2016年四川大学外国语学院241二外英语真题及详解Part ⅠReading Comprehension (30%)Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A., B., C. and D.. You should deicide the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center.Passage OneFor years there have been endless articles stating that scientists are on the verge of achieving artificial intelligence and that it is just around the corner. The truth is that it may be just around the corner but they haven’t yet found the right block.Artificial intelligence aims to build machines that can think. One immediate problem is to define thought, which is harder than you might think. The specialists in the field of artificial intelligence complain, with some justification, that anything that their machines do is dismissed as not being thought. For example, computers can now play very, very good chess. They can’t beat the greatest players in the world, but they can beat just about anybody else. If a human being played chess at this level, he or she would certainly be considered smart. Why not a machine? The answer is that the machine doesn’t do anything clever in playing chess. It uses itsblinding speed to do a brute-force search of all possible moves for several moves ahead, evaluates the outcomes and picks the best. Humans don’t play chess that way. They see patterns, which computers don’t.This wooden approach to thought characterizes machine intelligence. Computers have no judgment, no flexibility, no common sense. So-called expert systems, one of the hottest areas in artificial intelligence, aim to mimic the reasoning processes of human experts in a limited field, such as medical diagnosis or weather forecasting. There may be limited commercial applications for this sort of thing, but there is no way to make a machine think about anything under the sun, which a teenager can do. The hallmark of artificial intelligence to date is that if a problem is severely restricted, a machine can achieve limited success. But when the problem is expanded to a realistic one, computers fall flat on their display screens. For example, machines can understand a few words spoken individually by a speaker that they have been trained to hear. They cannot understand continuous speech using an unlimited vocabulary spoken by just any speaker.1. According to the passage, we know that the writer _____.A. thinks that artificial intelligence is just around the cornerB. doubts whether scientists can ever find artificial intelligenceC. does not believe that scientists have discovered real artificial intelligenceD. feels certain that scientists have obtained real artificial intelligence2. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?A. Complaints of the specialists pursuing artificial intelligence never have any effect.B. Anything that computers do should be seen as thought.C. It is very hard to define thought in the first place.D. Computers can play chess just like humans can.3. The advantage for computers in chess lies in _____.A. its intelligence in thinking out novel movesB. its ability to make best use of all possible moves rapidlyC. its flexibility in choosing movesD. its capacity in patterns recognition4. What is particular for machine intelligence?A. Its flawless judgment.B. Its good flexibility.C. Its ability to think broadly.D. Its rigid approach to thought.5. It is stated in the last paragraph that computers _____.A. can beat any person in playing chessB. can never be employed in weather forecastC. can be trained to understand some human wordsD. can be made to think as a teenager does【答案与解析】1.C 文章第一段最后一句话提到，人工智能“可能将要实现”，但是科学家们还没有找对方向。

可以看出作者认为科学家们还没有发现真正的人工智能。

2.C 第二段第二句话提到，“首先遇到的问题就是定义思想，而这要比你认为的难”。

3.B 由第二段的后半部分，得出“计算机在下棋时会计算接下来好多种走法，并且每种可能性都算几步棋”以及“而人不会这样”，可以得出计算机在下棋时的优势。

4.D 最后一段第一句话提到，机械智能的一大特点是“wooden approach”，即生硬的方法。

5.C 最后一段倒数第二句话提到，机器经过训练可以理解人类语言中的一些词汇。

Passage TwoIt’s hardly news that immigration system is a mess. Foreign nationals have long been slipping across the border with fake papers, and visitors who arrive in the U.S. legitimately often overstay their legal welcome without being punished. But since Sept. 11, it’s become clear that terrorists have been shrewdly factoring the weaknesses of our system into their plans. In addition to their mastery of forging passports, at least three of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were here on expired visas. That’s been a safe bet until now. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) lacks the resources, and apparently the inclination, to keep track of the estimated 2 million foreigners who have intentionally overstayed their welcome.But this laxness toward immigration fraud may be about to change. Congress has already taken some modest steps. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedy, requires the FBI, the Justice Department, the State Department and the INS to share more data, which will make it easier to stopwatch-listed terrorists at the border.But what’s really needed, critics say, is even tougher laws and more resources aimed at tightening up border security. Reformers are calling for a rollback of rules that hinder law enforcement. They also want the INS to hire hundreds more border patrol agents and investigators to keep illegal immigrants out and to track them down once they’re here. Reformers also want to see the INS set up a database to monitor whether visa holders actually leave the country when they are required to.All these proposed changes were part of a new border-security bill that passed the House of Representatives but died in the Senate last week. Before Sept. 11, legislation of this kind had been blocked by two powerful lobbies: universities, which rely on tuition from foreign students who could be kept out by the new law, and business, which relies on foreigners for cheap labor. Since the attacks, they’ve backed off. The bill would have passed this time but for congressional maneuverings and is expected to be reintroduced and to pass next year.Also on the agenda for next year: a proposal, backed by some influential law-makers, to split the INS into two agencies-a good cop that would tend to service functions like processing citizenship papers and a bad cop that would concentrate on border inspections, deportation and other functions. One reason for the division, supporters say, is that the INS has in recent years become too focused on serving tourists and immigrants. After the Sept, 11 tragedy, the INS should pay more attention to serving the millions of ordinary Americans who rely on the nation’s border security to protect them from terrorist attacks.6. T errorists have obviously taken advantage of _____.A. the irresponsibility of the officials at border checkpointsB. the legal privileges granted to foreignersC. the excessive hospitality of the American peopleD. the low efficiency of the Immigration and Naturalization Service7. We can learn from the passage that coordinated efforts will be made by various US government agencies to _____.A. refuse the renewing of expired visasB. ward off terrorist suspects at the borderC. prevent the forgery of immigration papersD. limit the number of immigrants to the U.S.8. It can be inferred from the passage that before Sept. 11, aliens with expired visas _____.A. might have them extended without troubleB. would be closely watched by FBI agentsC. might stay on for as long as they wishedD. would live in constant fear of deportation9. It is believed by many that all these years the INS_____.A. has been serving two contradictory functionsB. has ignored the pleas of the two powerful lobbiesC. has over-emphasized its service functions at the expense of the nation’s。