2002年考研真题第二篇原文和翻译-since the dawn human ingenuity

Since the dawn of human ingenuity, people have devised ever more cunning tools to cope with work that is dangerous, boring, burdensome, or just plain nasty . That compulsion has resulted in robotics--the science of conferring various human capabilities on machines . And if scientists have yet to create the mechanical version of science fiction,they have begun to come close.

从人类最初有了智慧至今人们一直在设计日益巧妙的工具来处理那些危险的、枯燥的、繁重的或者只是一般肮脏的工作。这种不得已的行为导致了机器人科学的产生——一门将人类的能力赋予机器的科学。如果科学家们还没有在机械上实现科幻小说的幻想那么他们也已经很接近这个目标了。

As a result , the modern world is increasingly populated by intelligent gizmos whose presence we barely notice but whose universal existence has removed much human labor. Our factories hum to the rhythm of robot assembly arms.Our banking is done at automated teller terminals that thank us with mechanical politeness for the transaction. Our subway trains are controlled by tireless robot-drivers . And thanks to the continual miniaturization of electronics and micro-mechanics, there are already robot system that can perform some kinds of brain and bone surgery with submillimeter accuracy- far greater precision than highly skilled physicians can achieve with their hands alone.

由此引起的结果是

现代世界已经日益充斥着智能的装置

虽然我们几乎都注意不到他们

但他们的普遍存在却节省了许多人类劳力。我们的工厂里轰鸣着机器人生产线的节奏我们的金融服务完成于自动柜员机旁完成业务后它们还会机械地、有礼貌地感谢我们我们的地铁车辆由不知疲倦的机器人驾驶。由于电子和微观机械仪器的不断缩小现在已有一些机器人系统能够进行精确到毫米的脑部和骨髓手术们的双手所能达到的水平。

But if robots are to reach the next stage of laborsaving utility , they will have to operate with less human supervision and be able to make at least a few decisions for themselves - goals that pose a real challenge. “While we know how to tell a robot to handle a specific error,” says Dave Lavery , manager of a robotics program at NASA, “we can’t yet give a robot enough ‘common sense’ to reliably interact with dynamic world.”

Indeed the quest for true artificial intelligence has produced very mixed results. Despite a spell of initial optimism in the 1960s and 1970s when it appeared that transistor circuits and microprocessors might be able to copy the action of the human brain by the year 2010, researchers lately have begun to extend that forecast by decades if not centuries.

但是如果机器人要进入节省劳力的下一个阶段

他们必须能够在更少的人工监控下运行

其精确性远远超过熟练的医生用他

并且至少能够独立地做一些决定。这些目标给我们提出了一个真正的挑战。“虽然我们知道如何让机器人去纠正一个特定的错误

”NASA的一个机器人项目经理戴维·拉维里说

“我

们仍然不能赋予机器人以足够的„常识‟使它们能够与动态的世界进行可靠的交流。”

实际上对真正的人工智能的追求已经产生了各种各样的效果。虽然一开始在20世纪60年代和70年代有过一段乐观的时期——那时候仿佛晶体管电路和微处理器的发展将使他们在2010年能够模仿人类大脑的活动——但是最近研究人员已经开始将这个预测延后数十年甚至数百年。

What they found , in attempting to model thought is that the human brain’s roughly one hundred billion nerve cells are much more talented-- and human perception far more complicated - than previously imagined. They have built robots that can recognize the error of a machine panel by a fraction of a millimeter in a controlled factory environment . But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of a winding forest rad or the single suspicious face in a big crowd . The most advanced computer systems oon Earth can’t approach that kind of ability , and neuroscientists still don’t know quite how we do it.

在试图建造思维模型的过程中研究人员发现人类大脑中的近1000亿个神经细胞要比以前想像的更聪明人类的感觉器官也比以前想像的更复杂。他们建造的机器人在严格控制的工厂环境里能够在仪表盘上识别毫米以下的误差。但是人的大脑能够扫描一个快速变化的场景迅速排除98的不相干的物体立即聚焦于森林中婉蜒道路旁的一只猴子或者人群中的一张可疑的脸。地球上最先进的计算机系统也不能仿效这种能力并且神经学科学家仍然不知道我们是怎样做到这一点的。