九年级英语课外阅读新文章(2016.01)

The 2004 US film I, Robot talks about the

relationship between humans and robots.

九年级英语课外阅读新文章(2016.01)

Computers could learn like humans

You might think the technology we have today is incredibly smart and is improving greatly each year, but some scientists don’t agree. Computers can do many things such as search for information at great speeds, recognize its owner’s fingerprints and open a whole new seemingly impossible gaming world. However, scientists believe this is only the beginning. They want to build a computer capable of human-like

learning. And recently, they had a breakthrough.

The latest Science magazine introduced a newly developed computer program that allows computers to not only work with numbers, but also in a wide range of different languages. At the moment, for computers to learn something new, thousands of images and bits of data (数据) need to be inputted (输入). But for humans, a child only needs one or two images to learn something new. This new program would mean computers would, like children, only need one or two images to understand something.

The computers would be able to see the handwritten letters, recognize them and recreate them. Ruslan Salakhutdinov, professor of computer science at the University of Toronto said: “It has been very difficult to build machines that need as little data as humans when learning something new.”

This improvement could bring a range of new opportunities. If computers are capable of human-like thoughts, then it will greatly reduce the amount of time it takes for new developments. However, some think this is one step in a dangerous direction. Is it safe to make computers who can think like humans? If we succeed in making computers as capable as humans, what would stop the computers from taking over humanity (人类) like in the film I, Robot (2004) with Will Smith?

1. Today computers can do the following EXCEPT _____.

A. search for information fast

B. recognize its owner’s fingerprints D. learn things exactly as humans do

C. create an almost impossible gaming world 2. What does the underlined word “breakthrough” in Paragraph 2 mean?

A. achievement

B. discovery

C. experiment

D. difficulty 3. With the new computer program, computers can _____.

a. work in many different languages

b. understand something with only one or two images or data

c. do better than children can

d. see the handwritten letters and recreate them A. ab B. bc C. ad D. cd 4. What does the last paragraph talk about?

A. The advantages and disadvantages of the new program.

B. The developments of computer programs.

C. The relationship between computers and humans.

D. Introduction of the film I, Robot (2004).