SECTION 2: PRACTICE
QUESTION 1
I. Fill in each blank with the correct form of the word given in brackets
1. Our company’s IT system has undergone a number of _______ (overhaul)
2. His colleagues quickly became accustomed to his ______ (mess) ways.
3. His presentation was _________ (slick) delivered, which satisfied his boss.
4. Our company always _________(quest) for more innovative and motivating training programs
for our employees.
5. Our department head never wants to waste time on _______ (trivial).
6. The World Bank said it would continue its partnership with Vietnam on its last mile of poverty
______ (alleviate).
7. They were ________ (malicious) accused of offences they did not commit.
8. In recent years, the full impact of ______ (global) in the workplace has yet to be realized.
9. There are a number of programs which can rescue your data if you ______ (accidental) delete
files.
10. When my boss is away, he would like to _______(regular) receive progress reports by email.
II. Use the words given to complete each of the following sentences
1. This / server / considerable / reliable / far / quiet / and / lot / powerful / than / that / server.
2. Palmtop / smaller / considerable / less / powerful / somewhat / cheap / than / laptop.
3. Suite / comprise / several / application / and / way / useful / than / single application.
4. Plug-in / use / provide / additional / features / application / far / common / than / patch / use /
correct / software / problem.
5. Virus / definite / dangerous / than / bug / because / bug / just / software / error / while /
virus / can / damage / software.
6. Crash / just / software / failure / so / it / less / serious / than / hard / disk / failure / which
/ cause / loss / all / information / you / save.
7. Internet / which / worldwide / network / share / billions / users / infinite / big / than /
intranet / which / one organization / network.
8. Workgroup / far / big / than / single / work / station / because / it / collection / work /
stations / link / together.
9. Our / IT / system / ageing / one / which / suggest / we / upgrade / soon / possible.
10. According / experts / incorrect / memory / address / most / common / reason / why /
our company / desktop / computer / keep / crash.
QUESTION 2
J. Reading 1: Read the text and do the tasks that follow
The Real Risks of Artificial Intelligence
If you believe some Al-watchers, we are racing towards the Singularity — a point at which
artificial intelligence outstrips our own and machines go on to improve themselves at an
exponential rate. If that happens — and it’s a big if— what will become of us?
In the last few years, several high-profile voices, from Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk and
Bill Gates have warned that we should be more concerned about possible dangerous outcomes of
supersmart AI. And they’ve put their money where their mouth is: Musk is among several
billionaire backers of OpenAI, an orgnisation dedicated to developing AI that will benefit
humanity.
But for many, such fears are overblown. As Andrew Ng at Stanford University, who is also
chief scientist at Chinese internet giant Baidu, puts it: fearing a rise of killer robots is like
worrying about overpopulation on Mars.
That's not to say our increasing reliance on AI does not carry real risks, however. In fact,
those risks are already here. As smart systems become involved in ever more decisions in arenas
ranging from healthcare to finance to criminal justice, there is a danger that important parts of our
lives are being made without sufficient scrutiny. What’s more, Als could have knock-on effects
that we have not prepared for, such as changing our relationship with doctors to the way our
neighbourhoods are policed.
What exactly is AI? Very simply, it’s machines doing things that are considered to require
intelligence when humans do them: understanding natural language, recognising faces in photos,
driving a car, or guessing what other books we might like based on what we have previously
enjoyed reading. It’s the difference between a mechanical arm on a factory production line
programmed to repeat the same basic task over and over again, and an arm that learns through
trial and error how to handle different tasks by itself.
How is AI helping us? The leading approach to AI right now is machine learning, in which
programs are trained to pick out and respond to patterns in large amounts of data, such as
identifying a face in an image or choosing a winning move in the board game Go. This technique
can be applied to all sorts of problems, such as getting computers to spot patterns in medical
images, for example. Google’s artificial intelligence company DeepMind are collaborating with
the UK’s National Health Service in a handful of projects, including ones in which their software
is being taught to diagnose cancer and eye disease from patient scans. Others are using machine
learning to catch early signs of conditions such as heart disease and Alzheimers.
Artificial intelligence is also being used to analyse vast amounts of molecular information
looking for potential new drug candidates — a process that would take humans too long to be
worth doing. Indeed, machine learning could soon be indispensable to healthcare.
Artificial intelligence can also help us manage highly complex systems such as global
shipping networks. For example, the system at the heart of the Port Botany container terminal in
Sydney manages the movement of thousands of shipping containers in and out of the port,
controlling a fleet of automated, driverless straddle-carricrs in a completely human-free zone.
Similarly, in the mining industry, optimisation engines arc increasingly being used to plan and
coordinate the movement of a resource, such as iron ore, from initial transport on huge driverless
mine trucks, to the freight trains that take the ore to port.
Als are at work wherever you look, in industries from finance to transportation, monitoring
the share market for suspicious trading activity or assisting with ground and air traffic control.
They even help to keep spam out of your inbox. And this is just the beginning for artificial
intelligence. As the technology advances, so too does the number of applications.
So what's the problem? Rather than worrying about a future AI takeover, the real risk is
that we can put too much trust in the smart systems we are building. Recall that machine learning
works by training software to spot patterns in data. Once trained, it is then put to work analysing
fresh, unseen data. But when the computer spits out an answer, we are typically unable to see how
it got there.
There are obvious problems here. A system is only as good as the data it learns from. Take
a system trained to learn which patients with pneumonia had a higher risk of death, so that they
might be admitted to hospital. It inadvertently classified patients with asthma as being at lower
risk. This was because in normal situations, people with pneumonia and ahistory of asthma go
straight to intensive care and therefore get the kind of treatment that significantly reduces their
risk of dying. The machine learning took this to mean that asthma + pneumonia = lower risk of
death.
As Als are rolled out to assess everything from your credit rating to suitability for a
job you are applying for to criminals’ chance of reoffending, the risks that they will sometimes
get it wrong — without us necessarily knowing — get worse.
Since so much of the data that we feed Als is imperfect, we should not expect perfect
answers all the time. Recognising that is the first step in managing the risk. Decision- making
processes built on top of Als need to be made more open to scrutiny. Since we are building
artificial intelligence in our own image, it is likely to be both as brilliant and as flawed as we are.
A, Match these terms with their definitions
1. exponential
2. put their money where their mouth is
3. overblown
4. Scrutiny
5. inadvertently
a, in a way that is not intentional
b. the careful and detailed examination of something in order to get information about it
c. becoming more and more rapid
d. to show by their actions and not just
their words that they support or believe in something
e. bigger or more important or impressive than it should be
B. Mark the statements True (T), False (F) or Not Given (NG) according to the information in
the text
6. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates have invested in AI.
7. The risks that people’s dependence on AI carries have already been existing.
8. The risks that Als will sometimes assess things incorrectly are reduced.
9. A system of AI is better than the data it learns from.
10. A future when Als take over human is more worrying than the imperfect data Als learn
from that can cause their flaws.
II, Reading 2: Read the text and de the tasks that follow
The Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence
A. Now that’s all well and good. But hang on. It learns by itself? Shouldn’t that be raising alarm
bells? While some privacy proponents have voiced concern about the sharing of personal data and
potential cases of fraud, others are worried about the extent that AI can self-learn and act. The
first place AI prediction software appeared was inside Nomura Securities, Japan’s largest
financial services group. Every 1/1000 of a second, the company’s latest AI software measures
hundreds of variables in deciding how much a share price will fluctuate and then it suggests a
plan of action every five minutes. “It arrives at analytical solutions that humans were not able to
even contemplate up until recently. We can no longer do without AI in this line of business,” says
Taishi Harada, Nomura’s AI Implementation Director.
B. So AI can arrive at solutions that humans were not able to reach? The AI story gets even
cloudier when we examine disturbing news out of Japan recently that Ponanza, an Al-wielding
Shogi (Japanese chess) robot beat a professional master player at his own game. The fact that the
robot defeated the master was not the story. The scary comment by the robot’s creator, Issei
Yamamoto, that he could not explain how the robot arrived at its game-winning strategies sent
shockwaves through Japan’s media networks. It reminded me of the telling lines in the 1984 flick
The Terminator when Michael Bichn’s character Kyle Reese explained how the apocalypse
started. “Defense network computers. New... powerful... hooked into everything, trusted to run it
all. They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence. Then it saw all people as a threat. Decided
our fate in a microsecond.” Sound like an early definition of AI? Um, yeah!
C. Incorporating passenger pickup and drop-off data from 4,425 taxies, in addition to time of day
and weather factors, NTT Docomo trained its AI technology over an 18- month period to predict
where potential passenger concentration will be most active within the next 30 minutes.
Obviously, NTT’s greatest strength is that it can use its WiFi network to show the location of
customers using their mobile phones. One taxi driver I spoke to said he had noticed a 20% rise in
passenger traffic since using the AI prediction system. The more a taxi drives around, the more
the AI system learns by itself, giving it the ability to predict where a customer will be with an
accuracy rate of up to 95%.
D. Now we have not reached that point yet with AI. But Tesla boss Elon Musk and Professor
Stephen Hawking are concerned. They have both declared Al to be the most serious threat to the
survival of the human race. Musk says “humanity risks summoning the demon with AI,” and has
stressed its development must proceed with a strict set of checks and balances, something that is
not happening now. Both visionaries agrec that while AI technology can be harnessed to help
humans in areas such as medicine and care for the aged, AI’s ability to self-learn and act on that
new knowledge is a real and present threat and needs immediate and tough governmental
regulatory oversight.
E. In downtown Tokyo, just like in most major cities, taxi drivers make an educated guess as to
where they might find their next paying passenger. Years of experience have honed their
prediction skills to pinpoint customers depending on location, the time of day and weather. But
even with this knowledge, tracking down passengers is still a hit and miss science with many
drivers saying they can cruise around for up to two hours without finding a fare. Japan’s biggest
mobile phone operator, NTT Docomo, wants to change all that. The phone giant says it is in the
process of creating a transportation revolution by perfecting a new taxi passenger pickup system
using Artificial Intelligence (Al). This system predicts future taxi demand and directs drivers to
high potential locations using AI. It does this by splitting the taxi driver’s chosen area of
operation into a 500-meter grid pattern that is displayed on a dashboard fitted iPad-sized tablet.
This shows the number of customers that may use the system in the next 30 minutes in a
particular grid.
A, Arrange paragraphs A — E in the correct order
1. ….. 2. ……… 3. ………… 4. …….. 5. ……….
B. Find one idea (i-vii) mentioned in each paragraph (A-E). There are two ideas which
do not match any of these paragraphs.
i. A movie in which robots were proved to be threatening to humans
ii, The time taxi drivers waste on the road without the help of Al
iii. A robot that was defeated by a master player
iv. The part of business in which humans cannot defeat Al
v. The accuracy rate of an Al system
vi. The necessary governmental surveillance towards AI
vii. The customers’ satisfaction thanks to AI
6. A….. 7. B.…. 8. C….. 9. D……… 10.E…………
C. Answer the questions about the text
11. What are NTT Docomo’s AI technology’s predictions of customers’ locations based
on?
12. What worries some privacy protagonists?
13. Who are the visionaries that can see AI as the most serious threat?
14. How does AI help taxi drivers in downtown Tokyo save time when trying to find
customers?
15. What is one example of AI defeating humans?
