人工智能5个常识

5 Things You Really Need to Know About AI

常速 | CET-6 偏难 | 794词 | 5分18秒

刘立军供稿

Part I. QUESTIONS

Listen to the passage and choose the best answer to each question you hear.

Q1. According to the text, what is one of the applications of generative AI?

A. Delivering news on television.

B. Driving autonomous vehicles.

C. Powering chatbots like Open AI’s ChatGPT.

D. Automating industrial manufacturing processes.

Q2. Why does the author mention a “talking” parrot in relation to AI?

A. To illustrate how AI learns languages through repetition.

B. To demonstrate AI’s ability to mimic human speech.

C. To highlight the differences between AI and real animals.

D. To explain that AI, like parrots, can communicate effectively with humans.

Q3. What was the problem with Microsoft’s chatbot Tay that led to its removal from social media?

A. It could not respond accurately to user questions.

B. It could not learn from interacting with users.

C. It failed to improve the safety features as promised.

D. It started making racist and offensive remarks.

Q4. Based on the text, why might it be important to integrate safeguards into AI systems?

A. To ensure AI replaces most jobs currently done by humans.

B. To prevent AI from becoming more intelligent than humans.

C. To maintain ethical use of AI and avoid propagation of bias and hate speech.

D. To reduce the energy consumption and environmental impact of AI.

Q5. What is the main point of the text about AI?

A. AI has been present for a long time and has various implications.

B. AI technologies are inherently dangerous and misleading.

C. Governments should immediately ban AI to prevent future issues.

D. Only AI with ethical frameworks will be beneficial for society.

Part II. TRANSCRIPT

5 Things You Really Need to Know About AI

Every day, it seems, there’s a new, bewildering or frightening story about AI in the news — how it’s going to steal our jobs, spread internet fakery on a colossal scale and generally take over the world. But what exactly is AI — artificial intelligence — and are the scare stories even true?

Five Things You Really Need to Know About AI

AI is as old as your grandparents.

So the first thing to know is that AI has been around a lot longer than you might think. Its roots lie in an idea known as an “artificial neural network” from the 1940s. A neural network is a bit like a team of interconnected workers that learn to solve problems. Each time they come up with a possible solution, it’s marked. If there is room for improvement, they adjust and change their connections. Over time, the network becomes more efficient. And technology powered by neural networks is all around us right now. It suggests movies and music we might like. It recognizes faces and objects when taking photos on smartphones, enabling features like facial recognition. It’s heavily used by social media platforms to personalize our feeds. (Q1) More recently, a form of AI known as “generative AI” is powering applications that can seemingly create new data. It can also power chatbots like Open AI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, which give humanlike responses to questions. These are getting better at interacting with us, and seemingly more humanlike. This can seem scary, but it’s worth knowing point two.

neural adj. 神经的；神经系统的

generative adj. 有生产力的；能生产的

AI can’t feel or think.

If you ask ChatGPT a question like this one — “Why should we be concerned about AI?” — it does a pretty good job of providing a response that appears logical. And with that convincing humanlike response, it’s easy for us to believe it understands what it’s saying, that it has feelings and motivations. It’s understandable that we do this, but it’s worth remembering, right now, AI can’t think or feel, can’t love or hate. (Q2) ChatGPT and its counterparts are sophisticated sentence-completion apps that analyze our patterns of communication and provide responses similar to the way humans would typically reply — a bit like a “talking” parrot, which leads us to point number three.

AI makes stuff up.

Chatbots can have an awkward relationship with the truth, technically known as “AI hallucinations”. You could also describe it as “making stuff up”. The core of the technology is a model that uses probability to predict the next word, sentence or paragraph. It can generate seemingly plausible replies, but lacks the ability to assess truthfulness or the accuracy of its responses. So anyone thinking of using chatbots to write content needs to be careful they’re not incorporating credible-sounding BS that can be easily spotted by someone who’s actually done the research.

hallucination n. 幻觉，幻视，幻听

BS n. 胡说，瞎话（bullshit缩写）

AI can sound racist and sexist.

The idea of a racist machine might seem far-fetched. But if AI is trained on data that’s racist, biased or hateful, then its output will be too. As we all know, racism, bias and hateful content can           be found in abundance online. (Q3) In 2016, Microsoft launched an experimental chatbot called Tay, but quickly pulled the plug after it made racist and offensive remarks. It learnt to do this from interacting with users on social media. Microsoft apologized and promised to implement improved safety features in future. (Q4) This is why the ethical framework that governs any AI application is incredibly important, and why many are calling for safeguards to prevent bias and hate speech to be built into AI systems.

far-fetched adj. 难以置信的；牵强的

ethical adj.（有关）道德的；伦理的

AI has incredible potential.

For all the notes of caution, it can be easy to forget there’s many potential benefits to AI. It’s set to truly revolutionize healthcare. AI has already discovered new drugs and is being used to identify cancer cells much more reliably than humans. And AI chatbots can behave like patient teachers when we struggle to understand a complex topic, summarizing huge volumes of information for us. The AI revolution has the potential to enhance and speed up work in many fields, from software programming, to animation, to law enforcement and journalism. This has pluses and minuses, of course, but could this extra capacity free us up to do other things? Like tackling climate change or looking after ourselves and each other better? As AI advances, governments and regulators will of course need to make sure it’s being used ethically and legally — no easy feat. But will AI take over the world? Don’t forget, AI is a tool, and even a powerful tool can’t take over the world on its own. It’s up to us to decide how we use it — or even if we should use it at all.

pluses and minuses 优缺点

Part III. KEY

Q1. C。细节题。文本提到：“A form of AI known as ‘generative AI’ is powering applications that can seemingly create new data... It can also power chatbots like Open AI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard…” 指出了生成AI的一种应用形式是为像Open AI的ChatGPT这样的聊天机器人提供支持，所以正确答案是C。

Q2. B。细节题。文章提到：“ChatGPT and its counterparts are sophisticated sentence-completion apps that provide responses similar to the way humans would typically reply — a bit like a ‘talking’ parrot...” 意在比喻AI和会说话的鹦鹉类似，都能模仿人类的语言，所以正确答案是B。

Q3. D。细节题。文章提到：“In 2016, Microsoft launched an experimental chatbot called Tay, but quickly pulled the plug after it made racist and offensive remarks.”微软的聊天机器人Tay因为发表种族主义和冒犯性言论而被迅速撤下，因此正确答案为D。

Q4. C。推理题。文章谈到了对于任何AI应用程序，非常重要的是建立道德框架，“why many are calling for safeguards to prevent bias and hate speech to be built into AI systems。”这暗示着需要安全机制，来确保AI的合规使用并避免传播偏见和仇恨言论，因此答案是C。

Q5. A。主旨题。整篇文章展示了关于人工智能的不同观点，并强调了其潜力和需要注意的问题，AI在历史上已存在很长时间，并且有着各种各样的影响。正确答案是A。

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