Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci…the art world has never lacked talent. And now, a new painter is ready to join the list, although this one isn’t even human.
Next month, auction house(拍卖行) Christie’s Prints and Multiples will make history by offering the first piece of art created by artificial intelligence (AI) for sale. The painting is a portrait of a man called Edmond De Belam, and is expected to be sold for up to $10,000 (69,000 yuan).
The work, which features a man with a mysterious look on his face, was created by software developed by the French art group Obvious. Laugero-Lasserre, an art collector, called the work “odd and amazing at the same time”. This isn’t the first example of Al-produced artwork, as AI has already been used to write poems and compose songs. However, many people doubt whether it should be called art at all.
According to Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828 -1910), art is about creating emotion. It’s “a means of…joining people together in the same feelings” he once said.
So, if the emotion behind art is what makes it, the ability to create and use tools is what makes human beings different from other species. And as a tool itself, the AI technology used to create the portrait is the result of a lot of effort made by several designers. Together, they “fed” the AI a huge collection of paintings from the 14th to the 18th centuries, until it was able to work out how to make similar paintings of its own.
The introduction of AI art could be the beginning of a new artistic movement. However, not everyone is ready to welcome these high-tech artists just yet.
“The human mind is what’s behind the AI technology. And the human mind is not a cold, hard fact,” Oscar Schwartz, a professor of AI, said during a Ted X Sydney speech. “Rather, it is something that’s created with our opinions and something that changes over time.”
1.Why are Monet, Picasso and da Vinci mentioned at the beginning of the passage?
A.To list world famous talented artists.
B.To highlight the inhuman painter by contrast.
C.To show the prosperity of the art world.
D.To introduce a new painter as great as them.
2.Why does the painting mentioned in Paragraph 2 gain special concern?
A.It’ll be auctioned in a famous auction house.
B.It’s the first AI-produced artwork for sale.
C.It’s the portrait of a man with mysterious look.
D.Its auction price is expected to be the highest.
3.Which of the following statement may Leo Tolstoy agree with?
A.AI technology is a tool for artistic creation.
B.AI is taught to express human emotions in art.
C.AI copied paintings of the 14th -18th centuries.
D.AI art joins people together in the same feelings.
4.What might be the future of the new artistic movement?
A.Predictable. B.Unacceptable.
C.Popular. D.Unclear.
Places of Interest in Wales
Conway: On the north Wales coast, Conway is where you’ll find the world’s smallest house, as well as a much larger “house”, Conway Castle, which was built in the 13th century.
Anglesey: This beautiful island is joined to the rest of north Wales by a road bridge and a railway bridge, and it’s just a short drive from Conway. Here you can visit the village of Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll which has the strangest name in Europe. Don’t miss the station. The sign runs the complete length of the platform! Also on Anglesey is Beaumaris Castle, which was started in the 13th century and to this day remains unfinished.
Snowdonia: Just a couple of hours’ drive from Beaumaris is the Snowdonia mountain range, which takes its name from the highest mountain in Wales, Mount Snowdon. From there, visit the famous Swallow Falls at nearby Betwsy-Coed.
Portmeirion: In 1925 Clough, Williams-Ellis bought an attractive piece of Welsh land for less than ￡5,000. He then set out to show the world how a naturally beautiful castle could be built without being damaged and spent the next 50 years building the town of Portmeirion with a style of Italy.
For more information, order our full-colour brochures:
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1.What do we know about Anglesey?
A.It is far from Conway.
B.It lies in the south of Wales.
C.It can be reached by train.
D.It has the smallest house in the world.
2.What can visitors get from the brochures?
A.Introduction of the climate in Wales.
B.Characteristics of buildings in Wales.
C.Detailed information about people in Wales.
D.Information about adventure activities.
请阅读下面文字，并按照要求用英语写一篇150词左右的文章。
The University of Cambridge confirmed on Monday that it had been using scores from China's national college entrance examination, or gaokao, as part of its admission criteria for Chinese students for several years.
It says in Weibo post, however, that it does not admit students only based on their test scores.
The University statement came after some Chinese media reported over the weekend that the university would start to admit Chinese students that ranked in the top 0.1 percent in the gaokao in their province, indicating that it would try to compete for talent with top universities in China.
The news immediately became one of the most viewed topics on social media, being read by 280 million users on Sina Weibo.
The gaokao is increasingly accepted by universities in Australia, the United States, Canada and Europe. The University of New Hampshire became the first US state university to accept the gaokao in its entrance criteria last year. The test is also recognized by 30 universities in Australia and 30 in Canada, as well as colleges in Italy, France and Spain.
［写作内容］
1.用约30个单词概述上述信息的主要内容；
2.谈谈剑桥大学接受中国高考成绩对你的启示，用2-3个理由或论据支撑你的看法。
［写作要求］
1.写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句；2.作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；
3.不必写标题。
［评分标准］
内容完整，语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。
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请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。注意；每个空格只填1个单词.请将答案写在答题纸上相应题号的横线上。
The future belongs to the flexible mind. This is the argument behind best-selling author Leonard Miodinow's new book, Elastic（灵活的），which examines the ever-increasing changes we find ourselves living through, and the ways of thinking best suited to them.
Do we need to develop a flexible mind?
Times we live in demand a flexible style of thinking. In politics, we now have to cope with more scandals in a single year than we used to encounter in a lifetime. Meanwhile, the speed and processing power of computers makes it difficult for us to navigate a landscape in which, the number of websites has been doubling every two to three years, and the way we use and access them is subject to frequent "disastrous changes". More importantly, social attitudes are changing just as fast.
Logical thought is an analysis that can be described by an algorithm （算术）of the kind that computers follow. Elastic thought cannot. Logical thought is solved to help us face the everyday challenges of life while elastic thought helps us succeed when circumstances change. Elastic thought is where our new ideas come from. Logical thought can determine how to drive from our home to the grocery store most efficiently, but it's elastic thought that gave us the automobile.
What makes it hard to think "flexibly"?
Flexible thinking comes naturally to all humans, but one way it may be blocked is through another power exercised by our brain, the ability to tune out "crazy” ideas. A single information processor depends on an algorithm to solve a problem. The human brain, instead, acts as a set of interacting and competing systems. They use our knowledge and expectations of the world to assess ideas. That approach is well suited to a stable environment. But it can be less productive when circumstances change.
How can we learn to be more flexible in our own thinking?
One of the abilities most important to flexible thinking is the power to relax our mind and let our guard down. If we are constantly alerted, our ideas may have a narrow range, and tend to be conventional.
One can also cultivate flexible thinking by adjusting one's external conditions. Studies show that sitting in a darkened room, or closing our eyes, can widen our perspective. Low ceilings, narrow corridors, and windowless offices have the opposite effect. Being able to think without any kind of time pressure is also important when striving for novel ideas. Just as important, interruptions are deadly. A short phone call, e-mail or even a text message can redirect your attention and thoughts.
As a more general exercise to nurture our mental flexibility we can try to pay special attention to one of our strongly held beliefs, take it seriously and recall times in the past that we were wrong about something, our intellectual interactions may also be helpful.
Deep 1. into Flexible Thinking | |
Passage outline | Supporting details |
2. to possess a flexible mind | •Political change along with technological and social changes in our times 3. for flexible thinking. •Flexible thinking and logical thinking are playing different roles in our daily lives. The latter helps make what we analyze accurate while the former enables us to be 4.. |
5. to thinking flexibly | • 6. information processors, our brain can either ignore new ideas or kill them 7. on our experience and expectations. |
Ways to cultivate flexible thinking | • It is better to let our mind off guard occasionally so as to avoid 8. our ideas to conventional ones. • Adjusting external surroundings 9. and thinking without time pressure and distractions is also important. • 10. on one of our strongly held beliefs and having some doubt about it may be of help. |
For most of recorded history, the struggle to eat has been the main focus of human activity, and all but a handful of people were either farmers or farm workers. Starvation was ever-present threat. Even the best years rarely yielded much of a surplus to carry over as an insurance against leaner times. In the worst situation, none but the powerful could be sure of a full stomach.
Now most people in rich countries never have to worry about where the next meal is coming from. In 1900 two in every five American workers laboured on a farm: now one in 5Q does. Even in poor places such as India, where famine still struck until the mid-20th century, the assumption that everyone will have something to eat is increasingly built into the rhythm of life.
That assumption, though, leads to complacency（自满情结）. Famine has ended in much of the world, but it still stalks parts of Africa -Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, to name three countries, depend on handouts of food. And millions of people still suffer from malnutrition. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation（FAO）, some 2 billion of the world's 7.3 billion people do not have enough to eat. Moreover, by 2050, the total population is projected to grow to almost 10 billion. Add this to the rising demand for meat, fish, milk and eggs, which is born of prosperity and which requires extra fodder to satisfy, and 70% more food will be needed in 2050 than was produced in 2009, the year the FAO did the calculation. That is a tall order. But it is not impossible.
Since the time of Thomas Malthus, an economist writing a little over 200 years ago, people have worried that population growth would outstrip（超过）food supply. So far, it has not. But neo-Malthusians spot worrying signs. One is that in some places the productivity of staples（主食）such as rice and wheat has reached a plateau（停滞期）.Neither new strains nor fancy agrochemicals are raising yields. Nor is there much unfarmed land left that is suitable to be brought under the plough. Neo-Malthusians also suggest that, if global temperatures continue to rise, some places will become unfarmable -particularly poor, tropical regions.
These are reasonable, concerns. But they can be overcome by two things: the application and spread of technology, and the implementation of sensible government policies.
Agricultural technology is changing fast. Much of this change is brought about by rich-world farmers and by rich fanners in middle-income places like Brazil. Techniques developed in the West 一 especially genome-based breeding that can create crops with special properties almost to order 一 are being adapted to make tropical crops. Such smart breeding, in alliance with new, precise techniques of genetic modification, should break through the yield plateaus. It can also produce crops with properties such as drought and heat-resistance that will. reduce the effects of global warming. Drought-resistant maize created in this way is already on the market.
The developing world applies as little to existing farming techniques as it does to the latest advances in genetic modification. Yield plateaus are a phenomenon only of the most intensively farmed parts of the world. Extending to the smallholders and subsistence farmers of Africa and Asia the best of today's agricultural practices, in such simple matters as how much fertilizer to apply and when, would get humanity quite a long way towards a 70% increase in output.
Indeed, government policy on reducing waste more generally would make a huge difference. The FAO says that about a third of food is lost during or after harvest. In rich countries a lot of food is thrown away by consumers. In poor ones it does not reach consumers in the first place. Bad harvesting practices, poor storage and slow transport mean that food is damaged, spoiled or lost to pests. Changing that, which is mostly a question of building things like better, pest-proof grain silos and monitoring their contents properly, would take a big bite out of the 70% increase.
The neo-Malthusians may throw up their hands in despair, but consider this: despite all the apparent obstacles, from yield plateaus to climate change, in the six years following the FAO analysis cereal production rose by 11%. If growth like that continues it should not only be possible to feed the 10 billion, but to feed them well.
1.According to Paragraphs 1 and 2, we can know that most people in the modern world ______ .
A.usually take food for granted .
B.are successfully getting rid of farming
C.tend to deal with lean years skillfully
D.enjoy equal rights to get good food
2.What does the underlined sentence, in Paragraph 3 probably mean?
A.Feeding a population of almost 10 billion can be expensive.
B.A precise calculation of the food growth rate is hard to make.
C.Increasing the output of food by 70% in given years is very difficult.
D.There is no parallel to the rising demand for high-quality food in history.
3.According to the passage, neo-Malthusians ______.
A.have disproved Thomas Malthus' argument
B.have contributed to the increased output of crops
C.have found that population growth will exceed food supply
D.have claimed that climate change may influence food production
4.What can we infer from the example of the develop world in Paragraph 7?
A.Technology is of little use if it is not adopted.
B.Yield plateaus are common to see all over the world.
C.The developing world has got used to existing farming techniques.
D.More advanced agricultural practices should be introduced to the developing world.
5.The underlined part "take a big bite out of" in the last but one paragraph is closest in meaning to “______ "
A.make a big profit of.
B.take full advantage of
C.indicate the influence of.
D.reduce a significant amount of
6.What does the author think of the future of le world's food supply?
A.It is worrying. B.It is promising.
C.It is controversial. D.It is uncertain.
Somewhere in the highlands of Afghanistan, a hungry fox pounces （猛扑）on a tasty-looking leopard gecko （豹纹 壁虎）.But the lizard has a get — out — of — jail — free card: a separable tail. The dropped part waves in an energetic but uncontrolled way around long enough to distract the fox, allowing the gecko itself to run off and hide.
Leopard geckos are one of a few lizard species that possess this ability, known as autotomy （自切）.The technique is effective, but the tail can account for about a quarter of the lizard's body mass. So how do these animals adapt to losing so much of it that quickly?
When geckos lose their tail, they "take this more sprawled posture （四肢伸开的姿势）"and walk with their limbs spread out farther from their body, says Chapman University biologist Kevin Jagnandan. Most researchers initially assumed this posture was a response to a suddenly shifted center of mass. But when Jagnandan observed leopard geckos with a tail in his laboratory, he realized that they wag it as they walk, suggesting that these movements may be key to the lizards' movements.
To test this assumption, Jagnandan and his team assessed the postures of 10 geckos walking in various conditions: with their tail intact （完整的）；with their tail restricted by a small section of glued-on fishing rod （whose mass can be neglected）; and with their tail self-amputated. These comparisons allowed the researchers to distinguish the effects of lost mass from those of lost tail-wagging on the geckos’ movements.
The lizards with an immobilized tail adopted ways similar to those with no tail, the researchers reported in a study published in Scientific Reports. This result suggests the sprawling walk they adopt after losing their tail is not compensating for the missing mass but rather for the lack of tail-wagging. Jagnandan thinks tail movements help the lizards keep balance and stability as they walk. He suspects that the tails of mammals living in trees, such as cats and monkeys, serve a similar purpose.
Bill Ryerson, a biologist at Saint Anselm College, who was not involved in the study, was surprised by the findings. "We thought we had settled it ——it seemed pretty open-and-shut" that mass was the main factor, he says. The new study challenges this earlier idea in a "beautifully simple" way, Ryerson adds.
Jagnandan hopes that understanding how animals react to missing body parts could ultimately help engineers design robots that can move more efficiently as heavy loads — or even entire limbs --- are added and removed.
1.From the first two paragraphs we can learn that ______.
A.the fox likes to play with the gecko's tail
B.the fox falls for the trick of the gecko
C.moving without a tail is much tougher for the gecko
D.the gecko becomes inactive when losing its tail
2.Most researchers once thought geckos adopted the sprawled posture because ______
A.the posture was key to their movements
B.their center of mass had changed
C.the posture was their unique survival skill
D.they imitated other mammals' behavior
3.What can we know about the findings of the study?
A.They are in accordance with the expectation of Bill Ryerson.
B.They were obtained after researchers compared three geckos' movements.
C.They solved several mysteries concerning other mammals.
D.They can be applied to the field of artificial intelligence.
4.What does the passage mainly talk about?
A.Why leopard geckos prefer a habitat in the highlands.
B.How leopard geckos play hide and seek games.
C.How leopard geckos adapt to losing their tails.
D.What role tails play in leopard geckos' life.
