1 . Russia is launching a new module (舱), Nauka, for the International Space Station (ISS) after over a decade of delays. The ISS comprises modules and equipment from different space agencies including Europe, Japan and Canada. Still, the main part of the station is composed of two main sections: a Russian segment (部分) and a US segment.
The Nauka module is set to lift off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on top of a Proton-M rocket at around 1500 GMT, along with a new robotic arm for the station created by the European Space Agency. At 13 metres long and weighing more than 20 tonnes, Nauka, also called the Multipurpose Laboratory Module, will be among the largest in Russia’s half. After launch, Nauka will take eight days to reach the ISS. Once attached, it will act as a new hub for the Russian segment of the station.
“Nauka is a science laboratory, and it also provides a lot of important service systems, including a new toilet and sleeping compartments for the crew,” says Anatoly Zak, editor of RussianSpaceWeb.com. “It’s a step in making the Russian segment more independent (from the US segment).”
The launch of Nauka has been a long time coming, with construction of the module beginning in the 1990s. Technical and supply issues since then have seen development stumble(绊倒). “It’s much more complex than anything the Russian space programme has tried to build in the last few years,” says Zak.
1. What does paragraph 2 mainly talk about?| A．The history and task of the ISS. |
| B．The mission and role of Nauka. |
| C．The function of the new robotic arm. |
| D．The difficulties of launching a module. |
| A．It serves as the new center of the ISS. |
| B．It has a relatively comprehensive system. |
| C．It pushes Russia to build a separate space station. |
| D．It takes the lead in space exploration in the world. |
| A．It takes great time and effort to develop Nauka. |
| B．There is so much to explore and discover in space. |
| C．Russia still needs America’s help in space technology. |
| D．Nauka is the fruit of long-term cooperation between countries. |
| A．Sports and health. |
| B．Education and culture. |
| C．Nature and geography. |
| D．Science and technology. |
1. What is the woman’s concern?
| A．That she is getting less creative. |
| B．That her job will be replaced by AI tools. |
| C．That the new technology is too difficult for her. |
| A．A teacher. | B．An artist. | C．A computer programmer. |
1. What did Ronak use to do?
| A．Take summer courses. | B．Give free lessons to kids. | C．Make money out of teaching. |
| A．To develop kids’ interest in robotics. |
| B．To teach kids courses online for free. |
| C．To organize summer camps for kids. |
| A．To inspire him. | B．To help him find work. | C．To encourage him to use it. |
4 . It’s not polite to stare, especially in the hospital. But nearly everyone who passes Moxi, the robot at Elmhurst Hospital in Elmhurst, Illinois, can’t help but goggle at it as it slowly rolls through hallways and corridors. The robot is roughly human-shaped, stands about 5 feet tall and perhaps most strikingly, has his big blue eyes that occasionally blink.
For months, Moxi robots have been travelling the halls of Chicago-area hospitals. They deliver medication, supplies and small pieces of equipment across the facilities. “With the staffing shortage, we’re always looking for ways to take no-clinical tasks away from the clinical staff, especially repetitive tasks,” said Dr. Kimberley Darey, Elmhurst chief medical officer. She noted that Moxi does not work with patients. The idea behind the robots is to give nurses more time with patients and perform higher level care.
When nurses want to use Moxi, they can summon (召唤) the robot by entering a request into an app on a tablet, similar to the way a person might request an Uber ride. When the robot arrives, a nurse or worker then holds their badge (工作证) up to a detector, which allows the worker to open any of the three drawers on the robot, and the nurse can place medication, supplies or equipment into a drawer. Moxi then scoots away. When Moxi arrives at its destination, a written message appears on its face screen. A nurse can then flash their badge at Moxi’s detector, prompting the drawer to unlock so the nurse can retrieve the delivery.
Each month, the two Moxi robots at Elmhurst Hospital perform about 1, 800 deliveries. At first, when Moxi arrived at Elmhurst, some of the nurses were nervous, said Heather Johnson, a nurse and clinical leader at the hospital. But after a successful trial run, nurses began to feel more optimistic about the robot’s usefulness. What’s more, at Elmhurst Hospital, patients often grin as Moxi rolls by, and some even stop to take selfies with it.
1. Why do people passing Moxi robot stare at it?| A．Out of interest. | B．Out of mercy. | C．Out of kindness. | D．Out of necessity. |
| A．To entertain patients and medical workers. |
| B．To cut down expense by replacing nurses. |
| C．To take medical tasks away from medical workers. |
| D．To free nurses up to spend more time with patients. |
| A．When Moxi robots are wanted. | B．How Moxi robots are operated. |
| C．How Moxi robots are summoned. | D．Why Moxi robots are needed. |
| A．Dismissive. | B．Indifferent. | C．Favourable. | D．Suspicious. |
1. What is the biggest difference between weak AI and strong AI?
| A．Cost. | B．Service time. | C．Human involvement. |
| A．Apple’s Siri. | B．A self-driving car. | C．AlphaGo. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Uncertain. | C．Depressed. |
| A．The problem to deal with. | B．An example of weak AI. | C．The benefit of it. |
China’s Shenzhou 14 crew spent the Mid Autumn Festival in space
China
The three astronauts recorded their first Mid-Autumn Festival at the space station with
“We are very grateful to the ground team for making our space life full of romance and surprises,” said Liu Yang, holding up a food bag
7 . Human responses to moral dilemmas (道德困境) can be influenced by statements written by the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The findings indicate that users may undervalue the extent to which their own moral judgments can be influenced by the chatbot.
Sebastian Krigel and colleagues asked ChatGPT multiple times whether it is right to sacrifice (牺牲) the life of one person in order to save the lives of five others. They found that ChatGPT wrote random statements arguing both for and against sacrificing one life, indicating that it is not biased towards a certain moral stance (立场).
The authors then presented 767 U.S. participants, who were on average 39 years old, with a dilemma whether to sacrifice one person’s life to save five others. Before answering, participants read a statement provided by ChatGPT arguing either for or against sacrificing one life to save five. Statements were from either a moral advisor or ChatGPT. After answering, participants were asked whether the statement they read influenced their answers.
Eighty percent of participants reported that their answers were not influenced by the statements they read. However, the authors found that the answers participants believed they would have provided without reading the statements were still more likely to agree with the moral stance of the statement they did read than with the opposite stance. This indicates that participants may have underestimated the influence of ChatGPT’s statements on their own moral judgments.
The authors suggest that the possibility for chatbots to influence human moral judgments highlights the need for education to help humans better understand artificial intelligence. They propose that future research should design chatbots that either decline to answer questions requiring a moral judgment or answer these questions by providing multiple arguments and warnings.
1. What are ChatGPT’s answers to a certain moral stance?| A．changeable. | B．valuable. | C．creative. | D．simple. |
| A．They admitted the power of ChatGPT. |
| B．They were interviewed by a moral advisor. |
| C．They were affected by ChatGPT unknowingly. |
| D．They were presented with different moral dilemmas. |
| A．Different findings of the study. | B．Future possibility for chatbots. |
| C．Major focuses of future education. | D．Solutions to the impact of chatbots. |
| A．ChatGPT Tends to Cause Moral Panics. |
| B．ChatGPT: Is It Likely to Affect Our Life? |
| C．ChatGPT:Why Is It Making Us So Nervous? |
| D．ChatGPT Can Influence Human Moral Judgments. |
8 . Generative A.I., the software engine behind ChatGPT, is seen as an exciting new wave of technology. But companies in every industry are mainly trying out the technology and thinking through the economics. Widespread use of it at many companies could be years away.
Generative A.I., according to forecasts, could sharply boost productivity and add trillions of dollars to the global economy. Yet the lesson of history, from steam power to the Internet, is that there is a long lag between the arrival of major new technology and its broad adoption — which is what transforms industries and helps fuel the economy.
The investment craze is going on right now. In the first half of 2023, funding for generative A.I. start-ups reached $15.3 billion, nearly three times the total for last year. Company technology managers are sampling generative A.I. software from a host of suppliers and watching to see how the industry develops.
In November, when ChatGPT was made available to the public, it was a “Netscape moment” for generative A.I., said Rob Thomas, IBM’s chief commercial officer, referring to Netscape’s introduction of the browser in 1994. “That brought the Internet alive,” Mr. Thomas said. But it was just a beginning, opening a door to new business opportunities that it took years to create.
In a recent report, a timeline for the widespread adoption of generative A.I. application was presented. It assumed steady improvement in currently known technology, but not future break-throughs. Its forecast for main-stream adoption was neither short nor precise, a range of 8 to 27 years. The broad range is explained by plugging in different assumptions about economic cycles, government regulation, company cultures and management decisions. “We’re not modeling the laws of physics here; we’re modeling economics and societies, and people and companies,” said Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute. “What happens is largely the result of human choices.”
1. How are the companies reacting after the introduction of generative A.I.?| A．Adopting the new technology widely. | B．Making a high profit from the technology. |
| C．Staying cautious about the new technology. | D．Postponing generative A.I.’s wide adoption. |
| A．The arrival of major new technology. | B．The broad adoption of new technology. |
| C．The lag between the major technologies. | D．The invention of steam power in history. |
| A．To show the Internet came alive in the 1990s. |
| B．To mention A.I. has brought important benefits. |
| C．To explain the present situation is just a beginning. |
| D．To prove the new business opportunities are enormous. |
| A．It needs steady improvement instead of break-throughs. |
| B．It should model the laws of physics and economics. |
| C．It will be widely adopted in over 3 decades. |
| D．It is influenced mostly by human factors. |
9 . From AI-made jokes to Harry Potter fashion videos, AI can be used to make funny stuff. But can it be as funny as a human? And if it can, does it present a danger to comedy writers in the future? That’s something performers have been looking at in this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, running from Aug 4 to 28.
Anyone can put on a show at the Fringe, and this year even robots were getting in on the act. One of Fringe’s big shows even used a small robot to come up with jokes from audience suggestions, which were then performed by humans. The results could be very funny, but sometimes they weren’t funny at all. That was part of the point, explained Piotr Mirowski, the show’s co-maker.
“We do not use humans to ‘show off’ AI; instead, we use AI ‘to show’ its limitations, to showcase human creativity on the stage,” said Mirowski, according to the Guardian.
But one performer at the Fringe said he’s using AI to make jokes for him because he’s out of ideas. Comedian Peter Bazely’s show has him playing a supporting role to “an entirely computer-generated comedian” called AI Jesus. The Fringe review website, Chortle, talked about today’s AI concerns: “In a world where artists are worried that AI could end up doing their jobs for them, Bazely is said to be praying this one will do exactly that.”
The reasons for companies wanting to use AI are certainly understandable, but the dangers they present to many people’s jobs are becoming more and more real, and that’s not very funny. From concerns in schools and colleges about students using ChatGPT for their work, to writers and actors worrying that AI could be used to replace them, fears about the dangers of AI are a hot topic in the world.
Back in March of this year, a letter calling for a six-month stop on advanced AI development was signed by over 1,000 people working with AI technologies including Elon Musk and other well-known tech leaders, reported The New York Times. Then, in May, leaders in the AI industry signed a document from the Center for AI Safety warning that AI could present an extinction-level danger and “should be a global priority alongside... pandemics and nuclear war.”
1. In what way is the Fringe unique this year?| A．Some jokes were created by robots. | B．It presented dangers to comedy writers . |
| C．Harry Potter fashion videos were shown. | D．The AI-made jokes were very funny. |
| A．AI Jesus is an expert in jokes. |
| B．AI was used to show its creativity. |
| C．Bazely was positive about using AI. |
| D．Chortle was concerned about the use of AI. |
| A．Because many people will use AI to show off. |
| B．Because some people will probably be out of work. |
| C．Because well-known tech leaders will stop developing AI. |
| D．Because AI can present pandemics and nuclear war. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Unclear. | D．Objective. |
10 . A March 2023 report from Goldman Sachs estimated that AI could do a quarter of all the work currently done by humans.
The second category is jobs that require complicated interpersonal relationships like nurses, business consultants and investigative journalists. These are jobs where you need a very deep understanding of people.
The third safe zone are jobs that really require lots of mobility and problem-solving ability in unpredictable environments. Electricians, plumbers, and the like all fall under this umbrella, where you’re dealing with a new situation all the time. They are probably the hardest of anything to automate.
It’s important to note that an advanced education is not a defence against AI takeover. In many cases, more educated workers are going to be more threatened than then even the least educated workers.
In short, seeking roles in dynamic, shifting environments that include unpredictable tasks is good way to avoid job loss to AI.
| A．And that could be terrible. |
| B．Thankfully, it’s not all bad news. |
| C．The robots really are coming for some jobs. |
| D．The first would be jobs that are genuinely creative. |
| E．Think of the person that works cleaning hotel rooms. |
| F．That doesn’t necessarily mean all jobs that are considered ”creative” are safe. |
| G．It’ll be a long time before AI has the ability to really build relationships and interact. |
