考研英語閱讀理解命題思路透析和真題揭秘(41)

2002年Text 2

Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty. That compulsion has resulted in robotics-the science of conferring various human capabilities on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close.��

As a result, the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms. Our banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robo-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics, there are already robot systems that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracy-far greater precision than highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone.��

But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility, they will have to operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves-goals that pose a real challenge. "While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error," says Dave Lavery, manager of a robotics program at NASA, "we can't yet give a robot enough ‘common sense' to reliably interact with a dynamic world."��

Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries.��

What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain's roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented-and human perception far more complicated-than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of a winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer systems on Earth can't approach that kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don't know quite how we do it.

50. The author uses the example of a monkey to argue that robots are .
[A] expected to copy human brain in internal structure.
[B] able to perceive abnormalities immediately.
[C] far less able than human brain in focusing on relevant information.
[D] best used in a controlled environment.

[答案] C

[解題思路]

本文對應(yīng)信息在文章的倒數(shù)第二句話"But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of a winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd"（但是人的大腦能夠掃描一個快速變化的場景，迅速排除98％的不相干部分，立即聚焦于森林中婉蜒道路旁的一只猴子、或者人群中的一張可疑的臉），這句話的重點不在于monkeys，其實我們完全可以用任何其他的物體或者動物來代替這個句子中的monkeys。這個句子的重點在于強調(diào)人腦在抓住關(guān)鍵信息方面那種機器人遠遠無法趕上的能力，因此正確的答案為C。A選項都與原文的意思相反，因為原文正是說明了機器人的內(nèi)部結(jié)構(gòu)還遠不及人腦。B選項的perceive abnormalities 原文沒有提到相關(guān)內(nèi)容，而D選項雖然內(nèi)容正確，卻與題干中的問題無關(guān)。

[題目譯文]

作者舉猴子的例子是為了說明機器人                      。
[A] 有望在內(nèi)部結(jié)構(gòu)上模仿人腦
[B] 能即刻覺察到異常情況
[C] 在重點抓住相關(guān)信息方面遠遠不及人腦
[D] 在受控制的環(huán)境中用得最好