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Robots make me nervous — especially the ones which seem to think for themselves. I was embarrassed to admit this till I heard that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, felt the same way.
Gates said in an interview with the social networking and news website Reddit: “I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence. First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage well. A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern.”
Well, maybe I don’t have to worry about my computer and kitchen equipment yet. After I use them I can always pull the plug. But in the future, machines might find a way to prevent us from switching them off. There’s a terrible thought!
Maybe the problem with computers too clever for us is not that they are evil like some we’ve seen in sci-fi movies. What could put us in danger is that they might be too efficient. That’s what philosopher Nick Bostrom from Oxford University believes. He says that machines are indifferent to humans and in pursuit of their own goals, the destruction of people might be just additional damage. Bostrom gives us an example: A machine which might have as its only goal to produce as many paperclips as possible might look at human bodies as extra material for paperclips and go after you. Because it is, well, a machine, it would not take pity on you.
It’s a good thing that American writer Isaac Asimov thought about how far robots can go and left us his three rules of robotics. They state that a robot may not hurt a human being or allow the human being to come to harm.
I’m glad my machines at home are “dumb”. All my cleaner wants to take over is the carpet in my living room. Let’s hope they don’t create an appliance which wants to take over the world!
1.The author quoted Bill Gates’ words in Paragraph 2 in order to make the text ________.
A. better-known
B. more persuasive
C. better-organized
D. more interesting
2.An intelligent paperclip machine would harm us because ________.
A. it is much cleverer than us
B. it would take over the world
C. it would see us just as material
D. it has the strong feeling of destroying us
3.How does the author feel about Isaac Asimov’s rules of robotics?
A. Optimistic. B. Sympathy. C. Disappointed. D. Regretful.
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We know the famous ones — the Thomas Edisons and the Alexander Graham Bells — but what about the less famous inventors? What about the people who invented the traffic light and the windshield wiper（雨刮器）? Shouldn’t we know who they are?
Joan Mclean think so. In fact, Mclean, a professor of physics at Mountain University in Range, feels so strongly about this matter that she’s developed a course on the topic. In addition to learning “who” invented “what”, however, Mclean also likes her students to learn the answers to the “why” and “how” questions. According to Mclean, “When students learn the answers to these questions, they are better prepared to recognize opportunities for inventing and more motivated to give inventing a try.”
Her students agree. One young man with a patent for an unbreakable umbrella is walking proof of Mclean’ statement. “If I had not heard the story of the windshield wiper’s invention,” said Tommy Lee, a senior physics major, “I never would have dreamed of turning my bad experience during a rainstorm into something so constructive.” Lee is currently negociating to sell his patent to an umbrella producer.
So, just what is the story behind the windshield wiper? Well, Mary Anderson came up with the idea in 1902 after a visit to New York City. The day was cold and stormy, but Anderson still wanted to see the sights, so she jumped aboard a streetcar. Noticing that the driver was struggling to see through the snow covering the windshield, she found herself wondering why there couldn’t be a built-in device for cleaning the window. Still wondering about this when she returned home to Birmingham, Alabama, Anderson started drafting out solutions. One of her ideas, a lever(操作杆) on the inside of a vehicle that would control an arm on the outside, became the first windshield wiper.
Today we benefit from countless inventions and innovations. It’s hard to imagine driving without Garrett A. Morgan’s traffic light. It’s equally impossible to picture a world without Katherine J. Blodgett’s innovation that makes glass invisible. Can you picture life without clear windows and eyeglasses?
1.By mentioning “traffic light” and “windshield wiper”, the author indicates that countless inventions are ________.
A. beneficial, because their inventors are famous
B. beneficial, though their inventors are less famous
C. not useful, because their inventors are less famous
D. not useful, though their inventors are famous
2.Professor Joan Mclean’s course aims to ________.
A. add colour and variety to students’ campus life
B. inform students of the windshield wiper’s invention
C. carry out the requirements by Mountain University
D. prepare students to try their own invention
3.Tommy Lee’s invention of the unbreakable umbrella was ________.
A. not eventually accepted by the umbrella producer
B. inspired by the story behind the windshield wiper
C. due to his dream of being caught in a rainstorm
D. not related to Professor Joan McLean’s lectures
4.Which of the following can best serve as the title of this passage?
A. How to Help Students to Sell Their Inventions to Producers?
B. How to Design a Built-in Device for Cleaning the Window?
C. Shouldn’t We Know Who Invented the Windshield Wiper?
D. Shouldn’t We Develop Invention Courses in Universities?
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September is an exciting month in every college freshman’s life. For many, it’s the first time that they’ve left home to live in a new environment. But after the hustle and bustle (喧嚣) of a few weeks, excitement gives way to a less enjoyable emotion—homesickness.
Homesickness manifests (显露) itself in many ways. You may miss mum’s cooking, your pets, or even your old bed. All this becomes a fond memory of the past. Homesickness can be a bitter feeling for many students, especially when faced with the challenges of settling into an unfamiliar environment.
But remember, you’re not alone. According to a recent BBC article, 70 percent of British college students experience homesickness. In this increasingly globalized world in which people migrate to faraway places for a relationship, education or work, homesickness is a feeling shared by many adults.
Homesickness can have similar symptoms to depression and in extreme cases it can develop into a panic attack. As for the term, homesickness or nostalgia wasn’t invented until the 17th century. It was considered a disorder by a Swiss physician, who attributed soldiers’ mental and physical discomfort to their longing to return home, “nostos” from Greek, and the accompanying pain, “algos”.
Studies in recent years, however, have shown that nostalgia may have some benefits to our mental health. After a decade of surveys and researches, Constantine Sedikides, a US social psychologist, found that nostalgia is what makes us human. He explains that nostalgia can resist loneliness, boredom and anxiety. Therefore, it’s necessary for college students to learn some ways to overcome the uncomfortable feeling.
1.From the first two paragraphs, we can infer that ________.
A. homesickness means a fond memory of the past
B. only a few students will experience homesickness
C. homesickness is an enjoyable emotion among freshmen
D. college freshmen usually suffer from homesickness after weeks
2.According to the passage, we can know that ________.
A. homesickness may cause mental diseases
B. homesickness is a feeling only shared by adults
C. homesickness won’t do any good to our health
D. homesickness is also called nostalgia in Switzerland
3.The attitude of Sedikides towards homesickness is ________.
A. negative B. supportive C. doubtful D. critical
4.What is the best title for the passage?
A. Let’s accept homesickness
B. How to fit in with the college life
C. A harmful emotion—homesickness
D. The disadvantages of homesickness
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A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.
A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.
There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two - headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl-friend.
No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.
1.The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is _______.
A. repeated without any change
B. treated as a joke
C. made some changes by the parent
D. set in the present
2.According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is _______.
A. in a realistic setting
B. heard for the first time
C. repeated too often
D. told in a different way
3.The advantage claimed for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it _______.
A. makes them less fearful
B. develops their power of memory
C. makes them believe there is nothing to be afraid of
D. encourages them not to have strange beliefs
4.One of the reasons why some people are not in favor of fairy tales is that _______.
A. they are full of absurd imagination
B. they just make up the stories which are far from the truth
C. they are not interesting
D. they make teachers of history difficult to teach
