8

The big issues

Reading 2 a If my aunt hadn’t lent me the money, I
wouldn’t have been able to go abroad.
b If you stay out in the midday sun, you’ll get
1 He expresses some hope in the the final burned.
paragraph, but generally the author does not
c If Thomas hadn’t had three jobs over the
appear to be optimistic.
summer, he wouldn’t have been able to buy a
2 1 C  2 B  3 B  4 C  5 A  6 D motorbike.
d If I were to offer you a scholarship, how
would you feel about it?
Vocabulary e If demand for our products were not falling,
profits would not be down.
1 a 4  b 1  c 5  d 3  e 6  f 2
3 a ignites/is ignited, goes up/will go up
Suggested answers
b knew, would tell
self-motivated, self-opinionated,
c would have gained, had volunteered
self-righteous, self-service,
d hadn’t been, would have left
self-sufficient
e Let, ’d like
2 a full-time/part-time f hadn’t worked, wouldn’t have got
b left-handed g hadn’t argued, had kept, wouldn’t have got
c light-hearted
d narrow-minded
e handmade Listening
f overstated
2 1 B 2 D 3 C 4 B 5 C 6 D
3 b in c im d ir  e in
f un g im h un Audio script
I: Today I welcome Paul Williams, who’s an expert in artificial
4 1 e 2 g 3 f 4 h 5 c 6 b 7 a 8 d intelligence, or ‘AI’, as it’s known. Paul – let’s start with a
5 a indistinguishable forward-looking question. How difficult is it to predict the future
b unsociable of artificial intelligence?
c unbearable P: Well, I’ll answer that one by actually looking backwards.
d inaccessible It’s interesting that in the 1940s, a man called Thomas Watson,
e sensitive/insecure head of the company IBM at the time, famously predicted that
f irreversible/unchangeable the world demand for computers might be as many as five. And
g immeasurable in the 1950s, AI researchers predicted that a computer would be
h insensitive/uncaring the world chess champion by 1968 – but that took a few more
decades. AI’s certainly had its share of wacky predictions!
I: But leaving aside the predictions of the past, what would be

Grammar your appraisal of AI’s future?

P: There’s still a lot of controversy about all this. But basically,
most experts remain optimistic about its future. Nevertheless,
1 Suggested answers they’re currently predicting that it won’t be until the middle of
a will hear this century that intelligent machines will be present in most
b hadn’t taken/tried to take areas of our lives.
c could call I: OK. So what’s the impact of AI now?
d could reach P: Well, as you may know, every text message and email you
e might be able to find send is routed using AI. And there are many other examples
of what you would call ‘narrow AI’ – that’s something which
can now be done by a computer, but which used to be done

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manually. It’s called ‘narrow’ because it is within a specific area,
but it’s actually getting wider.
I: So is this an unprecedented leap forward?
P: Some people would say that the best comparison is
probably that AI is at the same stage now as the personal
computer industry was in 1978. There wasn’t a lot of choice
back then. And, obviously, they couldn’t do as much as
today’s computers do. But my take on the situation is that the
comparison with the early computer industry doesn’t give a true
picture of AI’s successes. It’s already used in very advanced ways,
like scheduling flights or reading X-rays. And the best is surely to
come.
I: What do you mean exactly?
P: Well, I think that in the next few decades we’ll have a much
better understanding of how the human brain works. That
will give us a sort of template to follow and it’ll really help in
developing AI. That would mean that within the next fifty years,
there’ll be a lot of intelligent robots. You may say that it all
sounds a bit far-fetched, but take a moment to think back to the
1900s. Who would have thought that a century later, it would
be normal to have computers in your home – and I’m not just
talking about laptops or personal computers. You only have to
look at the computer chips in our coffee makers, refrigerators
and dishwashers to see the kind of unexpected leaps that took
place.
I: So should we be afraid of what these intelligent machines
might soon do to us?
P: The thought of a hyper-intelligent coffee maker trying to
kill us all seems a little far-fetched! What we should perhaps
be more worried about is whether we humans will be made
redundant by a legion of intelligent machines. But the simple
answer is that we won’t wake up one morning to find our lives
dominated by artificially intelligent devices.
I: How can you be so sure?
P: Well, science fiction is just that – fiction; it’s not based on
fact. Spielberg’s film AI may have had a company designing a
robot that could bond like a human, but that was in a film.
But scientists don’t just suddenly decide to make an emotional,
human-like robot. Things don’t happen that way. Some of these
innovations take many years to perfect. The road from here to
the real application of artificial intelligence will take thousands
of different routes. There’s really no need to panic.
I: Paul, thanks very much …

Use of English
1 People want to get onto a course or into a
workplace, and to develop ‘soft skills’. Businesses
want to raise their profile in the community.

2 1 A 2 B 3 C 4 C 5 C 6 A 7 B 8 A
3 1 A 2 C 3 D 4 B 5 C 6 B

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