1 . Artificial intelligence (AI) has amazing potential to change the world, and we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface. As AI matures and people move further away from distinct programming and monitoring of systems, unidentified bias (偏见) might make decisions continue for a long time that cause _______ harm for individuals and society. This bias might _______ input data or even the algorithms (算法) themselves.

All too often, data sets are incomplete and the sample represented in the data set does not _______ the population that the AI model is making predictions about — this is known as coverage bias. Some other types of bias related to input data include sampling bias, where data is not collected randomly from the target group, and participation bias, where users from certain groups _______ surveys at different rates than users from other groups. Still, another more challenging bias to identify is confirmation bias that occurs when a decision maker or analyst has a strong _______ belief or experience that affects their ability to consider alternatives. This could lead one to more strongly _______ data that confirms a preexisting belief.

Bias resulting from AI algorithms themselves, or algorithmic bias, is equally _______. One example of algorithmic bias is implicit bias or unconscious bias, where data scientists _______ make associations or assumptions based on their mental models and memories that affect data modeling decisions. Implicit bias can _______ how data is collected and classified, or how systems are designed and developed. As machines learn, their conclusions and decisions affect people. Ethical (道德的) AI must understand these impacts and create governance and testing methods to ________ mistakes and inaccuracies.

To create ethical AI, companies need to put the ________ of the individual at the center of data innovation. This means thinking about ________ rights as human rights and developing a comprehensive approach to data, including how we use AI.

Having ________ data practices for AI means having good AI governance. This governance not only focuses on data and analytics but also understands the impacts of any given analysis and makes sure it’s ________ and accurate. Good AI governance includes data responsibility as well as a commitment to transparency (透明性).

None of this will be easy, but true innovation never is. By coming together and working on the problem of bias now, before it becomes a(n) ________ force, businesses can help bring out the best AI has to offer the world.

3 . Climate experts have warned about the many ways a warming planet can negatively affect human health. ________ global temperatures are predicted to increase by 1.5℃ by the 2030s, that risk is becoming increasingly real.

One long-held prediction that appears to be coming true — according to the results of a study recently published in Nature Scientific Reports — is how climate change might enhance ________ of bacteria that thrive and spread through warm sea waters and cause an infection with a particularly high ________ rate.

Vibrio vulnificus (创伤弧菌) flourishes in salty or brackish waters above 68℉. Infections are currently rare in the U.S., but that’s likely to change. Using 30 years of data on infections, scientists at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. found that Vibrio vulnificusis ________ from its historic Gulf Coast range, with more Northern states reporting infections as waters become warmer.

“We’re seeing the core ________ of infections extending to areas that traditionally have very few and very rare cases,” says Elizabeth Archer, a Ph.D. researcher and ________ author of the study. “But these areas are now coming into the main area of infections.”

Based on the latest data on how much the world’s water and air temperatures will rise, the scientists predict that by 2081, Vibrio vulnificus infections could reach every state along the U.S. East Coast. Currently, only about 80 cases are reported in the U.S. each year; by 2081, that could go up to over three-fold, the authors say.

Such a proliferation could have serious health consequences. Vibrio vulnificus kills approximately 20% of the healthy people it infects, and 50% of those with weakened immune systems. There is little evidence that antibiotics can ________ the infection, but doctors may prescribe them in some cases. People can get infected either by eating raw shellfish like oysters or by exposing small ________ to waters where the bacteria live, which can lead to serious skin infections.

Warming sea temperatures aren’t the only reasons behind the rise of Vibrio vulnificus. Hotter air also draws more people to the coasts and bays, bringing them into closer contact with the bacteria.

“The bacteria are part of the natural marine environment, so I don’t think we can ________ it from the environment,” says Archer. “It’s more about mitigating infections by increasing ________ of the risk.”

To alert people to the growing threat, ________ systems are needed to track when concentrations of bacteria start to rise, similar to currently available pollen and pollution alarm.

Vbrio vulnificus is so ________ to temperature changes that concentrations could bloom after even a day of warmer water, so consistent monitoring and alerts are critical, says Iain Lake, professor of environmental epidemiology at University of East Anglia and senior author of the paper.

Lake says the expansion of Vibrio vulnificus is concerning for public health since the bacteria are now invading waters closer to heavily ________ areas, such as New York and Philadelphia. “Everyone can get a Vibrio vulnificus infection,” he says. “But the more ________ there is between warmer waters and people, the more the bacteria can move into populations ________ the elderly and those with other health conditions, who are more vulnerable to infections.”

4 . The Great PowerPoint Panic of 2003.

Sixteen minutes before touchdown on the morning of February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia (“哥伦比亚”号航天飞机)______ into the cloudless East Texas sky. All seven astronauts aboard were killed. As the shattered shuttle flew toward Earth in pieces, it looked to its live TV viewers like a swarm of shooting stars.

The immediate ______ of the disaster, a report from a NASA Accident Investigation Board determined that August, was a piece of insulating foam (绝缘泡沫胶) that had broken loose and damaged the shuttle’s left wing soon after liftoff. But the report also   ______ out a less direct, more surprising cause. Engineers had known about - and inappropriately______ - the wing damage long before Columbia’s attempted reentry, but the flaws in their analysis were ______ in a series of overstuffed computer-presentation slides that were shown to NASA officials.

By the start of 2003, the phrase “death by PowerPoint” had well and truly entered the ______ vocabulary. Edward Tufte was the first to have taken it literally: That spring, the Yale statistician published a booklet entitled The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, whose core argument was that the medium of communication influences the substance of communication. While PowerPoint, as a medium, did not ______ create unclear, lazy presentations, it certainly ______ and sometimes even masked them — with potentially deadly consequences. This is exactly what Tufte saw in the Columbia engineers’ slides.

Wired ran an excerpt (节选) from Tufte’s booklet in September 2003 under the headline “PowerPoint Is Evil.” A few months later, The New York Times Magazine included his assessment — summarized as “PowerPoint Makes You Dumb” — in its ______ of the year’s most important ideas. “Perhaps PowerPoint is uniquely suited to our modern age of confusion,” the entry read.

Despite the backlash it inspired in the ______, the presentation giant rolls on. The program has more monthly users than ever before, well into the hundreds of millions. During lockdown, people ______ PowerPoint parties on Zoom. Kids now make PowerPoint presentations for their parents when they want to get a puppy. If PowerPoint is evil, then evil ______ the world.

On its face at least, the idea that PowerPoint makes us stupid looks like a textbook case of misguided technological doomsaying. Today’s concerns about social media somehow resemble the PowerPoint critique. Both boil down to a worry that new media technologies ______ form over substance, that they are designed to hold our attention rather than to convey truth, and that they make us stupid.

______, concerns about new media rarely seem to make a difference. If the innovation did change the way we think, we are measuring its effects with an altered mind. Either the critical remarks were wrong, or they were so right that we can no longer tell the   ______.

5 . My phone was an extension of myself. I couldn’t go anywhere _________ it. I scrolled through my friends’ _________ into late night and turned my phone on before my eyes were fully open. I enjoyed having it until that day when I realized that what had started as a useful tool had turned into a(n) _________. So, I made a _________ decision to turn off that smartphone and _________ my old dumb phone out of hiding.

When I was watching TV shows or movies and there was a boring part, I _________ picking up the phone and checking out “what everyone else was doing.” Now I had to pay attention or find a way to _________ myself with my thoughts instead. When I visited New York City, I had to write out _________ and ask people where an intersection (十字路口) was _________ pulling out my phone.

I have welcomed silence into my life with open arms and am enjoying the increased __________ from not constantly having to fight with the __________ to check my phone while I’m trying to get something done. I am allowing my thoughts to speak to me instead of my phone. I am connecting with others in a __________ way that isn’t all about me. Instead of always posting about what’s going on in my __________ perfect life, I am connecting with my friends one-on-one, talking about the reality of our lives and being there for them from a place of __________.

As much as having a smartphone was __________, not having one is freeing on a much bigger level.

6 . Pope (罗马教皇) Francis wearing a massive, loose and white puffer coat. Elon Musk walking hand-in-hand with rival GM CEO Mary Barra. None of these things actually happened, but such AI-generated _______ did go viral online over the past week.

The situation demonstrates a new online reality: the _______ of a new crop of artificial intelligence tools has made it cheaper and easier than ever to create realistic images, as well as audio and videos. And these images are likely to pop up with increasing frequency on social media.

While these AI tools may enable new means of expressing creativity, the spread of computer-generated media also threatens to further _______ the information ecosystem. That risks _______ the challenges for users, news organizations and social media platforms to tell what’s real. There are also concerns that Al-generated images could be misused.

Images, compared to the Al-generated text, can be _______ powerful in provoking emotions when people view them, said Claire Leibowicz, head of AI and media integrity at the Partnership on AI. That can make it harder for people to slow down and _______ whether what they’re looking at is real or fake. _______, bad guys could eventually attempt to create fake content in quantity in order to confuse Internet users and provoke certain behaviors.

Computer-generated image technology has improved rapidly in recent years, from the photoshopped image of a shark swimming through a flooded highway to the websites that four years ago began mass producing mostly _______ photos of people. But in most cases, the creators of the recent hot images don’t appear to have been ill-intended.

There are _______ by platforms, AI technology companies and industry groups to improve the transparency when a piece of content is generated by a computer. Platforms including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Twitter and YouTube have policies restricting or even ________ the sharing of media that could mislead users. But as use of AI-generated technologies grows, even such policies could threaten to ________ user trust. If, for example, a fake image accidentally slipped through a platform’s detection system, it could give people false confidence. Although there’s a detection system that says it’s real, it’s actually not.

Work is also underway on technical solutions that would, ________, watermark an AI-generated image or include a transparent label in an image’s metadata, so anyone viewing it across the Internet would know it was created by a computer. “All these institutions are ________ disclosure and transparency,” Leibowicz said.

A group of tech leaders, including Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, this week wrote an open letter ________ artificial intelligence labs to stop the training of the most powerful AI systems for at least six months, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.” ________, it’s not clear whether any labs will take such a step. And as the technology rapidly improves and becomes accessible beyond a relatively small group of corporations doing responsible practices, lawmakers may need to get involved.

8 . If you order a Burger King Stacker Quad,you'll be served with a hamburger with no trace of any vegetable in it,a fact boasted about in the TV ads that accompanied the launch of the product in the United States.The Stacker Quad may be extraordinary, but it is far from_________.Recent times have seen the launch of products that the industry calls"indulgent offerings"foods marketed specifically on the basis of how much meat and cheese and how few vegetables they _________, it is worth _________how strange these developments would have seemed just two years ago,when the _________ to fast-food was at its height. At that time,the American burger restaurant Wendy's added a fresh-fruit bowl to its menu.However, at the end of last year,the company quietly _________the menu,blaming a lack of demand for such healthy dishes."We listened to consumers who said they wanted to eat fresh fruit,"a spokesman told the New York Times,"but apparently they _________ .

The industry's_________, it seems, had been to listen to the market researchers instead of the food psychologists. People tell researchers what they think they want to hear,or what the respondents want to believe about themselves. But we know,_________ recent psychological research, that people drink more than a third more fruit juice when they pour it into a short, wide glass instead of a narrow,tall one,and that people will eat more of a product if it comes in a bigger package.We know that people will report that 'Black Forest Double-Chocolate Cake' taste better than"Chocolate Cake', even when the cakes themselves are exactly the same. _________, we know that just because people say they want to eat more healthily, it doesn't mean they really do want to.

Denny Marie Post,from Burger King, admits that the fast-food industry vastly __________the appeal of healthier product lines."Healthy eating is more a state of intention than it is of __________ ."she says.There is a very small percentage whose behaviour agrees with their intentions.Andrew Geier,a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, recently conducted an experiment in which he placed a large bowl of sweets in the lobby of an apartment building.Eat your __________. Please use the spoon to serve yourself read a sign he placed next to the bowl.He left it there for 10 days in a row,with,on alternative days, either a teaspoon or a large spoon that held a quarter of a cup of sweets.When they were using the __________spoon, people on average took two thirds more sweet. This __________is known as'unit bias'-the way we tend to think that whatever quantity a product is sold in must be appropriate amount to __________.

9 . Gabe and I were taking a road trip from Weyburn to Nelson. At around 5: 30 pm, we were _______on a mountain road. I was texting my family. We weren’t _______there’d recently been flooding in the area.

When I _______from my phone, I saw a wave of mud racing down the mountain. Gabe tried to brake, but it was too late. The mudslide sent our car _______down the cliff. It _______on its side among some trees.

I don’t know how long we were unconscious, but I woke up to the _______of Gabe moaning (呻吟). We had no phone signal, so all we could do was _______for help. But my chest hurt too much to even_______. So Gabe started shouting as loud as he could.

Luckily, four men spotted us and went to our _______. On our way up, Gabe was in ________, slipping in and out of consciousness, and I ________didn’t think he was going to make it.

When the medical team finally reached us, they ________us into separate ambulances. I was swearing a lot as they took us away-I didn’t think I’d ever see my boyfriend again.

We spent weeks in hospital. Even after ________, I’ll walk with a limp for the rest of my life, and Gabe lost the vision in his left eye.

Before this all happened, we were happy-go-lucky people. We’re even more ________now. Despite the________we suffered, we’re grateful that we’re still living a pretty good life.

10 . High school biology teacher Kelly Chavis knew smartphones were a problem in her class. For one class period, students used a whiteboard to count every Snapchat, Instagram, text, call or other notifications that appeared on their phones.   Chavis   told   students   not   to _________ these notifications.

Teachers around the country have done similar experiments, usually _________ dozens of markings on the whiteboard. Chavis, who teaches honours-level classes, was _________ by the results of her experiment.

Chavis is among a growing number of teachers, parents and health experts who believe that smartphones are now partly to blame for increasing the levels of student _________. The use of electronic devices is so _________ that the National Education Association newsletter said it was a “mental health tsunami (海啸)”.

Tests, after-school activities and problems at home can increase _________ for students. But research now _________ that smartphones and social media are some of the main reasons for the rising levels of uneasiness.

Last year, an editorial in the journal Paediatrics proposed that doctors ask young patients about their social media use as part of routine exams. Three researchers wrote that too much social media use might _________ the development of mental health disturbance in at-risk teenagers, such as feelings of _________, depression and anxiety.

Researchers are still not sure whether phones cause student depression or depression causes phone use. __________ 70 percent of teens see anxiety and depression as major problems among their peers, according to a Pew Research report. Nearly 60 percent of parents said they were __________ about the influence of social media on their children’s physical and mental health.

Schools are starting to take steps to deal with the problem. Many public schools pay outside companies to watch students’ social media activity for signs of __________. Others invite in yoga teachers and comfort dogs to help __________ students. Some schools have organized unplugged events — days in which people do not use their electronic devices. Less than 20 percent of students and school employees took part, __________ the control that technology has over their daily lives.

Some parents are not letting their children get smartphones until they grow up. Deirdre Birmingham of New Jersey __________ a campaign called “Wait Until Eighteenth” because she didn’t think her video game-loving 10-year-old son was ready for a smartphone. The campaign involves groups of parents who have children in the same class. These parents agree not to let their children get phones until they are teenagers.