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题型:阅读理解 题类:常考题 难易度:普通

河南省三门峡市2020届高三上学期英语11月月考试卷

阅读理解

    If you're a fan of smart technology, you may have had some sleepless nights lately. That's because Alexa, the artificial intelligence (AI) behind US company Amazon's Echo smart speakers, has been "letting out an unprompted (自发的),creepy (令人毛骨悚然的)cackle for no apparent reason, according to BBC News.

    Many social media users shared their stories of Alexa scaring them with the seemingly unprompted laugh.

    "Every time Alexa laughs, an angel dies," Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk joked on social media.

    On March 7, Amazon released an update that fixed the problem, saying that the laugh was caused by Echo devices mistakenly thinking that users had said the command " Alexa, laugh".

    However, what should have been a funny story raised the ongoing topic of man versus machine.

    With the rise of artificial and robotic technology, "Digital machines started to demonstrate broad abilities in pattern recognition, complex communication, and other area that used to be particularly human," wrote Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in their book The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. They believe that AI will "do more and more, and our lives will get better".

    However, ever since the earliest days of AI there have been concerns that some day, software will take over the world, leaving the fate of humans unknown.

    "With artificial intelligence we are order the demon (魔鬼)Musk told students during a meeting at MIT in 2014. "If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful

    Many scientists have shared the same concern. The late British physicist Stephen Hawking said at a technology conference in Portugal in November that "computers can. in theory, imitate human intelligence, and exceed it ••• AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization."

    If creators are to safely control AL however, Hawking suggested that they "employ best practice and effective management".

    I am an optimist and I believe that we can create AI for the good of the world," he said at the conference. "We simply need to be aware of the dangers, identify them, employ the best possible practice and management, and prepare for its consequences well in advance."

(1)、What does the underlined word "cackle" in Paragraph 1 probably mean?
A、movement B、laughter C、scream D、story
(2)、The story of Alexa is intended to      .
A、lead into the discussion about humans and AI B、prove artificial intelligence has its weaknesses C、inform readers of the development of AI D、show how Alexa's problem was fixed
(3)、According to Brynjolfsson and McAfee, which statement below is probably TRUE?
A、The development of AI could threaten our survival one day. B、Digital machines have complete ability to recognize something without mistakes. C、Robots will never match humans in complex communication. D、Humans lives will be greatly improved with the help of robots.
(4)、What can be a suitable title for the text?
A、Man VS. Machine B、Time to Control Rise of AI C、Creepy AI D、AI: The Biggest Threat
举一反三
阅读理解

    In the story of “The crow and the Pitcher” from Aesop's Fables, a thisty crow (乌鸦)drops stones into a narrow jar to raise the low level of water inside so he can take a drink.

    Now scientists have evidence to back up that story. Crows actually do understand how to make water displacement (移位) work to their advantage, experiments show. The results suggest that the birds are, at least in some aspects, as smart as first-graders.

    Researchers, led by Sarah Jelbert at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, presented six crows with tubes filled with water. Inside the tubes, a worm or piece of meat on a piece of wood was floating, just out of reach of the crow. In front of the tubes, the researchers arranged several rubber erasers that would sink, and some plastic objects that would float. The crows found out that they could drop the erasers into the tubes in order to raise the water level and get their snack.

    However, the birds handled awkwardly in experiments in which they could choose to drop objects in either a wide tube or a narrow one to get a snack, the researchers said. Dropping objects into narrow tube would lift the water level by a greater amount and put the treat within reach after just two drops; while it took around seven drops to raise the snack to the same level in the wide tube. The crows obviously didn't realize this, and most of them went for the wide tube first.

    Previous studies showed that chimps and human children can solve similar tasks. In a 2011 study, chimps and kids found out that they could put water into a tube to reach a peanut that was floating in a small amount of water at the bottom.

阅读理解

    I came to study in the United States a year ago .Yet I did not know the real American society until I was injured in a car accident because after the accident I had to see a doctor and go to court.

    After the accident .my roommate called a doctor for me. I was very grateful and determined to repay him one day. But the next day, he asked me to pay him $200 for what he had done. I was astonished. He had good reason to charge me, he said. And if I wanted to collect money from the person who was responsible for my injury, I'd have to have a good lawyer. And only a good doctor can help me get a good lawyer. Now that he had helped me find a good doctor, it was only fair that I should pay him.

    But every day I went to see the doctor, I had to wait about 50 minutes. He would see two or three patients at the same time, and often stop treating one so as to see another. Yet he charged me $115 each time .The final examination report consisted of ten lines, and it cost me $215.

    My lawyer was all smiles the first time we met. But after that he avoided seeing me at all. He knew very well the other party was responsible for the accident, yet he hardly did anything. He simply waited to collect his money. He was so irresponsible that I decided to dismiss him. And he made me pay him $770.

    Now I had to act as my own lawyer. Due to my inexperience, I told the insurance company the date I was leaving America. Knowing that, they played for time…and I left without getting a cent.

阅读理解

    Bark

    Cover Price: $19.80         Price: $15.00($2.50 / issue (期) )

    You save: $4.80 (24%)      Review: By Pat Kane

    I absolutely love Bark magazine! I love the “smiling” pages and the tips on every issue. I am a dog lover and have saved all of my dogs from either death row or from people who were going to put them down. Everyone should have a chance to live and Bark stresses that with its articles. This magazine is a MUST HAVE for any dog lover!!

    Dog Fancy

    Cover Price: $54.00          Price: $14.99 ($1.25 / issue)

    You save: $39.01 (72%)       Review: By Berner Mom

    Don't waste your money on this magazine. 60-70 percent of it are advertisements, and the articles offer little useful information. It might be suitable for children, but not adults who are serious about educating themselves about dogs.

    Dog World

    Cover Price: $48.88           Price: $14.99 ($1.25 / issue)

    You save: $33.89 (69%)        Review: By one critic

    Dog World has many very interesting and thought-provoking (令人思考的) articles for people involved in dog showing, breeding(饲养), performance events, etc. However,over half of the magazine is devoted to breeder ads, which is boring. Still, as a whole, I recommend(推荐) it for the articles. Good articles, but tons of ads.

    Modern Dog

    Cover Price: $45.00             Price: $15.00 ($3.75 / issue)

    You save: $30.00 (24%)          Review: By Dinah

    My new favorite magazine! Beautiful photos, smart and amusing articles, fashion, art, interviews with famous people… all with a dog focus!Cover models range from Paris Hilton and Tinkerbell to Virginia Madsen and her dogs. Thanks to Modern Dog I now know how to give a dog-friendly cocktail party and how to actually get my dog to come when she's called. Surely worth checking out.

阅读理解

    Few of us make money by losing sleep. But three graduate students at Brown University in Providence built a company around sleep deprivation(睡眠不足).

    Jason Donahue, Ben Rubin and Eric Shashoua were working late nights in Brown's business and engineering schools. They began thinking about ways to sleep better. They discovered they weren't alone in burning the midnight oil. Around 20% of Americans get less than six hours of rest a night.

    The friends imagined a smart alarm clock that could track how much time people spend in the most restorative(有恢复作用的) stages of the sleep cycle: REM (rapid eye movement) and deep sleep. What would it cost to design such a thing? Five years of research, 20 employees, $14 million and a whole lot of doubting from investors and scientists.

    Their company, Zeo, based in Newton, Mass, launched its product in June, 2009. The Zeo device uses a headband with tiny sensors(传感器) that scan your brain for signs of four sleep states-REM, light, deep and waking sleep. The smart alarm clock displays a graph of your sleep pattern and wakes you as you're not in REM sleep. In the morning you can upload the data to the company's Web site, and so track your sleep over time. Most of the feedback(反馈) comes in the form of Zeo's ZQ score showing how well you've slept.

    “Zeo allows people to unlock this black box of sleep,” says Dave Dickinson, a health-care CEO.

    Whether any of this actually improves sleep is up to the consumer, who will also need to make lifestyle changes like cutting out alcohol before bedtime or caffeine after 3 P.M.

    For now the company is selling Zeo online only. Dickinson also plans to spread it to countries such as Australia, where sleep deprivation approaches US levels.

阅读理解

    Doing business nowadays without a cellphone? Living a very private life? I can't imagine it anymore.

    Journalist Chris Stokel-Walker explained it very well: For the average working person, there's no greater feeling than powering down your computer and kissing goodbye to your work emails for the day. If we're lucky enough to disconnect from the job on evenings and weekends, we're overjoyed to leave work emails and the stress that comes with it in the office.

    But experts say we're increasingly failing to do so, instead bringing the burden home with us and dealing with emails during our free time. Unsurprisingly, this routine has some serious consequences.

    Working abnormal or long hours has long been linked with depression(抑郁症), anxiety and even heart disease. In addition, the importance of weekend recovery has also been linked with weekly job performance and personal initiative(主动性). And further research showed psychological detachment(脱离) during off-work time reduced emotional exhaustion caused by high job demands and helped people stay engaged.

    So, if we know all this, it begs the question: Why are we still letting work bother our precious weekend? According to Cary Cooper, professor of Organizational School, the recent trend even spills into the way we access our work communications and projects.

    Today, says Cooper, work emails are just a tap of a smartphone away. "You don't carry your laptop around when you're out to dinner, but you do carry your mobile phone," he says. "The smartphone does not make up for what is lost." So delete your work email account from your inbox(收件箱), and leave the worries until Monday.

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