How did we get brains big enough to create machines with artificial intelligence? Some suggest that it was to help keep track of all the people, and their roles, within our growing social groups. Large, well-integrated and co-ordinated groups improved our chances of survival because they made the division of labour possible. The alternative explanation is that our brain power is due to needing brains that facilitated problem-solving and invention. Whatever the cause, our evolved problem-solving abilities have thrown a spanner in the works . Google's artificial intelligence machine AlphaGo upends the evolved social contract. Now we can only hope that the machine will help us understand how to preserve the value of individuals who have no contribution to make. Until recently, for instance, Lee Sedol's unique selling point lay in his ability to beat all-comers at the ancient Asian game of Go. Now a team of human beings equipped with AlphaGo, an AI tool, have beaten him. After the first defeat, Sedol pronounced himself "in shock". After the second defeat he was "quite speechless". After the third he confessed he felt "powerless". This quiet revolution has already started. You know about Google's self-driving car. Artificial intelligence is already better than most doctors at interpreting medical scans. It is organising school timetables and finding the optimal delivery schedule for supermarket supplies: getting Easter eggs into the hands of slavering infants involves AI. You're not even going to notice the takeover. Next time you're in a supermarket, give the self-service checkout a hard stare. It's essentially a static robot. And this robot has human assistants. Those people who turn up when you attempt to buy alcohol are summoned by the machine. The human assistant is still necessary, but only because the manufacturers and programmers made a decision to limit the robot's capabilities. They didn't have to: if we decided we wanted fully autonomous robot checkouts, we could equip them to read iris scans or fingerprints, or simply use face recognition. And that would require us to sign up and hand over our biometric data. Given a little time to get used to the idea, most of us probably would do, and more jobs will go. That tells us something about why we should start coming to terms with the implications of AlphaGo's success. It's not clear our big, clever brains can solve the problem. Maybe those who profit from making human roles redundant could pay a "human capital gains" tax: we could charge the innovators for replacing a job and divert the money into social programmes. But how to make Google pay to implement its AI? We may have found the problem AlphaGo can't solve.

单选题 According to the passage, artificial intelligence was probably created to______.

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】解析：细节题。根据题干中的created artificial intelligence将答案定位到第一段第一句，紧接着提供了我们创造出人工智能机器的两种解释：为了跟踪搜集人类社会职业信息，或者是由于人类需要更强大的解决问题和发明创造的能力。选项[A]与第二个表述基本一致，为正确答案。[B]选项“用机器代替人类”，并非开发人工智能的初衷。选项[C]和[D]也非人工智能所导致，而是人工智能的研究内容。

单选题 The phrase "throw a spanner in the works" in Para. 2 is closest in meaning to______.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】解析：猜词题。短语throw a spanner in the works的前后文写道：不管诞生的原因如何，人工智能已经颠覆了社会契约，也就是类似于“给……添乱”的意思。选项[C]“使某物陷入混乱”正好符合此意，为正确答案。[A]throw a handle“推一下把手(使大型机器或电器设备启动或停止)”；[B]throw in the towel“认输”；[D]throw the baby out with the bathwater“在摒弃不重要的东西的同时，将重要的东西也抛弃了”，喻指得不偿失。

单选题 By citing the example of the AlphaGo-Sedol battle, the author intends to show that______.

单选题 The author urges people to "start coming to terms with the implications of AlphaGo's success" partly because______.

单选题 What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】解析：推测题。最后一段表达的主要意思是：谁受益，谁纳税。与之含义最接近的是选项[B]。选项[A]“人类的大脑太过复杂，难以解决许多棘手的问题”，文中没有提及。选项[C]“即使阿法狗也不知道该如何让谷歌实施它的人工智能计划”，此选项在原文中几乎可以找到原句，但这只是作者提出的带有些许揶揄的问题，并非本段的主题。选项[D]“在将来，人类和人工智能之间的关系将一点都不和谐”，属于主观臆断。