2. 外语
  3. Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burd

Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burd

admin2017-08-15  39
问题     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 robot-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 submillimetre 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.
The word "gizmos" (Line 1, Para. 2) most probably means ______.
选项 A、programs
B、experts
C、devices
D、creatures
答案C
解析 本题可参照文章的第2段。从中可知，当今世界出现了越来越多的智能设备，虽然我们几乎注意不到它们，但是它们的广泛存在已经使人们摆脱了许多劳动。接着列举了机器人组装臂、自动柜员机终端、机器人司机以及以亚毫米的精确度做某些脑部和骨科手术的机器人系统。据此可知，gizmos一词最可能指的是人们的发明。C项与文章的意思相符，因此C项为正确答案。
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