C
A machine can now not only beat you at chess, it can also outperform you in debate. Last week, in a public debate in San Francisco, a software program called Project Debater beat its human opponents, including Noa Ovadia, Israel’s former national debating champion.
Brilliant though it is, Project Debater has some weaknesses. It takes sentences from its library of documents and prebuilt arguments and strings them together. This can lead to the kinds of errors no human would make. Such wrinkles will no doubt be ironed out, yet they also point to a fundamental problem. As Kristian Hammond, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University, put it: “There’s never a stage at which the system knows what it’s talking about.”
What Hammond is referring to is the question of meaning, and meaning is central to what distinguishes the least intelligent of humans from the most intelligent of machines. A computer works with symbols. Its program specifies a set of rules to transform one string of symbols into another. But it does not specify what those symbols mean. Indeed, to a computer, meaning is irrelevant. Humans, in thinking, talking, reading and writing, also work with symbols. But for humans, meaning is everything. When we communicate, we communicate meaning. What matters is not just the outside of a string of symbols, but the inside too, not just how they are arranged but what they mean.
Meaning emerges through a process of social interaction, not of computation, interaction that shapes the content of the symbols in our heads. The rules that assign meaning lie not just inside our heads, but also outside, in society, in social memory, social conventions and social relations. It is this that distinguishes humans from machines. And that’s why, however astonishing Project Debater may seem, the tradition that began with Socrates and Confucius will not end with artificial intelligence.
Why does the author mention Noa Ovadia in the first paragraph?
推理判断题。根据第一段的“Last week, in a public debate in San Francisco, a software program called Project Debater beat its human opponents, including Noa Ovadia, Israel’s former national debating champion.(上周，在旧金山的一场公开辩论中，一个名为Project Debater的软件程序击败了它的人类对手，其中包括以色列前全国辩论冠军Noa Ovadia。)”可知，作者在第一段提到Noa Ovadia的目的是展示Project Debater的聪明。故选B。
What does the underlined word “wrinkles” in paragraph 2 refer to?
词句猜测题。根据第二段的“Brilliant though it is, Project Debater has some weaknesses. It takes sentences from its library of documents and prebuilt arguments and strings them together. This can lead to the kinds of errors no human would make.(尽管Project Debater很聪明，但它也有一些弱点。它从文档库和预先构建的参数中提取句子，并将它们串在一起。这可能会导致人类不会犯的错误。)”和“will no doubt be ironed out(毫无疑问会被解决)”可知，划线词所在句子表示“这样的错误会被纠正，被解决”，划线词wrinkles的意思是“错误”，和errors意思相近，故选C。
What is Project Debater unable to do according to Hammond?
细节理解题。根据倒数第二段的“What Hammond is referring to is the question of meaning, and meaning is central to what distinguishes the least intelligent of humans from the most intelligent of machines. A computer works with symbols. Its program specifies a set of rules to transform one string of symbols into another. But it does not specify what those symbols mean. Indeed, to a computer, meaning is irrelevant.(Hammond所指的是意义的问题，而意义是区分最不聪明的人类和最聪明的机器的关键。计算机使用符号。它的程序指定了一组将一串符号转换为另一串符号的规则。但它并没有具体说明这些符号的含义。事实上，对于计算机来说，意义是无关紧要的。)”可知，根据Hammond的说法，Project Debater不能理解意义，故选B。
What can we learn from the last paragraph?
细节理解题。根据最后一段的“Meaning emerges through a process of social interaction, not of computation, interaction that shapes the content of the symbols in our heads. The rules that assign meaning lie not just inside our heads, but also outside, in society, in social memory, social conventions and social relations.(意义的产生是通过社会互动的过程，而不是计算的过程，这种互动塑造了我们头脑中符号的内容。赋予意义的规则不仅存在于我们的头脑中，也存在于社会之外，存在于社会记忆、社会习俗和社会关系中。)”可知，从最后一段我们能了解到社会互动是理解符号的关键。故选A。