Time and Tenses

Part I

Grammar

1. Answer the questions.

What is AI?

Do you think human type AI is achievable?

If you were to build a thinking machine, what would it be like?

Is it important to have it look like a human being?

2. Read and translate the following.

The world stands on the threshold of a second computer age. New technology now moving out of the laboratory is starting to change the computer from a fantastically fast calculating machines into a device that mimics human thought processes - giving machines the capability to reason, make judgments, and even learn. Already this "artificial intelligence'' is performing tasks once thought to require human intelligence...

Computers have emerged from back rooms and laboratories to help with writing, calculating

and play in homes and offices. These machines do simple, repetitive tasks, but machines still in the laboratory do much more. Computers can be made smart, and fewer and fewer people disagree. To understand our future, we must see whether artificial intelligence is as impossible as flying to the Moon.

Thinking machines need not resemble human beings in shape, purpose, or mental skills. Indeed some artificial intelligence systems will show few traits of the intelligent liberal arts graduate,

but will instead serve only as powerful engines of design. Nonetheless, understanding of how human minds evolved from mindless matter will shed light on how machines can be made to think. Minds, like other forms of order, evolved through variation and selection.

3. Answer the questions / do the tasks.

1. Do the parts in bold type refer to the present, past, or future?

2. Put a general question to each of them.

3. Put special questions to the first and last sentences.

4. Put questions beginning with when, where, why to other sentences.

5. What feature distinguishes questions in the Simple from those in other tenses?

6. Put questions to the subject of the sentences with parts in bold.

7. What makes the question to the subject different from other ones?

Part II

Practice

1. Complete the sentence with each of the suggested variants and answer the questions.

When the science adviser came to the lab…

- Max was checking the results.

- Steve checked the results.

- Andrew had checked the results.

Who is the most hardworking?

Who is the laziest?

Who will have a chance to listen to the comment of his chief?

2. Write three similar sentences.

3. Study the structure of the predicates in the following sentences.

1. When we checked the result we saw a mistake in our calculations.

2. The basic technique for such storage was proposed in 1963 by the scientist who was working on holographic technologies.

3. While experimenting with the passage of electric current in a tube from which most of the air had been removed, Roentgen made two observations.

4. Answer the questions.

1. Do the actions in the sentences happen simultaneously?

2. What grammar shows, that:

а) they are/were simultaneous?

б) follow each other in chronological order?

в) one of them happened earlier than the other?

5. Write three sentences dealing with some scientific facts, where the actions:

а) follow each other

b) happen at the same time

c) one action was before the other

6. Answer the question /do the tasks.

1. Why is the name of Bill Gates known to everyone?

2. Translate the paragraph from his article.

3. Explain the use of tenses.

When Allen and I launched Microsoft, big, expensive mainframe computers ran the back-office operations for major companies, governmental departments and other institutions. Researchers at leading universities and industrial laboratories were creating the basic building blocks that would make the information age possible. Intel had just introduced the 8080 microprocessor, and Atari was selling the popular electronic game Pong. At homegrown computer clubs, enthusiasts struggled to figure out exactly what this new technology was good for…