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Human memory is notoriously unreliable. Even people with the sharpest facial-recognition skills can only remember so much.
It's tough to quantify how good a person is at remembering. No one really knows how many different faces someone can recall, for example, but various estimates tend to hover in the thousands-based on the number of acquaintances a person might have.
Machines aren't limited this way. Give the right computer a massive database of faces, and it can process what it sees-then recognize a face it's told to find-with remarkable speed and precision. This skill is what supports the enormous promise of facial-recognition software in the 21st century. It's also what makes contemporary surveillance systems so scary.
The thing is, machines still have limitations when it comes to facial recognition. And scientists are only just beginning to understand what those constraints are. To begin to figure out how computers are struggling, researchers at the University of Washington created a massive database of faces-they call it MegaFace-and tested a variety of facial-recognition algorithms （算法） as they scaled up in complexity. The idea was to test the machines on a database that included up to 1 million different images of nearly 700,000 different people-and not just a large database featuring a relatively small number of different faces, more consistent with what's been used in other research.
As the databases grew, machine accuracy dipped across the board. Algorithms that were right 95% of the time when they were dealing with a 13,000-image database, for example, were accurate about 70% of the time when confronted with 1 million images. That's still pretty good, says one of the researchers, Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. "Much better than we expected," she said.
Machines also had difficulty adjusting for people who look a lot alike-either doppelgangers （长相极相似的人）, whom the machine would have trouble identifying as two separate people, or the same person who appeared in different photos at different ages or in different lighting, whom the machine would incorrectly view as separate people.
"Once we scale up, algorithms must be sensitive to tiny changes in identities and at the same time invariant to lighting, pose, age," Kemelmacher-Shlizerman said.
The trouble is, for many of the researchers who'd like to design systems to address these challenges, massive datasets for experimentation just don't exist-at least, not in formats that are accessible to academic researchers. Training sets like the ones Google and Facebook have are private. There are no public databases that contain millions of faces. MegaFace's creators say it's the largest publicly available facial-recognition dataset out there.
"An ultimate face recognition algorithm should perform with billions of people in a dataset," the researchers wrote.
1
Compared with human memory, machines can ________.
A.
identify human faces more efficiently
B.
tell a friend from a mere acquaintance
C.
store an unlimited number of human faces
D.
perceive images invisible to the human eye
本题答案：
A
B
C
D
参考答案：
A
系统解析：
由题干中的关键词human memory和machines定位到文章前三段。推理判断题。文章前两段指出人类的记忆是十分有限的，一个人最多也就能记住千余张面孔。第三段第一句指出，机器在此方面是没有限制的，第二句更是明确提到，只要给合适的电脑输入一个庞大的人脸数据库，它就可以以出色的速度和精确度识别人脸，可见机器在人脸识别方面比人类更有效，故答案为A。
2
Why did researchers create MegaFace?
A.
To enlarge the volume of the facial-recognition database.
B.
To increase the variety of facial-recognition software.
C.
To understand computers' problems with facial recognition.
D.
To reduce the complexity of facial-recognition algorithms.
本题答案：
A
B
C
D
参考答案：
C
系统解析：
由题干中的关键词MegaFace定位到文章第四段第三句。细节辨认题。由定位句可知，华盛顿大学的研究人员创建大型人脸数据库“百万面孔”的目的是为了弄清楚电脑在人脸识别方面所面临的困难，这与选项C的表述一致，故答案为C。
3
What does the passage say about machine accuracy?
A.
It falls short of researchers' expectations.
B.
It improves with added computing power.
C.
It varies greatly with different algorithms.
D.
It decreases as the database size increases.
本题答案：
A
B
C
D
参考答案：
D
系统解析：
由题干中的关键词machine accuracy定位到文章第五段第一句。细节辨认题。定位句指出，随着数据库的增大，机器的精确度全面下降，可见这与选项D的表述相同，故答案为D。
4
What is said to be a shortcoming-of facial-recognition machines?
A.
They cannot easily tell apart people with near-identical appearances.
B.
They have difficulty identifying changes in facial expressions.
C.
They are not sensitive to minute changes in people's mood.
D.
They have problems distinguishing people of the same age.
本题答案：
A
B
C
D
参考答案：
A
系统解析：
由题干中的关键词a shortcoming of facial-recognition machines定位到文章第六段。推理判断题。定位句前半部分指出，机器在处理相似度较高的人脸时也有困难，难以将长相极相似的人分辨为两个不同的人，可见A)的表述符合原文，故答案为A。
5
What is the difficulty confronting researchers of facial-recognition machines?
A.
No computer is yet able to handle huge datasets of human faces.
B.
There do not exist public databases with sufficient face samples.
C.
There are no appropriate algorithms to process the face samples.
D.
They have trouble converting face datasets into the right format.
本题答案：
A
B
C
D
参考答案：
B
系统解析：
由题干中的关键词the difficulty confronting researchers定位到文章倒数第二段前三句。细节辨认题。定位句指出，研究人员的问题在于他们没有现成的大规模数据库可用，一些大规模数据库都不是公共的，可见研究人员的困难就是他们没有充足的数据样本，故答案为B。
There're currently 21.5 million students in America, and many will be funding their college on borrowed money. Given that there's now over $1.3 trillion in student loans on the books, it's pretty clear that many students are far from sensible. The average student's debt upon graduation now approaches $40,000, and as college becomes ever more expensive, calls to make it "free" are multiplying. Even Hillary Clinton says that when it comes to college, "Costs won't be a barrier."
But the only way college could be free is if the faculty' and staff donated their time, the buildings required no maintenance, and campuses required no utilities. As long as it's impossible to produce something from nothing, costs are absolutely a barrier.
The actual question we debate is who should pay for people to go to college. If taxpayers are to bear the cost of forgiving student loans, shouldn't they have a say in how their money is used?
At least taxpayers should be able to decide what students will study on the public dime. If we're going to force taxpayers to foot the bill for college degrees, students should only study those subjects that're of greatest benefit to taxpayers. After all, students making their own choices in this respect is what caused the problem in the first place. We simply don't need more poetry, gender studies, or sociology majors. How do we know which subjects benefit society? Easy.
Average starting salaries give a clear indication of what type of training society needs its new workers to have. Certainly, there're benefits to a college major beyond the job a student can perform. But if we're talking about the benefits to society, the only thing that matters is what the major enables the student to produce for society. And the value of what the student can produce is reflected in the wage employers are willing to pay the student to produce it.
A low wage for elementary school teachers, however, doesn't mean elementary education isn't important. It simply means there're too many elementary school teachers already.
Meanwhile, there're few who're willing and able to perform jobs requiring a petroleum engineering major, so the value of one more of those people is very high.
So we can have taxpayers pick up students' tuition in exchange for dictating what those students will study. Or we can allow students both to choose their majors and pay for their education themselves. But in the end, one of two things is true:
Either a college major is worth its cost or it isn't. If yes, taxpayer financing isn't needed. If not, taxpayer financing isn't desirable. Either way, taxpayers have no business paying for students' college education.
6
What does the author think of college students funding their education through loans?
A.
They only expect to get huge returns.
B.
They are acting in an irrational way.
C.
They benefit at taxpayers' expense.
D.
They will regret doing so someday.
本题答案：
A
B
C
D
参考答案：
B
系统解析：
由题干中的college students和through loans定位到文章首段第二句。细节辨认题。定位句明确指出，从账面看到的学生贷款的数额上来看，很多学生是非常不理智的。结合上下文可知，作者的意思是学生通过借贷来接受教育并非合理的做法，故答案为B。
7
In the author's opinion, free college education is ________.
A.
impractical
B.
unsustainable
C.
a goal to strive for
D.
a way to social equality
本题答案：
A
B
C
D
参考答案：
A
系统解析：
由题干中的free college education定位到文章第二段。推理判断题。定位段第一句列举了使大学教育免费的若干条件，而随后一句则明确说明这些条件其实是不可能达成的，可见作者认为鼓吹大学教育免费是不现实的，故答案为A。
8
What should students do if taxpayers are to bear their college costs?
A.
Work even harder to repay society.
B.
Choose their subjects more carefully.
C.
Choose majors that will serve society's practical needs.
D.
Allow taxpayers to participate in college administration.
本题答案：
A
B
C
D
参考答案：
C
系统解析：
根据题干中的if taxpayers are to bear their college costs定位到文章第三段第二句。推理判断题。定位句指出，如果要让纳税人负担大学学费，则应该让纳税人对他们的钱如何使用有发言权。第四段随后具体解释说，纳税人至少应该能够决定学生使用公众的钱去学习的内容，即让他们决定学生应该学什么才符合公众利益，故答案为C。
9
What does the author say about the value of a student's college education?
A.
It is underestimated by profit-seeking employers.
B.
It is to be proved by what they can do on the job.
C.
It is well reflected in their average starting salary.
D.
It is embodied in how they remove social barriers.
本题答案：
A
B
C
D
参考答案：
C
系统解析：
由题干中的the value和a student's college education定位到文章第五段第一句。推理判断题。定位句提到，平均起点工资为社会需要新劳动者接受什么样的培训提供了明.确的提示。而所谓的劳动者培训，在本文就是指高等教育，结合后文的具体论述可知，作者认为高等教育的价值是通过平均起点工资来反映的，故答案为C。
10
What message does the author want to convey in the passage?
A.
Students should think carefully whether to go to college.
B.
Taxpayers should only finance the most gifted students.
C.
The worth of a college education is open to debate.
D.
College students should fund their own education.
本题答案：
A
B
C
D
参考答案：
D
系统解析：
本题考查文章的中心论点，需要结合全文信息来解答。主旨大意题。作者在文章开头部分以大学学费令学生债台高筑引入是否要提供免费的大学教育这个话题，并随后反驳了这个观点，指出真正免费的教育是不存在的。所谓免费，就是要让纳税人负担，而纳税人是否应该负担呢？作者进一步论述指出，如果让纳税人负担，则必须是只培养对公众利益有价值的人才，而作者在结尾处暗示，由纳税人决定学生学什么其实是不可行的，故而纳税人不应该负担学费。这也就意味着，学费还是应该由学生自己负担，故答案为D。
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