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Файл:Our Changing World. Практический курс первого иностранного языка. Учебное пособие для студентов второго курса специальности «Перевод и переводоведение.pdf
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b) It is not to be trusted.
c) It is an impressive development.
d) It is rather annoying.
5. The discovery made by Lenat`s computer program
a) went against 18th century mathematical theory.
b) was greeted with excitement by AI researches.
c) showed predictions about AI to be false.
d) enable it to win games like chess.
6. According to the writer, what do many mainstream AI researchers think is
most important?
a) inventing a computer to beat the Turing test.
b) developing computers to become chess champions.
c) improving computerized services in daily life.
d) creating computers for entertainment purposes.
The search for Artificial Intelligence
Robert Matthews, a leading UK researches, outlines his mission
It is one of the most evocative phrases in the lexicon of science: artificial intelligence,
“AI”, the creation of machines that can think. Just the mention of it conjures up
images of HAL, the all-too intelligent computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and
C3PO, the catty, batty robot from Star Wars.
For over half a century, computer scientists have been working towards creating such
machines, spending billions of pounds in the attempt. And hanging over their efforts
has been a challenge set by a British mathematician widely regarded as the father of
AI research: Alan Turing.
During the 1930s, Turing showed, in theory at least, that a “universal machine” could
be built, capable of performing all the tasks of any special-purpose computing
machine. After war-time work on code-breaking, Turing helped to turn his discovery
into the reality of an electronic computer. But he also believed his proof meant that
computers could mimic the action of the human mind.
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In 1951, Turing published a prediction: by the end of the century, computers would
be able to hold a five-minute conversation with humans and fool 30 per cent of them
into believing they were dealing with another human being.
It is a deadline that has come and gone, along with huge amounts of funding. Yet no
computer is remotely close to passing the “Turing Test.” What went wrong? Why has
no one succeeded in creating AI?
In fact, AI is already here, earning its keep in banks, airports, hospitals, factories –
even own home and car. It may not be quite what many were led to expect, but then
the story of real-life AI is one of misplaced dreams, bitter feuds and grant-grabbing
hype.
Today`s computer scientists divide into two broad camps on the issue of AI. The
pragmatists see AI as a means to creating machines that do for thinking what engines
have done for physical labour – taking on tasks we humans would prefer not to do:
spending endless hours scouring heaps of market data for trends or scanning piles of
medical images for signs of disease.
Then there are the visionaries, still wedded to Turing`s challenge and trying to bring
the sci-fi image to life. For them, AI is all about computerized “assistants” that solve
your printer problems and cheeky-chappy robots that talk to strangers. There are
some who even see AI as the route to understanding the workings of the human mind.
Without doubt, it is the visionaries who have done most to get AI research on TV
shows such as Tomorrow`s World. It is the pragmatists, however, who have got AI
out of the door and into successful applications: the neural network cooking controls
of microwave ovens, for example, or the expert system that vets credit card
transactions.
When current AI technology is pushed closer to its sci-fi image, the results can be
more irritating than impressive: witness Microsoft`s Paperclip Assistant, and the AIbased “help-desks” of some high-tech companies. Even now, 50 years after work
began automated telephone ticketing system at their local cinema.
Even so, visionary AI researchers working away from the mainstream have pulled
off some striking achievements. Herbert Simon`s 1957 prediction that a computer
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would make a mathematical discovery came to pass 20 years later, when a logicbased program named AM, developed by Douglas Lenat at Stanford University,
discovered that every even number greater than four seemed to be the sum of two odd
primes. In fact, AM had been pipped to this discovery by the Prussian mathematician
Christian Goldbach in the 18th century; nevertheless the rediscovery of “Goldbach`s
Conjecture” by AM caused a stir within the AI community.
Simon`s prediction that a computer would become world chess champion also came
to pass – in a manner of speaking – in 1997, when IBM`s Deep Blue computer beat
Garry Kasparov, the greatest human exponent of the game.
Most likely it will be one of the AI visionaries who finally creates a computer that
passes Turing`s 50-year-old test. For many in the mainstream AI community,
however, beating the Turing Test is viewed as little more than a party trick. They are
hard at work addressing far more basic issues in AI – like convincing computers to
hand over the cinema tickets you`ve paid for.
VOCABULARY PRACTICE
Match the highlighted words in the passage with their synonyms below.
time limit, disputes, groups, publicity, imitate, trick, achieved, creates in the mind
TEXT ANALYSIS
1. What do the underlined phrases in the text mean?
2. What are “visionaries” and “pragmatists” differ? What have they each achieved?
DISCUSSION
What applications of artificial intelligence would you like to see in the future? Talk
about: education, work, entertainment, homes, travel, medicine, finance
INTEGRATED LISTENING AND READING
Read the text, then listen to a part of a lecture on the same topic. You will notice that
some ideas coincide and some differ in them. Answer questions 1-10 by choosing A if
the idea is expressed in both materials, B if it can be found only in the reading text, C
if it can be found only in the audio-recording, and D if neither of the materials
expresses the idea.
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Now you have 7 minutes to read the text.
THE TURING TEST
Do computers think? It isn't a new question. In fact, Alan Turing, a British
mathematician, proposed an experiment to answer the question in 1950, and the test,
known as the Turing Test, is still used today. In the experiment, a group of people are
asked to interact with something in another room through a computer terminal. They
don't know whether it is another person or a computer that they are interacting with.
They can ask any questions that they want. They can type their questions onto a
computer screen, or they can ask their questions by speaking into a microphone. In
response, they see the answers on a computer screen or they hear them played back
by a voice synthesizer. At the end of the test, the people have to decide whether they
have been talking to a person or to a computer. If they judge the computer to be a
person, or if they can't determine the difference, then the machine has passed the
Turing Test.
Since 1950, a number of contests have been organized in which machines are
challenged to the Turing Test. In 1990, Hugh Loebner sponsored a prize to be
awarded by the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies – a gold medal and a cash
award of $100,000 to the designer of the computer that could pass the Turing Test;
however, so far, no computer has passed the test.
Now listen to a part of a lecture on a similar topic and then do the tasks (1-10),
comparing the text above and the lecture. You will hear the lecture twice.
Listening 2 (mp3).mp3
1. It is not quite clear whether computers can think.
2. Participants of an experiment can introduce their questions into a computer either
by speaking or by typing.
3. If people take the computer for a human being, it will mean that the computer has
passed the Turing Test.
4. The idea of challenging computers to the Turing Test is still alive.
5. Only one computer in the world has passed the Turing Test.
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6. A prize of 100,000 US dollars sponsored by Hugh Loebner in 1990 was not
awarded to any computer designer.
7. Some scholars doubt that the Turing Test can check what it claims to check.
8. The idea of the Chinese Room as a paradox isn’t new.
9. An argument based on Chinese characters has been developed to show that the
Turing Test isn’t meaningful.
10. John Searle believes that the person who manipulates symbols without
understanding them doesn’t show adequate behavior.
READING 2
And the word of 2022 is…
The Economist, 2022, December
Johnson’s choice is neither clever nor lovely. But it is hugely consequential
The story of a year is sometimes easy to identify: the financial crisis of 2008, the
Brexit-Trump populist wave of 2016 or the pandemic of 2020. The most wrenching
event of 2022 has been the war in Ukraine, yet those earlier stories have lingered in
the headlines. For language-watchers, all that meant much new vocabulary to
consider.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine obliged newsreaders to practise place-names from
Kharkiv to Zaporizhia. It also introduced weapons previously known only to
experts: manpads, nasams, himars and the like. (Soldiers have long had a flair for
acronyms, not just the official kind but in contributions like fubar and snafu.) A
debate also developed about whether it is culturally or militarily appropriate to refer
to kamikaze or suicide drones, drones being by definition pilotless. Loitering
munitions lacks a certain snap.
The economic problems to which the war contributed brought new words too. The
catchiest in that subcategory is shrinkflation, whereby companies hide price
increases by downsizing products while keeping price tags unchanged. It is a perfect
portmanteau (a word built from parts of others). It not only points to an important
thing, but its component parts are transparent so that it requires little explanation. No
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wonder Shaquille O’Neal, a retired American basketball star, used it in a pizza
advertisement—a measure of success, perhaps.
Business, economics and finance are perennial sources of new jargon, some bits
more enduring than others. The slowdown of China’s economy led to increased talk
of decoupling (of Western businesses from China’s). International frictions led to a
boom in friendshoring: a kind of reverse offshoring in which supply chains are
redirected to stable, ideally allied countries, rather than those invading their
neighbours or pursuing self-harming covid policies.
Focusing on China, zero covid might be the obvious word of this year. China’s
lockdowns and crackdowns provoked rare public protests in big cities, and forced an
unusual and public retreat from some elements of the policy late in the year. In
Chinese the authorities called their policy dongtai qingling, meaning “dynamic
clearing to zero”; that sounds rather more heroic than locking millions of people into
their homes.
Climate change also contributed vocabulary in 2022, a year of extreme weather
and eco-anxiety. A torrid summer saw governments set up public cooling centres.
Come the winter, soaring fuel prices introduced their cold-weather
equivalents, warm banks. At the cop27 climate-change summit in Sharm el-Sheikh
in Egypt, loss and damage took centre stage. Rich countries, whose industrialisation
has largely caused climate change, promised to set up a fund to redress the harms
already done, or certain to be done, in poorer ones. Loss and damage becomes a new
pillar in climate politics, alongside limiting further change (mitigation) and making
countries more resilient (adaptation).
Facebook renamed itself Meta in 2021 and spent vast sums in 2022 trying to activate
the metaverse, an online world in which people can interact via avatars and virtualreality goggles. Instead profits drooped as the company struggled even to get its
employees to inhabit its metaverse. The word was a finalist in Oxford Dictionaries’
Word of the Year contest, but was not selected. Perhaps another year. This is still a
word (and a world) looking for users.
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Instead, Oxford’s choice this year—based on a public vote—was goblin mode, a
state in which people indulge their laziest or most selfish habits. After years of covid,
recession and inflation, people are tired and frazzled and finding it harder to keep up
appearances. But another product of the covid era is Johnson’s word of the year.
After the lockdowns of 2020, followed, in 2021, by a slow return to the office,
2022 was the year that hybrid work settled in. Working at home some of the time
has advantages (decongesting cities and fewer painful commutes), and disadvantages
(fears of lower productivity combined with a sense of never being off duty). In the
spring Twitter announced a policy of unlimited working from home for those who
wanted it. When Elon Musk bought the company he promptly decreed the opposite.
But most firms have not gone to either extreme, instead trying to find the best of both
worlds.
As a coinage, hybrid work is no beauty. But it will reshape cities, careers, family life
and free time. That is ample qualification for a word of the year.
Set work
1. Look through the article and find the information about the following:
Johnson, the financial crisis of 2008, the Brexit, the pandemic, zero covid,
27climate change summit in Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt, Meta, Elon Musk
2. Transcribe and translate the following words.
kamikaze, portmanteau, transparent, perennial, jargon
3. Find the English equivalents from the article to the Russian words and
phrases. Reproduce the sentences from the article in which they are used.
весьма существенный, драматическое событие, иметь способность к чему-то,
называть, барражирующий авиационный боеприпас (дрон-самоубийца),
этикетка, неиссякаемый источник, замедление темпов роста экономики,
международные конфликты, союзные страны, проводить политику,
ограничительные меры, разгон демонстрантов, отказаться от, засушливое лето,
к наступлению зимы, резкий рост цен на топливо, выйти на передний план,
возместить ущерб, стать ключевым моментом, недопущение негативных
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последствий, метавселенная, позволять себе привычки, вымотанный, держать
марку/ лицо, неологизм, более чем достаточный
4. Explain the difference between abbreviation, acronym and portmanteau.
Give the examples of such words from the text.
5. Explain the underlined parts of the sentences or phrases. How do you
understand them?
1. … Trump populist wave of 2016
2. …. those earlier stories have lingered in the headlines
3. language-watchers,
4. Loitering munitions lacks a certain snap.
5. the catchiest
6. shrinkflation,
7. downsizing products
8. No wonder Shaquille O’Neal, a retired American basketball star, used it in a pizza
advertisement—a measure of success, perhaps
9. Business, economics and finance are perennial sources of new jargon, some bits
more enduring than others.
10. decoupling
11. a boom in friendshoring
12. self-harming
13. zero covid
14. “dynamic clearing to zero”
15. Oxford’s choice this year—based on a public vote—was goblin mode.
6. What is the word of 2023? What influenced this word choice? Guess what the
word of the current year is.
7. Translate the sentences into English.
1. Изобретение искусственного интеллекта – это весьма существенное событие
в науке. Это прорыв, который повлиял не только на науку, но и на весь мир.
2. COVID-19 – это драматическое событие в мире, которое унесло много
жизней. COVID19 нельзя называть просто инфекция.
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3. Талантливые дети имеют способность придумать и изобретать что-то
необычное.
4. Америка начала поставки новой партии барражирующих авиационных
боеприпасов на Украину.
5. Бизнес, экономика и другие отрасли являются неиссякаемым источником
жаргонизмов и неологизмов.
6. Замедление темпов роста экономики, международные конфликты, резкий
рост цен на топливо являются причиной массовых беспорядков на улицах
Европы. Правительства вводят ограничительные меры, а также на улицах
проводится разгон демонстрантов, что является сдерживающим фактором.
7. Нестабильная обстановка в стране, а также тот факт, что правительство
проводит политику, причиняющую вред стране, заставили бизнесменов
выводить свои активы в дружественные зарубежные страны.
7. Retell the article and comment on its main idea.
UNIT 3. CLONING
READING 1
As technology advances at breakneck speed, human cloning may be close behind
April 13, 2023 4th Industrial Revolution, Media Release, News, Opinion Pieces
Professor Letlhokwa George Mpedi is the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of
Johannesburg. He recently published an opinion article that first appeared in the Daily
Maverick on 12 April 2023.
There are not many convincing arguments for human cloning. From an ethical
standpoint, the arguments against it are overwhelming. But we can’t dismiss the
possibility out of hand.
On 5 July 1996, Dolly the sheep was born from a Scottish Blackface surrogate sheep.
With a white face that stood in stark contrast with her surrogate mother, she let out
a bleating cry to great excitement in the room.
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Dolly was the first successful instance of animal cloning, created from the udder
cells of a ewe. Many thought this would signal the beginning of human cloning but
30 years on from this moment, we have yet to venture into this terrain. Cloning is
perhaps one of the most notable instances of the tightrope between technological
advancement and ethics.
There have been strides in the area in recent years. Scientists have cloned plants and
various other animals, such as cattle, goats and cats. Whether this has been done
successfully, however, remains in question. The animals produced by cloning suffer
from various severe health handicaps, such as distorted limbs, dysfunctional organs,
gross obesity and premature death.
Dolly, for example, was euthanised at six years old, despite the lifespan of a sheep
being 12. Her health rapidly deteriorated as she endured progressive lung disease
and arthritis. Beyond the lessons we have learnt from cloning other animals, the very
idea of human cloning remains contentious.
According to the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), cloning aims
to produce “genetically identical copies of a biological entity”. Notably, there are
distinctions to be made about what we mean by cloning.
Scientists refer to three examples: cloning genes, cloning cells and cloning
individuals. Cloning genes and cells is routinely practised and allows for genetic
testing and investigation. However, as I have indicated in a previous article on this
platform on gene editing, despite advancements in the field of genetics, there are still
vast ethical and legal considerations in these processes.
Cloning of individuals, however, presents an entirely new frontier. There are two
central arguments for cloning: producing children who are genetically identical to
existing individuals, particularly in cases of infertility or unconventional family
structures; and the creation of cloned embryos for research or therapy.
Despite these arguments, human cloning is banned throughout most of the world. In
1998, physicist Leon Kass reflected on the creation of Dolly and declared the very
thought of human cloning unethical. As he wrote in The wisdom of repugnance: why
we should ban the cloning of humans, “The prospect of human cloning, so repulsive