【文章內容簡介】 ogy study this year of the facerecognition systems designed by Microsoft, IBM and the Chinabased Face++ found that facialrecognition systems consistently giving the wrong gender for famous women of color including Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, Michelle Obama and Shirley Chisholm, the first black female member of Congress. The panies have responded in recent months by pouring many more photos into the mix, hoping to train the systems to better tell the differences among more than just white faces. IBM said Wednesday it used 1 million facial images, taken from the photosharing site Flickr, to build the world39。s largest facial dataset which it will release publicly for other panies to use. IBM and Microsoft say that allowed its systems to recognize gender and skin tone with much more precision. Microsoft said its improved system reduced the error rates for darkerskinned men and women by up to 20 times, and reduced error rates for all women by nine times. Those improvements were heralded(宣布)by some for taking aim at the prejudices in a rapidly spreading technology, including potentially reducing the kinds of false positives that could lead police officers misidentify a criminal suspect. But others suggested that the technology39。s increasing accuracy could also make it more marketable. The system should be accurate, but that39。s just the beginning, not the end, of their ethical obligation, said David Robinson, managing director of the think tank Upturn. At the center of that debate is Microsoft, whose multimilliondollar contracts with ICE came under fire amid the agency39。s separation of migrant parents and children at the Mexican border. In an open letter to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella urging the pany to cancel that contract, Microsoft workers pointed to a pany blog post in January that said Azure Government would help ICE accelerate recognition and identification. We believe that Microsoft must take an ethical stand, and put children and families above profits, the letter said. A Microsoft spokesman, pointing to a statement last week from Nadella, said the pany39。s current cloud engagement with ICE supports relatively anodyne(溫和的)office work such as mail, calendar, massaging and document management workloads. The pany said in a statement that its facialrecognition improvements are part of our going work to address the industrywide and societal issues on bias. Criticism of face recognition will probably expand as the technology finds its way into more arenas, including airports, stores and schools. The Orlando police department said this week that it would not renew its use of Amazon. 39。s Rekognition system. Companies have to acknowledge their moral involvement in the downstream use of their technology, Robinson said. The impulse is that they39。re going to put a product out there and wash their hands of the consequences. That39。s unacceptable.（1）What is one of the technology39。s biggest biases in Paragraph 1? A.Class bias.B.Regional difference.C.Professional prejudice.D.Racial discrimination.（2）What can we know about the improvement of facialrecognition technology? A.Justice and equality have been truly achieved.B.It is due to the expansion of the photo database.C.It has already solved all the social issues on biases.D.The separation of immigrant parents from their children can be avoided.（3）What is the focus of the facerecognition debate? A.Data problems.B.The market value.C.The application field.D.A moral issue.（4）What is David Robinson39。s attitude towards facialrecognition technology? A.Skeptical.B.Approval.C.Optimistic.D.Neutral.（5）We can infer from the last paragraph that Robinson thinks _____. A.panies had better hide from responsibilitiesB.panies deny problems with its technical processC.panies should not launch new products on impulseD.panies should be responsible for the new product and the consequences（6）Which can be the suitable title for the passage? A.The wide use of Microsoft systemB.Fears of facialrecognition technologyC.The improvement of Microsoft systemD.Failure of recognizing black women【答案】 （1）D（2）B（3）D（4）A（5）D（6）B 【解析】【分析】本文是一篇議論文，微軟面部識別技術改進了膚色識別，宣布其人臉識別技術將會更加精確，但是人們卻認為它會帶來更大的問題，希望微軟把道德置于其利潤之上，并且能夠為產品以及其帶來的后果負責。 （1）考查推理判斷。根據第一段”Microsoft announced this week that its facialrecognition system is now more accurate in identifying people of color, touting (吹噓）its progress at tackling one of the technology39。s biggest biases (偏見).“可知微軟面部識別技術改進了膚色識別，吹噓它可以解決該技術最大的偏見，由此可以推斷該項技術在人種膚色上有偏見，也就是種族歧視。故選D。 （2）考查細節(jié)理解。根據第五段中的”The panies have responded in recent months by pouring many more photos into the mix, hoping to train the systems to better tell the differences among more than just white faces.“可知那些公司通過在原有照片中加入更多的照片，通過訓練系統(tǒng)，從而提升系統(tǒng)的識別能力，即通過擴充照片數據庫來提升系統(tǒng)的識別能力。故選B。 （3）考查推理判斷。根據第九段中的”At the center of that debate is Microsoft, whose multimilliondollar contracts with ICE came under fire amid the agency39。s separation of migrant parents and children at the Mexican border.“；和第十段中的”We believe that Microsoft must take an ethical stand, and put children and families above profits“可知對微軟人臉識別技術的爭論中心是，它會把墨西哥邊緣的移民父母和孩子分開，且人們認為微軟必須堅守道德底線，將兒童和家庭置于其利潤之上，故推斷目前對于臉部識別技術爭論的焦點是道德問題。故選D。 （4）考查推理判斷。根據最后一段中的 The impulse is that they39。re going to put a product out there and wash their hands of the consequences. That39。s unacceptable.可知Robinson認為他們推出了一種產品然后對其后果撒手不管，這是讓人難以接受的。故推斷Robinson對人臉識別技術是不支持的。故選A。 （5）考查推理判斷。根據最后一段中的 The impulse is that they39。re going to