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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】這是一篇討論機器人取代人類的科技說明文，話題是考生比較熟悉的科技類文章。文中指出在大蕭條時期眾多失業(yè)的情況下，有一類工人卻受益于經濟混亂：機器人。機器人和業(yè)務外包比自動化分流了更多的崗位。但是專家指出，并不是因為機器人比人廉價，而是它們比人類更優(yōu)秀。在很多具體工作上，人類無法做到像機器人那樣精確。文章最后一段探討還有那些崗位能免于機器人取代的危機，作者本以為記者行業(yè)可以，但是結果卻不是這樣，幾乎所有崗位都面臨這種趨勢，從而緊扣文章原文題目和主題：Who Needs Humans?人類還有何用?

　　本文選材雖然是科技相關，但是詞匯都比較簡單，沒有太偏的詞匯。而這幾道題相比而言，難度又低了不少，很多選項直接可以通過對比原文排除，如54題談到對機器人的看法，其中B選項說機器人比人類工作更省錢更便宜，而文中已經特別清晰的表明立場，It’s not that …此外，詞匯復現也能幫助大家準備做對題目，如第52題的答案中benefit from就對應了原文中的be good for，所以很快很輕松的就選出來了。因此考生只要明確文中幾個人物各自的觀點，勾畫好關鍵詞，整體上來講，5道題都做對基本可以做到的。