2012年12月大学英语六级考试真题
Passage One
Questions 52 to 56 are bad on the following passage.
Amid all the job loss, there’s one category of worker that the economic disruption has been good for: nonhumans.
From lf-rvice checkout lines at the supermarket to industrial robots armed with saws and taught to carve up animal bodies in slaughter-hous, the ever-more-intelligent machines are now not just assisting workers but actually kicking them out of their jobs.
刘富君
Automation isn’t just affecting factory workers, either. Some law firms now u artificial intelligence software to scan and read mountains of legal documents, work that previously was performed by highly-paid human lawyers.
father的对应词“Robots continue to have an impact on blue-collar jobs, and white-collar jobs are under atta
懂得放手
ck by microprocessors,” says economics professor Edward Leamer. The recession permanently wiped out 2.5 million jobs. U.S. gross domestic product has climbed back to pre-recession levels, meaning we’re producing as much as before, only with 6% fewer workers. To be sure, robotics are not the only job killers out there, with outsourcing (外包) stealing far more jobs than automation.
Jeff Burnstein, president of the Robotics Industry Association, argues that robots actually save U.S. jobs. His logic: companies that embrace automation might u fewer workers, but that’s still better than firing everyone and moving the work overas.
It’s not that robots are cheaper than humans, though often they are. It’s that they’re better. “In some cas the quality requirements are so exacting that even if you wanted to have a human do the job, you couldn’t,” Burnstein says.
好的创业项目Same goes for surgeons, who’re using robotic systems to perform an ever-growing list of operations—not becau the machines save money but becau, thanks to the greater precision of robots, the patients recover in less time and have fewer complications, says
Dr. Myriam Curet.
Surgeons may survive the robot invasion, but others at the hospital might not be so lucky, as iRobot, maker of the Roomba, a robot vacuum cleaner, has been showing off Ava, which could be ud as a mesnger in a hospital. And once you’re home, recovering, Ava could let you talk to your doctor, so there’s no need to nd someone to your hou. That “mobile teleprence” could be uful at the office. If you’re away on a trip, you can still attend a meeting. Just connect via videoconferencing software, so your face appears on Ava’s screen.
Is any job safe? I was hoping to say “journalist,” but rearchers are already developing software that can gather facts and write a news story. Which means that a few years from now, a robot could be writing this column. And who will read it? Well, there might be a lot of us hanging around with lots of free time on our hands.
注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。
52. What do we learn from the first few paragraphs?
A) The over-u of robots has done damage to American economy.
B) It is hard for robots to replace humans in highly professional work.
C) Artificial intelligence is key to future technological innovations.
D) The robotic industry has benefited from the economic recession.
53. What caud the greatest loss of jobs in America?
A) Using microprocessors extensively.
B) Moving production to other countries.
C) The bankruptcy of many companies.
D) The invasion of migrant workers.
54. What does Jeff Burnstein say about robots?
A) They help companies to revive.富都酒店
B) They are cheaper than humans.
C) They prevent job loss in a way.
D) They compete with human workers.
55. Why are robotic systems replacing surgeons in more and more operations according to Dr. Myriam Curet?
A) They save lots of money for the patients.
B) They beat humans in precision.（精确度）
C) They take less time to perform a surgery.
D) They make operations less painful.
56. What does the author imply about robotics?冬藏是什么意思
A) It will greatly enrich literary creation.
B) It will start a new technological revolution.读后感海底两万里
C) It will revolutionize scientific rearch.
D) It will be applied in any field imaginable.
Passage Two
有什么好听的歌吗
Questions 57 to 61 are bad on the following passage.
You’ve now heard it so many times, you can probably repeat it in your sleep. President Obama will no doubt make the point publicly when he gets to Beijing: the Chine need to consume more; they need—believe it or not—to become more like Americans, for the sake of the global economy.
And it’s all true. But the other side of that equation is that the U.S. needs to save more. For the moment, American houholds actually are doing so. After the personal-savings rate dipped to zero in 2005, the shock of the economic crisis last year prompted people to snap shut their wallets.
In China, the houhold-savings rate exceeds 20%. It is partly for policy reasons. As we’ve en, wage earners are expected to care for not only their children but their aging parents. And there is, to date, only the flimsiest (脆弱的) of publicly-funded health care and pension systems, which increas incentives for individuals to save while they are working. But China is a society that has long esteemed personal financial prudence (谨慎). There is no chance that will change anytime soon, even if the government creates a better social safety net and successfully encourages greater consumer spending.
