题目内容
This astounding industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior. was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science fiction writer. The laws appeared in 1, Robot, a book of short stories published in 1950 that inspired a Hollywood film. But decades later the laws, designed to prevent robots from harming people either through action or inaction, remain in the realm of fiction.
With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. "Security, safety and sex are the big concerns," says Henrik Christensen, chairman of the European Robotics Network at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and one of the organisers of the new roboethics group. Should robots that are strong enough or heavy enough to crush people be allowed into homes？ Should robotic sex dolls resembling children be legally allowed？
These questions may seem esoteric but in the next few years they will become increasingly relevant, says Dr. Christensen. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's World Robotics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly outstripping their industrial counterparts. Japanese industrial firms are racing to build humanoid robots to act as domestic helpers for the elderly, and South Korea has set a goal that 100% of households should have domestic robots by 2020. In light of all this, it is crucial that we start to think about safety and ethical guidelines now, says Dr. Christensen.
So what exactly is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces？ "Not enough," says Blay Whitby, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Sussex in England. This is hardly surprising given that the field of "safety-critical computing" is barely a decade old, he says. But things are changing, and researchers are increasingly taking an interest in trying to make robots safer. One approach, which sounds simple enough, is to try to program them to avoid contact with people altogether. But this is much harder than it sounds. Getting a robot to navigate across a cluttered room is difficult enough without having to take into account what its various limbs or appendages might bump into along the way.
Regulating the behavior. of robots is going to become more difficult in the future, since they will increasingly have self-learning mechanisms built into them, says Gianmarco Veruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, Italy. As a result, their behavior. will become impossible to predict fully, he says, since they will not be behaving in predefined ways but will learn new behavior. as they go.
The word "astounding" in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.
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In business, if not politics, the world has quietened down a bit: the number of spectacular bankruptcies, indictments, scandals, and implosions is not as high as it was. Although executives still have to face a global slowdown, the uncertain effects of the war in the Middle East, and the still fresh confusion over bird flu, they might now be excused a deep breath and a look at aspects of their businesses that may have been neglected in the scramble to stay on top of new accounting laws and restated earnings.
One area to start catching up on is knowledge. This is true both personally, as executives work out whether or not they are staying on top of internal or external developments, but also at die level of companies. A survey of knowledge management, Knowledge Unplugged, published in 2005 by McKinsey, found that the best-performing companies were far more likely than the worst-performing ones to use creative techniques for acquiring, processing and distributing knowledge--everything from emphasizing team work in product development to holding "idea contests" and trying to avoid boring daily routines.
But creating an atmosphere in which knowledge can be shared can be almost as challenging as obtaining it in the first place. This is the potential prisoner's dilemma of knowledge: the more valued it becomes, the less incentive employees have to share it with one another, at; the risk of losing the competitive advantage of what they know--or, worse, seeing another profit at their expense. This proves to be even truer at the company level. While firms might turn to external partners to enhance their knowledge base, the sharing will be incomplete without mutual trust.
Since "knowledge" is such a vague term, it helps to have specific goals in mind when looking to gain more of it. Are you looking for information about your company, or industry in particular？, Despite the general slowdown in executive education, there are still a number of courses devoted specifically to helping managers in given industries--technology, for example, or health care. Are you more concerned with acquiring more knowledge, or putting it to better use？ Do you need to move quickly, or is this a subject that needs to be explored in greater depth？
And bear in mind that styles of learning vary. Some people will profit most from informal networking; some enjoy learning in a classroom; others will be able to take advantage of the company intranet. Be flexible in the pursuit of knowledge; it is better to set performance targets, concentrate on meeting them, and allow individuals and their teams to explore their own solutions Sometimes the best way to generate knowledge is simply a bit of brainstorming.
The edition of Executive Education Outlook looks at the options available to executives in gaining knowledge, and enhancing what they already have. It includes a look at the state of distance learning--neither the revolution the hype claimed it would be in the late 1990s, nor completely dismissible--as a possible conduit of knowledge, the best place to go for new programmes in knowledge management, and a consideration of the demand for the best sources of knowledge: business school academics.
Coming in June, Global Executive will also feature a series of Executive Dialogue interviews with prominent CIOs, further exploring the themes of information and knowledge gathering. Concentrating on knowledge now may be the best way to be prepared for the next challenges facing the business world.
It can be inferred from the first paragraph that ______.
内蒙古是我国面积位于第二位的省区，仅次于新疆。（）
听力原文： The Treasury Department announced today that it is lowering the guaranteed interest rate on some U. S. savings bonds. The 1.5 point decline to 6% came as no surprise to investors. The Treasury said it is lowering the rate on savings bonds to bring it in line with other market interest rates which have been falling all year. For in stance, money market mutual funds are now yielding just over 5%; five-year treasury notes are trading at about 6.5%. So the government has been paying a premium to people buying savings bonds, and it's turned out to be an expensive way to finance the public debt. The relatively generous rate on the bonds have made them very popular in the past few months. Since the beginning of August, sales have been about double the usual pace. And this week, the rush to buy savings bonds intensified because of reports that the Treasury was going to cut the rate any day, and people wanted to lock in the old rate. Savings bonds bought before tomorrow, the day the cut goes into effect, will still yield 7.5%.
The guaranteed interest rate on some U.S. savings bonds was ______.
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文：M: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on Wordmaster: surviving a job interview! Here's the first bit of advice from human resources consultant Sharon Armstrong: It's not just words you have to think about, but also how you express them Avoid, she says, a flat monotone voice that people sometimes get when they are nervous.
W: It loses something and I think that it can add so much if you show your excitement and your eagerness to work for that company.
M: Next: Be prepared for a common approach known as behavioral based interviewing.
W: And that is where past performance will indicate future performance. So good interviewers will ask you very detailed questions where they'll put you on the spot and they'll want to know specifically your role in what you did for a particular project. And so the key to giving a good answer to a behavioral interview question is to do what I call a STAR, S-T-A-R. The S and the T stand for explaining a situation or a task that you were given, the A is the action you took and the R is the results.
M: So what you're saying is that you need to be prepared before you walk into the door.
W: Go through some mock interviews, if you can have friends ask you questions. Practice in the mirror, answering questions. Go in with three or four things you really want to stress about yourself. And then you can bring those out no matter what the question is asked.
M: How do you follow up after the interview？
W: Please send a thank you letter. I'm begging you. And you can do it by e-mail. And in that thank you letter you do a couple of things. Make sure that you express sincere appreciation for the time that they spent interviewing you. You have an opportunity to re-emphasize some of your strongest qualities. You have another chance to make that ease as to how your skills match their needs. If there was something that you wish you had said a little more about, again an opportunity to do it here. Now that sounds like a lot to cover, but you do it very briefly, in a short couple of paragraphs and get it out right away.
M: Keep it short, keep it simple？
W: Absolutely. Again, they're business people; they don't have a lot of time. Just getting it is going to make a big difference. I talk to recruiters all the time. They never get thank-you letters. It's such simple business etiquette that people just don't take the time to do it.
M: These days, interviewers ask tougher questions than they used to.
W: It's no longer "What do you see yourself doing in five years？" Those are old questions. They're asking questions that are going to get at more specific things. For example, "Give me a specific example of a time when a co-worker criticized your work in front of others. How did you respond？ How has that event shaped the way you communicate with others？" They're trying to get at your communication skills. "Give me a specific example of a time when you sold your supervisor on an idea or concept. How did you proceed？ What was the result？" That's your assertiveness. So be ready for these kinds of questions, and if you have this experience in your background, just be able to communicate it effectively. You don't have to use the proper language all the time, just get across your results and your accomplishments.
M: And you probably shouldn't be afraid to say "Well, I don't understand that question."
W: Absolutely. And don't feel like you have to answer immediately. Take a moment. Pausing is comfortable--if you're comfortable with it, it will seem comfortable. But if you sometimes launch into an answer right away, you might head down a road you don't want t
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