Living With Artificial Intelligence Reading Answers: The IELTS Reading Test consists of three passages, with a variety of question types designed to assess your reading comprehension skills. One such passage, “Living With Artificial Intelligence Reading Answers,” explores the rapidly advancing field of AI and its potential impact on humanity. This passage of the IELTS Reading Test presents a unique challenge, offering multiple question formats, including True/False/Not Given and summary completion.
By practicing questions related to the “Living With Artificial Intelligence Reading Answers” topic, students can enhance their understanding of AI-related themes and refine their strategies for answering questions efficiently. Working through model answers for the "Living with Artificial Intelligence" passage will help boost confidence and improve the overall IELTS band score.
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Powerful artificial intelligence (AI) needs to be reliably aligned with human values, but does this mean AI will eventually have to police those values?
This has been the decade of AI, with one astonishing feat after another. A chess-playing AI that can defeat not only all human chess players, but also all previous human-programmed chess machines, after learning the game in just four hours? That’s yesterday’s news, what’s next? True, these prodigious accomplishments are all in so-called narrow AI, where machines perform highly specialized tasks. But many experts believe this restriction is very temporary. By mid-century, we may have artificial general intelligence (AGI) – machines that can achieve human-level performance on the full range of tasks that we ourselves can tackle.
If so, there’s little reason to think it will stop there. Machines will be free of many of the physical constraints on human intelligence. Our brains run at slow biochemical processing speeds on the power of a light bulb, and their size is restricted by the dimensions of the human birth canal. It is remarkable what they accomplish, given these handicaps. But they may be as far from the physical limits of thought as our eyes are from the incredibly powerful Webb Space Telescope.
Once machines are better than us at designing even smarter machines, progress towards these limits could accelerate. What would this mean for us? Could we ensure a safe and worthwhile coexistence with such machines? On the plus side, AI is already useful and profitable for many things, and super AI might be expected to be super useful and super profitable. But the more powerful AI becomes, the more important it will be to specify its goals with great care. Folklore is full of tales of people who ask for the wrong thing, with disastrous consequences- King Midas, for example, might have wished that everything he touched turned to gold, but didn’t really intend this to apply to his breakfast.
So we need to create powerful AI machines that are ‘human-friendly’- that have goals reliably aligned with our own values. One thing that makes this task difficult is that we are far from reliably human-friendly ourselves. We do many terrible things to each other and to many other creatures with whom we share the planet. If superintendent machines don’t do a lot better than us, we’ll be in deep trouble. We’ll have powerful new intelligence amplifying the dark sides of our own fallible natures.
For safety’s sake, then, we want the machines to be ethically as well as cognitively superhuman. We want them to aim for the moral high ground, not for the troughs in which many of us spend some of our time. Luckily they’ll be smart enough for the job. If there are routes to the moral high ground, they’ll be better than us at finding them, and steering us in the right direction.
However, there are two big problems with this utopian vision. One is how we get the machines started on the journey, the other is what it would mean to reach this destination. The ‘getting started’ problem is that we need to tell the machines what they’re looking for with sufficient clarity that we can be confident they will find it – whatever ‘it’ actually turns out to be. This won’t be easy, given that we are tribal creatures and conflicted about the ideals ourselves. We often ignore the suffering of strangers, and even contribute to it, at least indirectly. How then, do we point machines in the direction of something better?
As for the ‘destination’ problem, we might, by putting ourselves in the hands of these moral guides and gatekeepers, be sacrificing our own autonomy – an important part of what makes us human. Machines who are better than us at sticking to the moral high ground may be expected to discourage some of the lapses we presently take for granted. We might lose our freedom to discriminate in favor of our own communities, for example.
Loss of freedom to behave badly isn’t always a bad thing, of course: denying ourselves the freedom to put children to work in factories, or to smoke in restaurants are signs of progress. But are we ready for ethical silicon police limiting our options? They might be so good at doing it that we won’t notice them; but few of us are likely to welcome such a future.
These issues might seem far-fetched, but they are to some extent already here. AI already has some input into how resources are used in our National Health Service (NHS) here in the UK, for example. If it was given a greater role, it might do so much more efficiently than humans can manage, and act in the interests of taxpayers and those who use the health system. However, we’d be depriving some humans (e.g. senior doctors) of the control they presently enjoy. Since we’d want to ensure that people are treated equally and that policies are fair, the goals of AI would need to be specified correctly.
We have a new powerful technology to deal with- itself, literally, a new way of thinking. For our own safety, we need to point these new thinkers in the right direction, and get them to act well for us. It is not yet clear whether this is possible, but if it is, it will require a cooperative spirit, and a willingness to set aside self-interest.
Both general intelligence and moral reasoning are often thought to be uniquely human capacities. But safety seems to require that we think of them as a package: if we are to give general intelligence to machines, we’ll need to give them moral authority, too. And where exactly would that leave human beings? All the more reason to think about the destination now, and to be careful about what we wish for.
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IELTS Reading Multiple Choice Question (Q. 1-6)
Q1. According to the passage, what is the main challenge of developing powerful AI?
A) Machines will not be able to match human intelligence.
B) Aligning the goals of AI with human values.
C) Preventing AI from gaining physical capabilities.
D) Creating AI that can only perform specific tasks.
Q2. What does the author suggest might happen once AI is better than humans at designing machines?
A) It will lead to the end of human intelligence.
B) It will speed up the progress towards the limits of thought.
C) It will slow down the development of AI.
D) It will make AI useless to human society.
Q3. What could be the consequence of creating AI with superhuman cognitive and ethical abilities?
A) AI will not be able to make decisions.
B) AI will follow the moral high ground and guide human behavior.
C) AI will only focus on profitability.
D) AI will make ethical decisions for humans, but without understanding.
Q4. Why is it difficult to direct AI towards human-friendly goals?
A) Machines are not capable of understanding human values.
B) Humans are conflicted and have diverse moral beliefs.
C) AI is inherently unethical.
D) The goals of AI are irrelevant to human interests.
Q5. What is the potential downside of AI acting as a moral gatekeeper?
A) AI might be too lenient in allowing unethical behavior.
B) It could restrict human autonomy and freedom of choice.
C) AI will act without any moral direction.
D) It will make decisions based solely on logic and reason.
Q6. What does the author imply about AI’s role in the healthcare system?
A) AI could make decisions that challenge the authority of human professionals.
B) AI will replace all human healthcare workers.
C) AI will only be used for administrative tasks in healthcare.
D) AI will be incapable of handling complex medical cases.
IELTS Reading Yes/No/Not Given (Q. 7-10)
Q7. The passage suggests that AI will eventually solve all human moral dilemmas.
Yes
No
Not Given
Q8. The author believes that AI will always be less capable than humans in decision-making.
Yes
No
Not Given
Q9. The passage indicates that AI’s cognitive capabilities will eventually surpass human intelligence.
Yes
No
Not Given
Q10. The author warns against the possibility of humans losing their freedom due to AI’s ethical control.
Yes
No
Not Given
IELTS Reading Summary Completion (Q. 11-13)
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
In the past decade, AI has achieved many ________ feats, but the focus now is on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI) that can handle human-level tasks.
The key challenge in AI development is to create machines whose goals align with human ________.
The author discusses the risk of losing humans ________ if AI takes over moral decision-making.
Answer 1: B) Aligning the goals of AI with human values
Location: Paragraph 6
Explanation: The passage emphasizes the difficulty of aligning AI's goals with human values, stating that this alignment is necessary for ensuring that AI remains "human-friendly" and ethically sound.
Answer 2: B) It will speed up the progress towards the limits of thought
Location: Paragraph 5
Explanation: The author mentions that once AI surpasses human intelligence, its ability to design even smarter machines will accelerate progress towards the physical limits of thought.
Answer 3: B) AI will follow the moral high ground and guide human behavior
Location: Paragraph 7
Explanation: The author discusses the potential benefits of AI being smarter than humans at ethical reasoning, guiding humans towards the moral high ground, which will help them find the best course of action.
Answer 4: B) Humans are conflicted and have diverse moral beliefs
Location: Paragraph 8
Explanation: The passage explains the difficulty of directing AI towards human-friendly goals because humans have conflicting beliefs about what is ideal and moral, making it hard to pinpoint a clear direction for AI.
Answer 5: B) It could restrict human autonomy and freedom of choice
Location: Paragraph 10
Explanation: The author highlights the concern that AI’s role as a moral guide could limit human autonomy and freedom, as it may discourage actions currently considered acceptable, even if they are ethically questionable.
Answer 6: A) AI could make decisions that challenge the authority of human professionals
Location: Paragraph 11
Explanation: The passage suggests that AI could become more efficient than humans in managing healthcare resources, which could undermine the control currently held by human professionals, such as senior doctors.
Answer 7: No
Location: Paragraph 8
Explanation: The passage does not suggest that AI will solve all human moral dilemmas. Instead, it highlights the challenges of ensuring AI aligns with human values and acknowledges that humans are conflicted about moral issues.
Answer 8: No
Location: Paragraph 5
Explanation: The passage states that AI will eventually surpass human cognitive abilities, particularly in designing smarter machines, so it is not less capable than humans in decision-making.
Answer 9: Yes
Location: Paragraph 5
Explanation: The passage states that AI will eventually surpass human intelligence, specifically mentioning the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) that can handle a wide range of tasks.
Answer 10: Yes
Location: Paragraph 10
Explanation: The author warns that humans may lose their autonomy if AI becomes a moral guide, restricting their ability to make certain decisions and actions.
Answer 11: astonishing
Location: Paragraph 2
Explanation: The passage refers to AI accomplishments as "astonishing feats," and this term fits the blank in the summary regarding the remarkable achievements of AI.
Answer 12: values
Location: Paragraph 6
Explanation: The passage mentions that one of the main challenges is aligning the goals of AI with human values, which is crucial for ensuring AI remains beneficial and ethical.
Answer 13: autonomy
Location: Paragraph 10
Explanation: The passage discusses the potential loss of human autonomy if AI is given the role of ethical guide, restricting freedom of choice and behavior.
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