1 . I was ready to pay for my bananas at the grocery one night, when fear seized me. My wallet was gone. I could only have left it on the G9 bus, which was now speeding in the dark to some
The heart-stopping moment was quickly followed by mental math. How much time and money would it cost to replace the contents of that little wallet? The credit cards, the driver’s license, the cash, all lost to the bus.
Two hours later, back at my house, I heard a knock on the door. My husband
After sharing the story online, I heard from someone, who identified the lady as Erin Smith. Without
This one stranger responded beautifully to my small
| A．famous | B．unknown | C．familiar | D．convenient |
| A．ignored | B．interrupted | C．examined | D．answered |
| A．still | B．ever | C．yet | D．even |
| A．delay | B．question | C．regret | D．invitation |
| A．threw | B．placed | C．opened | D．spotted |
| A．selfless | B．risky | C．delightful | D．personal |
| A．crisis | B．danger | C．encounter | D．failure |
| A．exchanged | B．recalled | C．whispered | D．repeat |
| A．Going away | B．Turning around | C．Looking back | D．Coming along |
| A．longing | B．grateful | C．concerned | D．enthusiastic |
2 . Studying a subject that you feel pointless is never a fun or easy task. If you’re studying history, asking yourself the question “why is history important” is a very good first step. History is an essential part of human civilization. You will find something here that will arouse your interest, or get you thinking about the significance of history.
History grounds us in our roots. History is an important and interesting field of study, and learning the history of our home country can give us a deeper, more meaningful glimpse (一瞥) into our ancestral pasts, and how we got to where we are today. Many people feel like they need a sense of cultural belonging, which is something that studying your roots and being open-minded to the evolution (演变) of your culture can provide.
History enriches our experience. Reading history is an amazing experience because it enables us to reflect on the social and economic life of the people living long time ago. According to the experts, problems faced by people regardless of the past and present are the same. With the information about the ancestors, one can become more experienced in handling challenges of life.
History makes us more empathetic (具有共情能力的). Studying history can give us insight (洞察力) into why our culture does certain things, and how the past has shaped it into what we know now. It also provides a rather strong foundation for empathy across cultures. Fear and hate for others is usually caused by ignorance (无知). We’re scared of the things that we don’t understand. History has the potential to break down those boundaries by offering us insight into entire worlds that would otherwise be foreign to us.
History can inspire us to learn more. What’s fantastic about history is the way it broadens our horizons. It’s almost impossible to learn about one historical period without having dozens of questions about related concepts. Study the 19re century England, and you might catch a glimpse of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Look up Charles Dickens, and you might learn a thing or two about realism. Or maybe you end up switching your attention away from novels, and discover the history of romantic poets in England. It can go anywhere, and there is something in there for absolutely anybody.
The value of history cannot be underestimated. We don’t have to live in the past, but we can definitely do better by learning from it and using the lessons learnt to lead more meaningful lives.
1. People can get a sense of cultural belonging by studying history and _______.| A．thinking about the meaning of it |
| B．accepting the development of culture |
| C．analyzing how they get to the present state |
| D．reflecting on their social and economic life |
| A．It is difficult to get rid of cultural barriers. |
| B．People are willing to accept foreign cultures. |
| C．Cultural conflicts in history are difficult to ignore. |
| D．History helps us improve our cross-cultural awareness. |
| A．How to Build Cultural Identity | B．Why Studying History Matters |
| C．Know the Past, Know the Present | D．History: a Way to Broaden Horizons |
1.活动目的；
2.时间、地点及内容；
3.希望与呼吁。
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2.开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
NOTICE
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Students’ Union
April 26th, 2024
AI art, aka (又名) computation art or generative art, refers to the creation of any artwork through the use of artificial intelligence programs. This can include art forms like music, photography and video, but in this article we’ll focus on 2D and 3D illustrative art.
AI art should not be confused with digital art, which refers to artworks created using any type of digital software. Typically, with digital art, the creator has to employ some level of artistic skill and technique, and understand how to use tools such as Adobe Illustrator.
With AI art, in contrast, you typically only have to type in a text prompt (提示词). A finished artwork is then created by generative AI algorithms without any further input needed.
AI art is controversial (有争议的) within the art and design professions for two main reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, allowing people to generate art through software means they’re less likely to pay someone to create it by hand. And that’s inevitably (不可避免的) going to lead to job losses and the loss of freelance work to professional artists. The second reason is that AI art generators are trained on art made by humans. Yet in most cases, these artists have not been paid for this sampling of their work. And by copying their style, which they may have taken decades of hard work to develop, AI art generators are arguably carrying out the biggest copyright theft in history.
It all reminds us of the story of how an aging Pablo Picasso was one day sketching (素描) in a park. A woman approached him and asked him to sketch her. The famous artist took one look at her, and dashed off an abstract likeness in seconds. She loved it, and asked how much she should pay. “5,000 francs,” he replied. “Why so expensive?” she cried in shock. “It took you less than a minute!” He replied: “No, Madame, it took me a lifetime.”
The artist community is now in a similar position, on a massive scale. AI art generators are taking out the equivalent of 5,000 francs of value multiple times a second, and yet artists aren’t getting a penny. A number of court cases are testing out this argument in court.
1. What is AI art?2. With digital art, what does the creator have to do?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
➢The author tells the story of Pablo Picasso to show that he is a very great artist
4. Are you a supporter of AI art? Why or why not? (In about 40 words)
5 . According to a new Agriculture Department report, U. S. forests could exacerbate global warming because they are being destroyed by natural disasters and are losing their ability to absorb planet-warming gases as they get older. The report predicts that the ability of forests to absorb carbon will start declining after 2025 and that forests could release up to 100 million metric tons of carbon a year as their emissions (排放) from decaying (腐烂的) trees go beyond their carbon absorption. Forests could become a “substantial carbon source” by 2070, the USDA report says.
The loss of carbon absorption is driven in part by natural disasters such as wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes, which are increasing in frequency and strength as global temperatures rise. The disasters destroy forestland, destroying their ecosystem and decreasing their ability to absorb carbon, according to Lynn Riley, a senior manager of climate science at the American Forest Foundation. Aging forests also contribute. The report found that older, mature trees absorb less carbon than younger trees of the same species, and U. S. forests are rapidly aging.
This trend is likely to continue, as forests come under increasing threat from climate change and exploitation (开采). The typical tropical (热带的) forest may become a carbon source by the 2060s, according to Simon Lewis, professor in the school of geography at Leeds University. “Humans have been lucky so far, as tropical forests are cleaning up lots of our pollution, but they can’t keep doing that indefinitely,” he said. “We need to cut down fossil fuel emissions before the global carbon cycle starts working against us.”
U. S. forests currently absorb 11 percent of U. S. carbon emissions, or 150 million metric tons of carbon a year, equal to the combined emissions from 40 coal power plants, according to the report. The loss of forests as natural carbon absorbers will require the U. S. to cut emissions more rapidly to reach net zero. “As we work to decarbonize (碳减排), forests are one of the greatest tools at our handling. If we were to lose that, it means we will contribute that much more in emissions.” Riley said.
1. What does the underlined word “exacerbate” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Relieve. | B．Worsen. | C．Address. | D．Measure. |
| A．The key role of forests in the ecosystem. |
| B．The consequences of frequent natural disasters. |
| C．The impact of rising global temperatures on forests. |
| D．The reasons for forests’ declining ability to absorb carbon. |
| A．Reducing fossil fuel emissions. | B．Dealing with decaying trees in time. |
| C．Planting younger trees on a large scale. | D．Limiting the exploitation of forest resources. |
| A．To stress the significance of forests. |
| B．To offer suggestions on forest management. |
| C．To present the efforts the U. S. has made to reach net zero. |
| D．To show the increasing carbon emissions from coal power plants. |
Most people believe when they live comfortably and earn enough money, they will have worries. However, most people never feel they
7 . Vast numbers of copyrighted books appear to have been memorized by ChatGPT and its successor GPT-4, posing questions about the legality of how these large language models (LLMs) are created.
Both artificial intelligences were developed by private firm OpenAI and trained on huge amounts of data, but which texts make up this training data is unknown. To find out more, David Bamman at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues looked at whether the AIs were able to fill in missing details from a selection of almost 600 fiction books, drawn from sources such as nominees (被提名者) for the Pulitzer prize, and The New York Times’s bestsellers lists over the same time period.
The team picked 100 passages from each book that contained a single, named character. The researchers then blanked out the name and asked the AI to fill it in. This task was designed to expose if the AIs could return the exact right answer. “It really requires knowledge of the underlying material in order to be able to get the name right,” says Bamman.
Both AIs completed the task with high accuracy — as much as 98 percent for passages from Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — which is out of copyright — and 76 percent for J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which is not. The researchers say this suggests the AIs were trained on significant proportions of both books.
These AIs don’t produce an exact duplicate of a text in the same way as a photocopier, which is a clearer example of copyright infringement. “ChatGPT can recite parts of a book because it has seen it thousands of times,” says Andres Guadamuz at the University of Sussex, UK. “The model consists of statistical frequency of words. It’s not reproduction in the copyright sense.”
“The use of copyright works without permission in training data sets for large language or image models has already emerged as one of the most pressing legal challenges to this novel industry,” says Lilian Edwards at Newcastle University, UK.
Bamman says that, ultimately, the legal system in each country will have to determine whether LLMs are infringing (侵犯) copyrights. “I think that’s an open question that a lot of court cases are going to decide for us in the coming months,” he says.
Regulation is also likely to play a key role: the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act, which has been two years in the making, will include a requirement that companies making generative AI tools need to disclose any copyrighted material used to train their models. That was a late change, added to the draft law in April, according to Reuter.
1. Bamman and his colleagues designed the task to_________.| A．compare the accuracy rate of ChatGPT and GPT-4 |
| B．test the range of knowledge of ChatGPT and GPT-4 |
| C．show how ChatGPT and GPT-4 memorize many books |
| D．check what ChatGPT and GPT-4’s training data consist of |
| A．AIs were trained more on copyrighted works than those out of copyright. |
| B．Guadamuz thinks what AIs have done is a kind of copyright infringement. |
| C．AI companies need to uncover copyrighted materials used as training data. |
| D．The permission for the use of copyright works becomes a legal challenge. |
| A．The training process of AIs. | B．The legal uncertainty of AIs. |
| C．The future regulation of AIs. | D．The training materials of AIs. |
8 . Try Hard, but Not That Hard.
So many of us were raised with the belief of hard work and max effort, taught that what we put in was what we got out. Now, some coaches and corporate leaders have a new message.
Trying to run at top speed will actually lead to slower running times. Lifting heavy weights until you absolutely can’t any more won’t spark more muscle gain than stopping a little sooner. The trick — be it in exercise, or anything — is to try for 85%. Aiming for perfection often makes us feel awful, burns us out and backfires. Instead, count the fact that you hit eight out of 10 of your targets this quarter as a win.
“I already messed it up,” Sherri Phillips would regret after missing one of her daily personal goals. Last year, the COO of a Manhattan photography business began tracking metrics like her sleep quality and exercise time. It was only after she switched to aiming for 85% success over a week that she stuck with her efforts, instead of giving up when she missed a mark.
Dialing in on the sweet spot of 85% can help us grow. In a 2019 paper, researchers used machine learning to try to find the ideal difficulty level to learn new things. The neural network they created, meant to mimic the human brain, learned best when it was faced with queries (疑问) set to 85% difficulty, meaning it got questions right 85% of the time. If a task is too hard, humans get demotivated, says Bob Wilson, an author of the study. “If you never make any errors, you’re 100% accurate, well, you can’t learn from the mistakes.”
Ron Shaich, a founder and former CEO of restaurant chain Panera, is skeptical of people who hit 100% on sales targets. He wonders if the goals are too low. They should be ambitious enough that you won’t always get there, he says. Now an investor, board member and author of a coming business book that stresses 80% equals success, Shaich is convinced most companies don’t even hit that number.
Years ago, as a consultant, Grace Ueng learned the “80-20 rule.” The idea was to stop once you were 80% complete on a project, she says. Ueng recently took up piano. She practiced for long hours and still grimaced when she performed for her music group. Then she started tackling small chunks of a piece instead of running through the whole thing again and again. Before a recent performance, she read a book and went to church instead of putting in extra hours at the piano. When it was time to perform, she played well—and actually enjoyed it. “You have to have the wisdom,” she says, “to know when to stop.”
1. What is the main message of the passage?| A．Maximum effort is key to success. |
| B．Striving for perfection leads to burnout. |
| C．Consistent hard work guarantees success. |
| D．Proper aims and effort enhance performance. |
| A．Exceptional performance. |
| B．Perfect strategic planning. |
| C．Goals not ambitious enough. |
| D．High levels of employee motivation. |
| A．Bob Wilson thinks 100% accuracy gets people full of motivation. |
| B．Sherri Phillips would not regret any more after tracking 85% metrics. |
| C．Grace Ueng felt optimistic after she played the piano for a long time. |
| D．Researchers believe the ideal learning way is to face difficult queries. |
9 . Making use of the wind, the water or, for more than half of all plant species, animals, plants disperse (散播) seeds far and wide. Frugivores — animals such as gibbons that feed on the fleshy fruits of plants — eat and then excrete (排泄) seeds away from the original tree. The African savanna elephant can carry seeds up to a record-breaking distance of 65 kilometres. This ability to shift geographical ranges will be crucial to plants when it comes to surviving climate change. However, just like all gibbon species, the African savanna elephant is endangered, its population down by 60 percent over the past 50 years.
Researchers in Denmark and the USA have published a new study into how the loss of seed-dispersing animals could affect the resilience (恢复力) of forests and other natural ecosystems. They found that, historically, the decline of seed-dispersing animals has had the greatest influence on plants across the temperate (温带的) regions of North and South America, Europe and southern Australia. “Our temperate ecosystems have lost a lot of the natural seed-dispersal function that they would have had,” explains Evan Fricke, lead author of the study, referring to large mammals that were once widespread in these regions.
Nevertheless, the poor conservation status of many seed-dispersing tropical animals puts plants in regions such as Southeast Asia and Madagascar most at risk today. Without the preservation of such animals, global seed dispersal could decline by a further 15 percent. “The direct implication of this decline is that many plant species will be unable to keep pace with a changing climate,” says Fricke. “That means the potential loss not only of plant biodiversity but of the ecosystem functions that those plants provide.”
As wildlife is lost, plants can no longer adapt and survive and forests become less sustainable, which reduces the amount of carbon they can store. They also lose their ability to support wildlife. Whole ecosystems are disrupted. The conclusion, Fricke says, is clear: we must conserve currently endangered species and restore the populations of important seed dispersers. “Independent of climate change, rewilding has the potential to benefit our ecosystems, but in a changing climate, it has the added benefit of increasing the climate resilience of those ecosystems,” he says.
1. The author mentions the African savanna elephant in Paragraph 1 to ________.| A．provide a solution | B．predict the ending |
| C．express an opinion | D．highlight the problem |
| A．They are vital and endangered. |
| B．They are being well conserved. |
| C．They are unrelated to whole ecosystems. |
| D．They are widespread across the temperate regions. |
| A．Seed-dispersing animals play an important role in preventing climate change. |
| B．The loss of seed-dispersing animals has hardly affected temperate regions. |
| C．Rewilding can promote the climate resilience of our ecosystems. |
| D．Plants disperse seeds by way of animals excreting them. |
1. 推荐的小说；
2. 推荐的理由。
注意：1. 词数 100 左右；
2. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Jim,
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Yours，
Li Hua
