晚练册 第1周-【晨读晚记】2023-2024学年高三上学期英语阅读强化训练

Week One 第1周 晚练 的阅读理解A The technology for speech-recognition systems has advanced greatly since its appearance in the 1950s. Many voice systems can understand the language when spoken at a normal conversational rate.But even the advanced human-machine interfaces()used today are unable to trick the listeners into thinking a com- puter is a human.Why is this?Simply put,it's because human beings rely on more than words to convey ideas or interpret messages,such as tones,facial expressions,body movements,and objects in the world around them. One significant recent achievement in the field of talking computers is virtual personal assistants(VPAs) on mobile phones.If you tell a mobile phone VPA that you want to schedule a lunch with a friend,it can set the appointment in your phone in seconds.The VPA can also hold a basic "conversation"and has earned fame for its elementary sense of humour.Still,the humour is preprogrammed and can be triggered only when human users speak certain key words. While the potential for"real"communication between a human and a machine may seem exciting,this possi- bility concerns some people.Some experts worry about people's attachment to these machines and fear that the art of successful human-to-human conversation will be undeveloped in younger generations.They worry that people won't be able to display the right emotion or tone in conversations because they haven't been practising those skills. Others fear that machines will take over functions that were traditionally performed by humans,such as customer service.Another concern often associated with the development of new technology is the invasion of privacy( )When people use certain speech-recognition applications,they leave behind an audio track of their speech. When you ask a VPA for directions,your speech is sent and saved to a remote server for processing.This digital trail may lead to data mining,or the collection of large quantities of personal data. For now,however,the continuing ev