1 . It’s a typical day at school. You’re playing soccer with your friends. One of them kicks you the ball and you run for it. You trip. You fly through the air. You land—hard, right on your face! The next moment, you’re in the nurse’s office. Your bleeding nose is being checked by laser sensors (激光传感器) that coming out of a...robot? Has the nurse’s office been taken over by sci-fi aliens (外星人) from outer space?
No. You’ve just been pushed forward 15 years into the future. And it’s a future that Susan Epstein, a computer science professor who teaches artificial intelligence, is really excited to think about. “I am crazy about this kind of thing! You could go up to the robot, put your nose in, and the machine would decide whether you needed to be treated, and how.”
Aside from being cool, an AI nurse has other advantages. It doesn’t need to take vacations. It doesn’t need to get paid a salary. And it might figure out what’s wrong with your nose faster than a human would. There are all kinds of ways that AI could be used to help make us healthier and researchers are studying how to use AI to diagnose (诊断) lung disease, cancer, and more.
Our robot nurse isn’t meant to completely take the place of humans, though. “It would work with real, live nurses and doctors,” says Epstein, “there are things humans are good at, like building trust among members of our own species or comforting someone who’s hurt or sick. A big part of medicine is the relationship between a doctor and a patient.”
Epstein points out that AI programs will never be perfect—no matter how much we might want them to be. But if AI can diagnose a deadly disease more precisely even 10 percent of the time, think of how many lives it could save. “Besides”, says Epstein, “I think there are probably patients who might prefer to have a machine for a doctor!” Would you?
1. What’s the function of para 1?| A．To introduce a scientific study. |
| B．To lead to the topic of the text. |
| C．To describe an experience of the writer. |
| D．To give an example to support an argument. |
| A．Humans are better at treating patients than AI doctors. |
| B．AI doctors alone can cure patients of most of the diseases. |
| C．Patients’ trust in doctors may affect their treatments positively. |
| D．Patients may receive as much comfort from AI doctors as from humans. |
| A．They are better at trust-building. |
| B．They will take over humans. |
| C．Their biggest strength is being cool. |
| D．They are life-saving if properly used. |
| A．Negative. | B．Favorable. | C．Doubtful. | D．Unclear. |
2 . By 2050 we’ll be able to send memories, emotions and feelings across the Internet.
I’m talking about telepathy (心灵感应), really. We’ll still communicate the traditional way.
Medicine will develop fast, too. We will have cured certain forms of cancer, and we will have begun to treat the disease like the common cold. We’ll live with it. It will no longer be deadly.
| A．We will do a few tests. |
| B．People will live an easy life. |
| C．We won’t fear it like we used to. |
| D．Brain science will have changed communication. |
| E．We can already use human cells to grow skin, noses, ears, etc. |
| F．But communicating telepathically will avoid misunderstandings between people. |
| G．Our clothes will discover the beginnings of a heart disease, and advise us to get treatment. |
