Since the dawn of human ingenuity1, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty. That compulsion has resulted in roboticsthe science of conferring various human capabilities2 on machines. And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction, they have begun to come close.
As a result, the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor3. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot as百度竞价推广bly arms. Our banking4 is done at automated5 teller6 terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robo-drivers. And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics, there are already robot systems that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracyfar greater precision than highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone.
But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility, they will have to operate with less human supervision7 and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselvesgoals that pose a real challenge. While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error, says Dave Lavery, manager of a robotics program at NASA, we can't yet give a robot enough 'common sense' to reliably interact with a dynamic world. Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor8 circuits and microprocessors9 might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries.
What they found, in attempting to model thought, is that the human brain's roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talentedand human perception far more complicatedthan previously10 imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter in a controlled factory environment. But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant11, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of a winding12 forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd. The most advanced computer systems on Earth can't approach that kind of ability, and neuroscientists still don't know quite how we do it.
1. Human ingenuity was initially13 demonstrated in .
A. the use of machines to produce science fiction
B. the wide use of machines in manufacturing industry
C. the invention of tools for difficult and dangerous work
D. the elite's cunning tackling of dangerous and boring work
2. The word gizmos most probably means .
A. programs
B. experts
C. devices
D. creatures
3. According to the text, what is beyond man's ability now is to design a robot that
can .
A. fulfill14 delicate tasks like performing brain surgery
B. interact with human beings verbally
C. have a little common sense
D. respond independently to a changing world
4. Besides reducing human labor, robots can also .
A. make a few decisions for themselves
B. deal with some errors with human intervention
C. improve factory environments
D. cultivate human creativity
5. The author uses the example of a monkey to argue that robots are .
A. expected to copy human brain in internal structure
B. able to perceive abnormalities immediately
C. far less able than human brain in focusing on relevant information
D. best used in a controlled environment
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