1 . An open letter, attracting signatures from the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, was released early last week. It advocates a 6-month stop to give Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies and regulators time to make safeguards to protect society from potential risks of the technology.
AI has progressed at an alarming speed since the launch of ChatGPT, from the Microsoft-backed company Open AI. ChatGPT reportedly reached more than 100 million users by January, 2023, and major tech companies are racing to build generative AI into their products, which have caught many off guard.
“I think many people aren’t well prepared for the pace and scale of these AI models. They are ideal for spreading misinformation, cheating people out of their money and convincing employees to click on dangerous links in emails,” says Michael Osborne, a machine learning researcher of AI company Mind Foundry, who signed the letter. “I feel that a 6-month pause would give regulators enough time to catch up with the rapid pace of advances.”
Privacy is another emerging concern, as critics worry that systems could exactly reproduce personal information from their training sets. Italy’s data protection authority prohibited ChatGPT on 31 March over concerns that Italians’ personal data are being used to train Open AI’s models. Some technologists warn of deeper security threats. Planned ChatGPT-based digital assistants that can read and write emails could offer new opportunities for hackers.
Unfortunately, many problems of today’s AI models don’t have easy solutions. One tricky issue is how to make AI-generated content easy to detect. Some researchers are working on “watermarking” — creating a digital signature in the AI’s output. However, a recent research finds that tools which slightly change AI-produced text can easily defeat this approach.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates tells Reuters the proposed pause won’t “solve the challenges” ahead. He notes the people behind the letter are heavily involved in the tech world, which he thinks gives them an arrow perspective on the potential risks.
1. What’s the purpose of the open letter?| A．To draw the attention of AI giants. |
| B．To present the risks of AI technology. |
| C．To call for a pause on the AI development. |
| D．To turn down the application of AI programs. |
| A．AI models threaten human survival. |
| B．AI users have expanded out of control. |
| C．AI development brings potential dangers. |
| D．AI technology will replace human beings. |
| A．It is hard to sign digitally. | B．It is easy to detect AI’s output. |
| C．It is wise to leave a water mark. | D．It is tough to settle AI problems. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Negative. |
| C．Ambiguous. | D．Tolerant. |
2 . It’s true that colleges and universities remain an important source of talent, but when a college degree becomes a box-checking, it unnecessarily places a barrier between skilled workers seeking better jobs and employers in need of their talents.
A degree is an achievement, but with careers stretching to half a century, a one-time intensive period of study is not enough. The reality is that with the current pace of technological change, everyone needs to continuously expand their skills, especially as industries keep changing. The same jobs today will require new skills five years from now.
Hiring those who have already developed some of these skills through other experiences -like lower-wage gateway jobs such as customer service representatives and computer support specialists -can jump start the training process and help companies future-proof their workforce.
Placing higher value on other proven tools - like professional certifications, which are on the rise in popularity, and evaluating candidates via behavioral questions that allow them to showcase their skills during the interview process, are other ways employers can identify someone’s ability to do the job.
In this age of uncertainty, when companies prioritize skills (not degrees), they can build a stronger workforce that has gained experiences via many different routes, which can help to avoid “group-think” and lead to more energetic and creative teams. Those that play by the rules of an old playbook from an old era will fall behind.
The labor market has long been one of the opaquest (不透明的) markets in the world, burdened by the inefficient and unequal ways we match talent and opportunity. Recognizing the diverse ways skills are acquired and adopting a skills-first approach to talent will bring greater transparency, efficiency and equity to the labor market, making it easier for anyone from anywhere to achieve anything.
1. What employees may help companies future-proof their workforce?| A．Those with a college degree. | B．Those who had done lower-wage jobs. |
| C．Those keeping pace with changes. | D．Those without work experiences. |
| A．Ability to use tools. | B．Popularity in previous jobs. |
| C．Achievements in college. | D．Skills shown in the interview. |
| A．Chances are for real talents. | B．It recognizes both degrees and skills. |
| C．A skills-first approach is adopted. | D．It’s still unbalanced and needs improving. |
| A．It’s Hard for People without a College Degree to Find a Good Job. |
| B．College Degrees Remains Important in Building a Strong Workforce. |
| C．It’s Time for Employers to Stop Caring So Much about College Degrees. |
| D．Anyone from Anywhere Can Achieve Anything in This Age of Uncertainty. |
3 . Four Amazing summer Camps in Bangkok
With the school year wrapping up, students will be at home for their long summer holidays. It’s that time of the year again for parents to seek the best summer camps in Bangkok to ensure their little ones do not get bored and restless. Here are four Bangkok summer camps with excellent reputations, some of which have been around for more than 100 years.
Bangkok Science Camp
Time: July 15-25, 2023
The Bangkok Science Camp is designed for high school students who have a passion for science and technology. During the camp, students will participate in hands-on workshops, listen to lectures, and conduct experiments. Topics covered include physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. Students will have the opportunity to work with experienced scientists and learn about cutting-edge research.
Bangkok Cultural Exchange Camp
Time: August 1-10, 2023
The Bangkok Cultural Exchange Camp is an opportunity for high school students to learn about Thai culture and history. During the camp, students will visit historic sites, participate in cultural activities, and learn about Thai traditions. Students will also have the opportunity to meet and interact with local students and learn about their daily lives.
Bangkok Volunteer Camp
Time: August 5-15, 2023
The Bangkok Volunteer Camp is an opportunity for high school students to make a positive impact on the local community. During the camp, students will participate in community service projects, such as teaching English to underprivileged children, helping with conservation efforts, and working with local charities.
Bangkok Entrepreneurship Camp
Time: August 5-15, 2023
The Bangkok Entrepreneurship Camp is designed for high school students who are interested in entrepreneurship and innovation. During the camp, students will learn about business concepts, develop their entrepreneurial skills, and work on a group project. Students will also have the opportunity to meet and learn from successful entrepreneurs in Bangkok.
Visit www.thaisummercamp.com/2023 for more information.
1. Which one can be a good candidate for Bangkok Science Camp?| A．An elementary school student who loves science. |
| B．A 12th grader who loves chemistry experiments. |
| C．A parent who has a passion for science. |
| D．A historian who likes to study Thailand. |
| A．Bangkok Science Camp. | B．Bangkok Cultural Exchange Camp. |
| C．Bangkok Volunteer Camp. | D．Bangkok Entrepreneurship Camp. |
| A．Their target group is students. |
| B．They all charge very expensive fees. |
| C．They all only accept people who can speak Thai. |
| D．They all run their activities in August. |
4 . If reducing stress has been on your summer to do list, there’s one powerful thing you can still do before the season ends: get in the habit of taking a walk outside with a friend.
A quick walk in nature with a friend combines three of the most effective stress-reducing and resilience(恢复力)building techniques: physical exercise, spending time in nature and social connection. The activity works by helping normalize the hormonal changes that result from long time stress and enhancing the emotional resources that help us cope.
Walking quickly activates(激活)the body`s stress response. And when the walk is over, the stress system comes back down to baseline. Regular exercise helps your stress response become more efficient, says Jennifer Heisz, associate professor at McMaster University.
As little as 10 minutes of sitting or walking in nature can decrease a person’s heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol levels, as well as self-reported stress levels. One possible explanation, the researchers say, is that spending time in nature lowers the activity of our sympathetic nervous system, which regulates stress hormones, and taps into the parasympathetic(副交感)nervous system, which promotes our calm and relaxation responses.
Taking that hike with a loved one can further reduce stress by adding the important element of social connection. Talking with trusted friends helps people process stressful events and lifts self-esteem. Social support has positive effects on the brain and body, scientific research finds.
Earlier this year, Cassie Moreno was in a rut of stress and anxiety. She was starting a new job, struggling to make new friends during the pandemic, and going through a breakup. Strolling along the Hudson River with other women, the 26-year-old Maine native says she felt an immediate surge of confidence and calm.
“I was, like, how do we live here? Look at the water! Look at the Statue of Liberty! How did we get this lucky?” she says.
1. What is the purpose of paragraph 2?| A．To explain a rule. | B．To clarify an argument. |
| C．To present a fact. | D．To introduce a topic. |
| A．Reducing blood pressure. | B．Lifting self-esteem. |
| C．Raising stress hormones. | D．Activating nervous system. |
| A．She was refreshed with confidence. |
| B．She was in a state of stress and anxiety. |
| C．She was struggling through a hard time. |
| D．She was amazed by the fantastic scenery. |
| A．By giving explanations. | B．By making comparisons. |
| C．By listing examples. | D．By proving assumptions. |
5 . The classic 1951 science fiction film “The Day the Earth Stood Still” features a frightening robot (Gort) whose threatening actions are under control only when he is commanded, “Klaatubaradanikto”. What does this mean? I don’t know. But when I overhear my students speaking to each other. I am often similarly confused.
I teach at a university. One of the “problems” is that as the years pass, I get older, but my students remain the same age —18 to 22. Early on, when I was in my 20s and 30s, this wasn’t an issue, as we were close enough in age to speak the same language. But lately I have become well aware that a language ship seems to have sailed, and I am not on board.
Let me illustrate. Recently, when I walked into my class, my students were chatting happily with each other. One of their comments caught my ear: “Venmo it to me.” I had no idea was “Venmo” meant, so I asked. The good-natured students were happy to explain it to me, and in return I nodded with an expression of silly embarrassment, as if I should have known better.
I went home that evening, absorbed in that moment of non-comprehension. I am not against change, but I am uncomfortable with change when its pace has me hanging on by my fingernails. If I were to awaken from a five-year nap, I’d have no idea what people were talking about. I just wouldn’t understand the language.
Their willingness to explain their words to me is a great comfort, and I congratulate myself on a least having the desire to know what they’re talking about, as well as on my ability—for the most part—to understand their explanations.
But what will happen if my interest wanes and that the language ship finally disappears over the horizon? The answer, to me, is clear: Klaatubaradanikto.
1. What did the author probably meet with?| A．Hearing loss. | B．Cultural shock. |
| C．A language barrier. | D．A frightening robot. |
| A．Learning needs. | B．Age difference. |
| C．Teaching loads. | D．Language abuse. |
| A．It is entirely avoidable. | B．It is really small. |
| C．It is very beneficial. | D．It is much too rapid. |
| A．Lessens. | B．Grows. | C．Happens. | D．Maintains. |
6 . As I write about technology for a living, I’m used to seeing small leaps in technological progress. But occasionally, something will shock me. Last year, a company, Open AI, released a truly jaw-dropping demonstration called ChatGPT that seems to have skipped a few generations. It’s like going straight from the Wright Brothers to a Boeing 747. So what exactly is it?
“ChatGPT is a computer program that can understand and respond to human language like a real person. It can be used for having a conversation or finishing a sentence. Even this sentence you are reading now, was written by ChatGPT.”
That’s right—I asked ChatGPT to “write a basic explanation of ChatGPT and reveal that the paragraph itself was written by ChatGPT at the end” and it came up with that explanation all on its own. It seemingly knows how to talk about everything—from politics to science fiction.
Amazingly, it seems so human in its ability to understand questions and answer them competently. “Write a story about Boris Johnson in the style of Roald Dahl,” you can ask it, and it’ll spin up a pretty good children’s story. It can even write songs.
It isn’t, however, completely human-like. It sometimes generates things that sound true, but are just nonsense. And it can’t do maths—I asked it the square root of 717,409, and it told “approximately 838.8” (the answer is 847).
I think ChatGPT is like a calculator. It doesn’t replace the human completely-but it does make doing the sums quicker. In the same way, it’s easy to imagine in the near future every time we write something, having an AI assistant helping us get started by generating a draft, on whatever topic we’re writing about. Actually, Microsoft is planning to build the technology into its Office apps. And this is why I’m pretty convinced that ChatGPT is going to change the world. Our computers will no longer be just our word processors—but our writing partner too. So now I’m just hoping that my editor doesn’t decide it could write a pretty decent technology column without me.
1. What does the writer want to show by mentioning Wright Brothers and Boeing747 in paragraph I?| A．OpenAI has advanced in making planes. |
| B．ChatGPT will soon be applied to Boeing 747 |
| C．ChatGPT is a huge technological breakthrough. |
| D．Wright Brothers may be forgotten by next generations. |
| A．ChatGPT’s imagination in creating science fiction. |
| B．ChatGPT’s rich knowledge of politics and science. |
| C．ChatGPT’s confidence in excelling human intelligence. |
| D．ChatGPT’s ability to understand and answer questions. |
| A．Caring for the patients in hospital. | B．Calculating square roots accurately. |
| C．Replacing teachers to teach students. | D．Explaining why London is a better city. |
| A．A column writer. | B．A technology expert. |
| C．A magazine editor. | D．A computer programmer. |
7 . ChatGPT--a conversational language model which was launched in November and is free and simple to use -- can swiftly produce poems, math equations or essays on topics, bringing concern that students will misuse the technology. And because it doesn’t copy an existing text, there is no easy way to be certain whether a human or a bot wrote the answer.
As many educators began to worry about whether students may use ChatGPT to generate papers, Edward Tian had an idea. The 22-year-old student, who studies computer science and journalism, decided to build an app to detect whether a text- was human-written or AI-written.
Over a few days in a Toronto coffee shop during winter break, he got to work. On Jan. 2, he launched’ GPTZero. It analyzes different properties of a text for its “perplexity”, which is the randomness of the text, and the “burstiness”, which is the variation of the text over time. So, a human-written text would have high perplexity, something very unfamiliar to an Al model, and exhibit properties of burstiness, which are non-common items that appear in random clusters (集 群), rather than being uniformly distributed.
Tian said he expected a few dozen people to ever try it. But he woke up the next morning stunned by the response. He has even heard from people all over the world— many of them are teachers or college admissions officers, Many people have subscribed for updates from Tian as he works to improve the technology.
The quick response to Tian’s effort highlighted the breakneck pace at which technology is changing classrooms, teaching, and the ways that people define and understand learning. Tian believed everyone deserved to reap the benefits of Al, but safeguards were needed to make sure new technologies were not abused.
Tian said it would be sad if, years from now, people mostly relied on AI and writing became far more uniform. “There’s something implicitly(含蓄地) beautiful in human prose,” he said, “that computers can never copy.”
1. Why did Edward Tian create GPTZero?| A．To predict abuse of ChatGPT. |
| B．To analyse properties of texts. |
| C．To relieve educators of anxiety. |
| D．To recognize Al-generated texts. |
| A．They are random and varied. |
| B．They are plain and unfamiliar. |
| C．They are common and diverse. |
| D．They are uniform and complex. |
| A．It is safely guarded. |
| B．It is highly anticipated. |
| C．It is quickly updated. |
| D．It is thoroughly developed. |
| A．Human will win the competition against AI. |
| B．Most people will benefit from AI in the future. |
| C．Writing will become more common than before. |
| D．There is incomparable charm in Human writings. |
My mom is a world class chef, at least in my eyes. She is capable of the most dangerous cooking crafts, ranging from southern to northern Chinese cuisine, spiced with some Western influences.
As her daughter, I felt it a responsibility to use this time living at home to learn a few family dishes. I grew up watching my mom spin in the kitchen and I dutifully ate all the remainders. It seemed that Chinese cuisine was full of flexible rules and the ways could be dangerous and thrilling. It’s about time that I should stir (搅动) my appetite for cooking and not just for eating.
I was starting to cook at the not－so－tender age of 18. I could actually pull off a few Western dishes in fashion. But Chinese food was a whole new scene. I stepped into the new world with some great fear. Ahead of me was a war of massive mission — cutting, frying, chopping. HOT OIL. BURNING. But at least I figured I might find some cooking genes.
We began with a simple but hearty Chinese noodle dish: the egg and tomato noodle with green onion. With my mom’s excited looks, I pulled over my apron (围裙). The beginning of the lesson started off smoothly enough. I washed the tomatoes with great expertise. I proceeded to wash the eggs.
It started getting heated when I was separating the egg yolks from the egg whites. It was quite depressing. It took a good 10 minutes before the mission was completed. The next step was beating the eggs with just a small amount of water. This wasn’t too bad. Even cutting up the tomatoes wasn’t too difficult.
The worst part was to come — the eggs frying in a pot. I’m deadly afraid of hot oil. I danced around nervously, waiting for the oil to get to the right temperature. “See if the oil is ready,” my mom asked. I gave her a question mark. She sighed in despair, “Go put your hand over the oil.”
注意：1续写词数应为150左右;
2请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
“You want me to dangerously drop my hand over the hot oil?” I repeated unbelievably.
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Eventually, I placed my “masterpiece” on the table.
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9 . It’s important to be able to talk to people when networking and building strong relationships. If you work in a professional role, you probably need to make small talk sometimes. However, you may don’t know how to make small talk. Don’t worry.
Put your electronic devices away. The first step to making small talk is to put your devices away. This is a small but meaningful gesture in this digitalized world.
Listen first. In social situations, one way to show you are offering your full attention is to listen.
Ask open questions.
| A．Respond enthusiastically. |
| B．Here are some tips for you. |
| C．They are some simple but useful methods. |
| D．Behave properly in response to open questions. |
| E．When you are talking with someone, listening is also important. |
| F．When you ask about the person you are speaking to, ask open-ended questions. |
| G．Putting your phone or computer away shows you focus on the person you are talking to. |
10 . There’s a phrase in Australia that is still widely in use today, “you’ve got Buckley’s”. It relates to a man named William Buckley.
Born in Cheshire, England, Buckley had served in the Napoleonic Wars where he was wounded in action, before being accused of receiving stolen goods (a roll of cloth) and sentenced to transportation (流放) for life in 1802. Buckley arrived at Port Phillip Bay with more than 300 soldiers, settlers and prisoners in 1803, aged 23.
However, the settlers failed to settle at Port Phillip Bay and they gave up the site they chose for their settlement. As the settlers prepared to leave for Tasmania, Buckley escaped with 2 other men. But after reaching the other side of Port Phillip Bay the two tired, hungry and frightened men turned back for Sullivan Bay.
Buckley would not give up and he wandered on alone, eating shellfish and fruits for several weeks before he was befriended by the Wathaurong people. Over the next 32 years Buckley lived with the Wathaurong and learnt their language and customs.
When John Batman, a leading member of the Port Phillip Association, arrived with new settlers in 1835, Buckley finally decided to meet them. At first he couldn’t remember his own language or name but managed to identify himself by the letters “WB” on his arm. He tried to work for the settlers and was employed as an interpreter between the settlers and the aborigines (土著人). But he felt he wasn’t trusted by either side. After less than 2 years he left for Hobart where he died after an accident in January 1856.
Buckley’s story has been reinterpreted many times over the years. His name lives on in Australian English with the saying “you’ve got Buckley’s”. It means very little chance—despite the fact that the real Buckley took his impossible chance for freedom and survived.
1. Why did William Buckley leave England?| A．He was found guilty. | B．He tried to escape war. |
| C．He was caught stealing. | D．He hoped for a better life. |
| A．They suffered many hardships. | B．Two of them died of starvation. |
| C．They met the Wathaurong people. | D．Buckley gave up on the other two. |
| A．He worked as an interpreter. |
| B．He earned his living in Hobart. |
| C．He got on well with Batman’s settlers. |
| D．He stayed with the Wathaurong people. |
| A．When a person survived a disaster. |
| B．When a person isn’t trusted by people. |
| C．When a person tries to do something interesting. |
| D．When a person wants to take a flight on a stormy night. |
