2012年12月六级真题答案及解析汇总(考试吧版)

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　　Amid all the job losses of the Great Recession, there is one category of worker that the economic disruption has been good for: nonhumans.

　　From self-service checkout lines at the supermarket to industrial robots armed with saws and taught to carve up animal carcasses in slaughter-houses, these ever-more-intelligent machines are now not just assisting workers but actually kicking them out of their jobs.

　　Automation isn’t just affecting factory workers, either. Some law firms now use artificial intelligence software to scan and read mountains of legal documents, work that previously was performed by highly paid human lawyers.

　　“Robots continue to have an impact on blue-collar jobs, and white-collar jobs are under attack by microprocessors,” says Edward Leamer, an economics professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, a survey of the U.S. and California economies. Leamer says 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 percent fewer workers. To be sure, robotics are not the only job killers out there, with outsourcing stealing far more gigs than automation.

　　Jeff Burnstein, president of the Robotics Industry Association, a trade group in Ann Arbor, Mich., argues that robots actually save U.S. jobs. His logic: companies that embrace automation might use fewer workers, but that’s still better than firing everyone and moving the work overseas.

　　It’s not that robots are cheaper than humans, though often they are. It’s that they are better. “In some cases the quality requirements are so stringent that even if you wanted to have a human do the job, you couldn’t,” Burnstein says.

　　Same goes for surgeons, who are using robotic systems to perform an ever-growing list of operations—not because the machines save money but because, 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, a three-foot-tall droid on wheels that carries a tablet computer. iRobot reckons Ava could be used as a courier in a hospital. And once you’re home, recovering, Ava could let you talk to your doctor, so there’s no need to send someone to your house. That “mobile telepresence” could be useful 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 researchers are already developing algorithms 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.

　　52. What do we learn from the first few paragraphs?

　　答案：The robotic industry has benefited from the economic recession.

　　53. What caused the greatest loss of jobs in America?

　　答案：Moving production to other countries.

　　54. What does Jeff Burnstein say about robots?

　　答案：They compete with human workers.

　　55. What are robotic systems replacing surgeons in more and more operations according to Dr. Myriam Curet?

　　答案：They beat humans in precision.

　　56. What does the author imply about robotics?

　　答案：It will be applied in any field imaginable.

　　【解析】这是一篇讨论机器人取代人类的科技说明文，话题是考生比较熟悉的科技类文章。文中指出在大萧条时期众多失业的情况下，有一类工人却受益于经济混乱：机器人。机器人和业务外包比自动化分流了更多的岗位。但是专家指出，并不是因为机器人比人廉价，而是它们比人类更优秀。在很多具体工作上，人类无法做到像机器人那样精确。文章最后一段探讨还有那些岗位能免于机器人取代的危机，作者本以为记者行业可以，但是结果却不是这样，几乎所有岗位都面临这种趋势，从而紧扣文章原文题目和主题：Who Needs Humans?人类还有何用?

　　本文选材虽然是科技相关，但是词汇都比较简单，没有太偏的词汇。而这几道题相比而言，难度又低了不少，很多选项直接可以通过对比原文排除，如54题谈到对机器人的看法，其中B选项说机器人比人类工作更省钱更便宜，而文中已经特别清晰的表明立场，It’s not that …此外，词汇复现也能帮助大家准备做对题目，如第52题的答案中benefit from就对应了原文中的be good for，所以很快很轻松的就选出来了。因此考生只要明确文中几个人物各自的观点，勾画好关键词，整体上来讲，5道题都做对基本可以做到的。