1 . What would you do if you walked up to a robot with a human-like head and it smiled at you first? You’d likely smile back and perhaps feel the two of you were genuinely interacting. But how does a robot know how to do this? Or a better question, how does it know to get you to smile back?
While we’re getting accustomed to robots that are expert at verbal (口头的) communication, thanks in part to advancements in large language models like ChatGPT, their nonverbal communication skills, especially facial expressions, have fallen far behind.
The Creative Machines Lab has been working on this challenge for more than five years. In a new study, the group unveils Emo, a robot. To train the robot how to make facial expressions, the researchers put Emo in front of the camera and let it do random movements. After a few hours, the robot learned the relationship between their facial expressions and the movement orders — much the way humans practice facial expressions by looking in the mirror. This is similar to our human ability to imagine what we look like when we make certain expressions.
Then the team ran videos of human facial expressions for Emo to observe them one after another. After training, which lasts a few hours, Emo could predict people’s facial expressions by observing tiny changes in their faces as they begin to form an intent to smile. It can not only make a wide range of facial expressions but also knows when to use them.
“I think predicting human facial expressions accurately is a revolution. Traditionally, robots have not been designed to consider humans’expressions during interactions. Now, the robot can integrate human facial expressions as feedback,” said Yuhang Hu. “When a robot makes co-expressions with people in real-time, it not only improves the interaction quality but also helps in building trust between humans and robots. In the future, when interacting with a robot, it will observe and understand your facial expressions, just like a real person.”
1. Why does the author ask questions in paragraph 1?| A．To stress the sincere interaction. |
| B．To show curiosity about robots. |
| C．To get readers engaged in the subject. |
| D．To prove the power of smiling. |
| A．By making it force a smile. |
| B．By asking it to look in the mirror. |
| C．By recording its expression at random. |
| D．By employing a way of self modeling. |
| A．Interact with humans like a friend. |
| B．Prepare facial expression in advance. |
| C．Read the mind of humans in an active way. |
| D．Recognize and respond to real-time human expressions. |
| A．Emo Robot Makes Quick Facial Reactions |
| B．Robots Can Smile at Human Beings Now |
| C．Emo Robot Reads Human Mind Exactly |
| D．Robots Can Interact with You Naturally |
2 . During my daughter’s first year at school, her teacher dismissed our concerns about her shaky pencil hold by saying: “Don’t worry, handwriting is on its way out. By the time she’s in year 12, they’ll all be typing or voice-dictating their exams.”
Fast-forward 12 long school years and that now grown-up girl is in her final high-school exams. And of the many hours of articles and long and short answers, every single page, line, word and letter will be handwritten. Every single primary-school teacher undertook at the start of each year to fix her handwriting but it never changed.
My high school had company typing classes. It was so boring but I say that typing is the very best thing I learned at school. In all my work—as a health professional, a writer and an online teacher—being able to type efficiently, quickly and exactly has been invaluable. As a writer, I can type reasonably accurate notes during an interview, all while looking at the person I’m speaking with. As writing rates have been inactive or going backwards, I’d have a much harder time if I couldn’t type so well.
A group of friends who went to high school says that I’m fortunate to have had compulsory typing lessons, as some schools only offered it to girls, and some friends deliberately shunned the subject in order to avoid gender-based opinions that they wanted to become a secretary.
You might be thinking that none of this will be an issue for much longer, given how far voice recognition tech has come and how ChatGPT can produce writing within seconds. In fact, the increased availability of AI will perhaps mean that handwritten exams will be around for even longer, as seeing someone put pen to paper is one of the few ways we have of promising original work.
Efficient handwriting and fast and correct typing are skills that perhaps should be more highly valued by educators and employers. Learning to hand-write and type might be boring but I predict that they’ll still be important skills even when today’s little ones are in year 12.
1. What does the example of the author’s daughter prove?| A．Handwriting isn’t out of date. | B．His concern turned out true. |
| C．Students like voice-dictating exams. | D．Adults can’t fix their handwriting. |
| A．It earned him a big come. | B．It made him work more effectively. |
| C．It brought more job chances for him. | D．It helped him survive his hard life. |
| A．Put up with. | B．Keep away from. |
| C．Take advantage of. | D．Get used to. |
| A．The application of AI. | B．The value of education. |
| C．The originality of our works. | D．The efficiency of exams. |
3 . Our species’ incredible capacity to quickly acquire words from 300 by age 2 to over 1, 000 by age 4 isn’t fully understood. Some cognitive scientists and linguists have theorized that people are born with built-in expectations and logical constraints (约束) that make this possible. Now, however, machine-learning research is showing that preprogrammed assumptions aren’t necessary to swiftly pick up word meanings from minimal data.
A team of scientists has successfully trained a basic artificial intelligence model to match images to words using just 61 hours of naturalistic footage (镜头) and sound-previously collected from a child named Sam in 2013 and 2014. Although it’s a small slice of a child’s life, it was apparently enough to prompt the AI to figure out what certain words mean.
The findings suggest that language acquisition could be simpler than previously thought. Maybe children “don’t need a custom-built, high-class language-specific mechanism” to efficiently grasp word meanings, says Jessica Sullivan, an associate professor of psychology at Skidmore College. “This is a really beautiful study, ” she says, because it offers evidence that simple information from a child’s worldview is rich enough to kick-start pattern recognition and word comprehension.
The new study also demonstrates that it’s possible for machines to learn similarly to the way that humans do. Large language models are trained on enormous amounts of data that can include billions and sometimes trillions of word combinations. Humans get by on orders of magnitude less information, says the paper’s lead author Wai Keen Vong. With the right type of data, that gap between machine and human learning could narrow dramatically.
Yet additional study is necessary in certain aspects of the new research. For one, the scientists acknowledge that their findings don’t prove how children acquire words. Moreover, the study only focused on recognizing the words for physical objects.
Still, it’s a step toward a deeper understanding of our own mind, which can ultimately help us improve human education, says Eva Portelance, a computational linguistics researcher. She notes that AI research can also bring clarity to long-unanswered questions about ourselves. “We can use these models in a good way, to benefit science and society, ” Portelance adds.
1. What is a significant finding of machine-learning research?| A．Vocabulary increases gradually with age. |
| B．Vocabulary can be acquired from minimal data. |
| C．Language acquisition is tied to built-in expectations. |
| D．Language acquisition is as complex as formerly assumed. |
| A．Facilitate. | B．Persuade. | C．Advise. | D．Expect. |
| A．Its limitations. | B．Its strengths. | C．Its uniqueness. | D．Its process. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Cautious. | C．Dismissive. | D．Positive. |
On Nov. 3, 2022, the Mengtian lab module of China’s Tiangong space station carried out a crucial transpositioning operation,
The lab module is about 17.9 meters long and
Liu Guoning, deputy chief designer of the scientific cabinet system, said the scientific experiments
In 2022, China launched two new crewed spaceships-Shenzhou XIV and Shenzhou XV respectively on June 5 and Nov. 29. On Nov. 30, the six Chinese astronauts from the two missions marked a
After accomplishing many “firsts” during their six-month space station mission, three Chinese astronauts on board the Shenzhou XIV manned spaceship returned to Earth
5 . AI is just now starting to go mainstream, but these classic films about AI have been exploring the future of artificial intelligence for decades.
Ex Machina
In Ex Machina, a computer programmer is selected by the genius CEO of the company he works for to take part in an experiment involving the Turing test (图灵测试)with an impressive AI robot named Ava, convincingly played by a real actress.
A. I. Artificial Intelligence
No list on films featuring AI would be complete without A. I. Artificial Intelligence where a young AI boy with human-like feelings is left out by his human mother. As is so often the way, the questions posed by the story make the film way ahead of its time. What responsibility would humanity hold for an artificial intelligence that is advanced enough to actually experience feelings and emotional turmoil (混乱)？
I, Robot
As humans and robots struggle to survive together, and sometimes against each other, on Earth and in space, the future of both hangs in the balance. Here human men and women confront robots gone mad, telepathic robots, robot politicians, and vast robotic intelligence that may already secretly control the world. And both are asking the same questions: What is human? And is humanity out of date?
Brian and Charles
When an inventor in a Welsh village develops an AI being that looks like a mature professor who acts nothing like it, the result is quite possibly the funniest film of the decade so far. This is a film that is the perfect antidote to the apocalyptic threats surrounding modern life in the 21st century.
1. Who took the Turing test in the film Ex Machina?| A．A CEO. | B．An AI boy. |
| C．An inventor. | D．A programmer. |
| A．He is played by Ava. |
| B．He is experiencing emotional turmoil. |
| C．He is a life-like robot turning bad. |
| D．He is an orphan in real world. |
| A．I, Robot. | B．Ex Machina. |
| C．Brian and Charles. | D．A. I. Artificial Intelligence. |
The advancement of technology has led to the development of AI. AI systems are now capable of performing many tasks, such as recognizing speech, understanding natural language, and even diagnosing medical conditions. However,
One of the primary concerns is the potential for AI systems to show existing biases. AI systems are often trained on large datasets
Privacy is also a critical issue, as AI systems often rely on large amounts of personal data to function
The development and use of AI present both opportunities and challenges. To ensure a
1. What do we know about this manned flight mission?
| A．It has the longest staying time. |
| B．It is the hardest to operate. |
| C．It travels at the fastest speed. |
| A．Play cards. | B．Play tennis. | C．Play instruments. |
| A．Women are less suitable in this mission. |
| B．Women are as excellent as men. |
| C．Women undertake more than men do. |
8 . Could an app tell if a first date is just not that into you? Engineers at the University of Cincinnati say the technology might not be far off. They trained a computer—using data from reparable technology that measures respiration, heart rates and perspiration to identify the type of conversation two people were having based on their physiological responses alone.
Researchers studied a phenomenon in which people’s heart rates, respiration and other autonomic nervous system responses become synchronized (同步的) when they talk or collaborate. Known as physiological synchrony, this effect is stronger when two people engage deeply in a conversation or cooperate closely on a task. “Physiological synchrony shows up even when people are talking over Zoom, an online chat platform,” said study co-author Vesna Novak.
In experiments with human participants, the computer was able to differentiate four different conversations with as much as 75% accuracy. The study is one of the first of its kind to train artificial intelligence how to recognize aspects of a conversation based on the participants’ physiology alone.
“The computer could tell if you’re a bore,” lead author Chatterjee said. “A modified version of our system could measure the level of interest a person is taking in the conversation, how harmonious the two of you are and how engaged the other person is in the conversation.”
Studies have shown that physiological synchrony can predict how well two people will work together to accomplish a task. The degree of synchrony also correlates with how much empathy a patient perceives in a therapist or the level of engagement students feel with their teachers.
“You could probably use our system to determine which people in an organization work better together in a group and which are naturally opposed,” Chatterjee said.
This aspect of affective computing holds huge potential for providing real-time feedback for educators, therapists or even autistic people, Novak said, “There are a lot of potential applications in this space.”
1. What did the engineers train the computer to do in the study?| A．Record conversations. | B．Smooth conversations. |
| C．Judge conversations. | D．Provide conversation tips. |
| A．How we develop talking skills. | B．How physiological synchrony works. |
| C．Why chatting online gets popular. | D．Why physiological synchrony matters. |
| A．By offering them some teaching skills. |
| B．By helping them correcting homework. |
| C．By creating a relaxing studying atmosphere. |
| D．By providing them with students’ participation level. |
| A．Stay or pass? This computer can tell. | B．Good or bad? That is a big problem. |
| C．What can the computer do for patients? | D．How can we improve our people skills? |
9 . Amazon’s Alexa might soon replicate the voice of family members — even if they’re dead. The capability, announced at Amazon’s Re: Mars conference in Las Vegas, is in development and would allow the virtual assistant to reproduce the voice of a specific person based on a less than a minute of provided recording.
Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, said at the event Wednesday that the desire behind the feature was to build greater trust in the interactions users have with Alexa by putting more “human qualities of empathy and affect.”
“These qualities have become even more important during the ongoing pandemic when so many of us have lost ones that we love,” Prasad said. “While AI can’t get rid of that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last.”
In a video played by Amazon at the event, a young child asks “Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?” Alexa then acknowledges the request, and switches to another voice imitate the child’s grandmother. The voice assistant then continues to read the book in that same voice.
To create the feature, Prasad said the company had to learn how to make a “high-quality voice” with a shorter recording instead of hours of recording in a studio. Amazon did not provide further details about the feature, which is bound to spark more privacy concerns and moral questions.
1. Which one can best replace the underlined word in paragraph one?| A．reproduce | B．reduce | C．rebuild | D．review |
| A．To make Alexa easier to use. |
| B．To get rid of users’ pain of losing their family member. |
| C．To develop more trust in the communications between users and Alexa. |
| D．To make Alexa more like human. |
| A．To tell the reader how the child misses his grandma. |
| B．To show Alexa can read stories for young children. |
| C．To show the significance of Alexa during the pandemic. |
| D．To give an example on how the new feature works. |
| A．Amazon’s Alexa will bring back your lost beloved ones. |
| B．Amazon’s Alexa will replicate the voice of lost family members. |
| C．Amazon’s Alexa will make your memories last. |
| D．Amazon’s Alexa will get rid of your pain of loss. |
10 . COVID-19 changed a lot—how we socialized, where we went, and even what work looked like. A new study shows the pandemic (流行病) may have changed our personalities as well.
Psychologists have long believed that a person’s characters stayed pretty much the same, even in the wake of stressful events. But by looking at pre-pandemic levels of neuroticism (神经质), extraversion (外向), openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness (勤奋而细心) and comparing that to data collected in 2021 and 2022, researchers found clear personality changes among the United States population.
“The pandemic was an opportunity to see how a collective stressful event may impact personality,” said lead study author Angelina Sutin, a professor of medicine at Florida State University.
Extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness all declined in the US population in the years following the start of the pandemic, particularly in young adults, according to the study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.
Why were younger adults more impacted? We don’t know for sure, Sutin said, but there are theories. “Personality is less stable in young adults. Then at the same time, the pandemic disturbed what young adults are supposed to be doing. They’re supposed to be in school or starting their careers. Then, everything was changed. However, the results didn’t hold true for each person.”
Researchers examined the data through the five-factor model, which hypothesizes (提出假说) that the various personality characters can come down to five important qualities: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Over the entire population they examined, researchers found a declining trend in neuroticism in 2020, but the changes were small. Once they took 2021 and 2022 data into account, researchers saw a more significant decrease in extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Neuroticism also increased over this time. That is especially significant considering how important those characters are, Sutin said. For example, conscientiousness is important for academic and work outcomes, as well as relationship and physical health, she added.
1. How do researchers get their study results?| A．By comparing data collected in different periods. |
| B．By collecting data from different people. |
| C．By making experiments in a university. |
| D．By building a five-factor model. |
| A．Personality is more stable in old adults. |
| B．The study results hold true for every person. |
| C．Younger adults are less impacted during the pandemic. |
| D．American people are more likely to be influenced. |
| A．Neuroticism. | B．Extraversion. |
| C．Openness. | D．Conscientiousness. |
| A．Pandemic Has a Great Impact on People’s Life |
| B．Young Adults Adapted Quickly During the Pandemic |
| C．Different Personality Characters Influence Social Relationships |
| D．People Experienced Personality Changes During the Pandemic |
