoming a threat to humanity.
1. For what purpose was the test conducted?| A．To study how neurons work in the human brain. |
| B．To study how computing systems work and learn. |
| C．To find out a more effective way to keep secrets. |
| D．To find out a more powerful way to break the codes. |
| A．encrypting—messages—code—messages—decrypting |
| B．messages—encrypting—code—decrypting—messages |
| C．code—messages—encrypt—decrypting—messages |
| D．messages—code—decrypting—encrypting—messages |
| A．AI must be a blessing. | B．AI should be forbidden. |
| C．AI is sure to be a failure. | D．AI is a double-edged sword. |
| A．Hopeful. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Puzzled. | D．Panicked. |
7 . "We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. ... Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth" These are the words of the famous scientist Stephen Hawking.
Hawking was not alone in this view. Many experts feel that the only way for humans to last far into the future is to colonize (殖民) other planets. That way, if an asteroid (小行星), a terrible discase, or some other disaster strikes Earth, we would still have a chance. Mars is one of the best choices. NASA, the private company SpaceX，and other organizations all have plans to send humans there. "Either we spread Earth to other planets, or we go out of existence,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk said.
But not everyone agrees that colonizing Mars or any other planet is such a great plan. The most common argument against going is that it's just too expensive or dangerous. It will take huge amounts of money and other resources just to get people there, let alone set up a place for them to live. It's not even clear if humans could survive on Mars.
Maybe all the time and money people would pour into a Mars task would be better spent on more important projects here on Earth, like dealing with poverty or climate change. Some experts argue that handling a problem like an asteroid strike or disease outbreak while staying here on Earth would be much easier and less expensive than surviving on a new planet. In addition, moving to a new planet could harm or destroy anything that already lives there. Mars seems uninhabited, but it could possibly host some life. Human visitors may destroy this life or change the Martian environment forever.
What do you think? Should humans colonize outer space or stay at home?
1. In writing Paragraph 1, the author aims to________| A．provide an explanation | B．make a comparison |
| C．reach a conclusion | D．introduce a topic |
| A．protect humans from dying out |
| B．make Hawking's dream come true |
| C．seek more space for humans to live in |
| D．encourage different organizations to compete |
| A．Out of space, out of mind. | B．Money should be well spent. |
| C．East or west, home is the best. | D．One should mind his own business. |
| A．Confident. | B．Doubtful. | C．Objective. | D．Supportive. |
| Islands that could disappear in your lifetime Island vacations are dreams for many tourists, but climate change has lifted ocean temperatures, raised sea levels and worsened storm severity. As a result, some islands are threatened and could disappear in the coming decades. | |
| Federal States of Micronesia 2019 Population: 112,640 The average rate of sea-level rise worldwide has been 3.1 mm per year since 1993. But the rate around Federated States of Micronesia is three times faster. The country is at risk of disappearing because of coastal flooding, erosion, and frequent storms. | Tuvalu 2019 Population: 11,508. Tuvalu is a small chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean. For more than 25 years, its representatives have raised alarms that climate change could raise sea levels enough to flood the islands. Even if waters never get that high, Tuvalu could still become uninhabitable as rising sea levels have polluted the nation’s groundwater resources with salt. |
| Marshall Islands 2019 Population: 58413 Residents of Marshall Islands, a chain of volcanic islands and coral atolls in the central Pacific Ocean, have known for years that they have to either build new artificial islands to relocate or raise the existing ones. | Shishmaref Alaska 2019 Population: 617 In 2016, people living in Shishmaref, Alaska, located near the Bering Strait, voted to relocate before melting ice and land erosion would forced them to. Alaska had granted the city $8 million toward the move, but officials say it will cost $200 million. |
1. The sea level around Federal States of Micronesia is rising as much as ______ or so a year.
| A．1.1 mm | B．3.1 mm | C．6.6 mm | D．9.3 mm |
| A．Federal States of Micronesia | B．Tuvalu |
| C．Marshall Islands | D．Shishmaref |
9 . When you pull the headset over your eyes and the game begins， you are transported to a tiny room with white walls．Your task is to break out of the room， but you cannot use your hands， joystick or game pad．You must use your thoughts．
You turn toward a ball on the floor， and your brain sends a command to pick it up．With another thought，you send the ball crashing into a mirror， breaking the glass and revealing a few numbers scribbled on a wall．You mentally type those numbers into a large keypad by the door．And you are out．
Designed by Neurable，a small startup founded by Ramses Alcaide，an electrical engineer and neuroscientist （神经科学家），the game offers a way of selecting items in a virtual world with your thoughts．
Having a headset with virtual reality goggles （眼镜） and sensors （传感器） that can read your brain waves，it will be a few years before this device comes into the market． And it is limited in what it can do．But it works．I recently played the game，titled Awakening，when Alcaide and two Neurable employees passed through San Francisco， so did a few hundred others this month at the Siggraph computer graphics conference in Los Angeles．
Driven by recent investments from the US government， many startups and bigger companies are working on ways to mentally control machines， looking for smoother ways to use virtual reality technology．
"Neurotechnology has become cool，" said Ed Boyden， a professor at the MIT Media Lab who advises one of those startups．
At Neurable， Alcaide and his team are pushing the limits of EEG （脑电图） headsets． Although sensors can read electrical brain activity from outside the skull， it is very difficult to separate the signal from the noise． Using computer algorithms （算法） based on Alcaide's research， Neurable works to read activity with a speed and accuracy that's not usually possible．
The algorithms learn from your behavior．Before playing the game，you train them to recognize when you are focusing your attention on an object．A pulse of light bounces around the virtual room，and each time it hits a small colored ball in front of you，you think about the ball．At that moment，when you focus on the light and it stimulates your brain，the system reads the specific signals of your brain activity．
1. How can you break out of the room in the game？| A．Open the door with the joystick． |
| B．Type the numbers you have got into the keypad in mind． |
| C．Send a ball crashing into the door． |
| D．Use your hands to open the door． |
| A．Many people in San Francisco have played this game except the author． |
| B．The US government didn't invest money in the virtual reality technology． |
| C．The device having a headset with virtual reality goggle has come into market． |
| D．A lot of startups and companies are doing research into mentally control machines． |
| A．A game you can control with your mind |
| B．The limits of EEG headsets |
| C．Sensors that read brain signals |
| D．Recent investments on virtual reality technology |
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1. What’s the passage mainly about?| A．The history of the Family Village. |
| B．The origin of the Family Village |
| C．The function of the Family Village. |
| D．The introduction of the Family Village. |
| A．an organization which can give a hand to people in trouble |
| B．a community which have many good opportunities to look for jobs |
| C．a website tells us some miserable stories about ordinary people. |
| D．a community which can give people some advice for the disabled and their family |
| A．advised | B．supported | C．suspected | D．included |
| A．The Family Village was popular. |
| B．The Family Village came into being ten years ago. |
| C．Help provided by the Family village is money. |
| D．Our village is constantly changing. |
