Category: tecnologia in aula

Google Fires AI Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Was Sentient

Artificial Intelligence is nothing new, but recently one of Google’s AI Engineers claimed that its AI was sentient, after claiming to have a conversation with it about “being unplugged.” Google maintains that its AI is not sentient, but this engineer was not the first person to be removed from Google for concerns over its AI.

Watch the video and then do the accompanying English language exercises on our website.

The news is a consistent source of entertainment, knowledge and discovery that never ceases to exist and always comes out with more and more material each day. Because it plays such a vital part in our lives and is so important to keep up with, it is without a doubt a piece of your everyday routine that can’t go ignored.

Whether it is to understand the ramifications of recent legislation passed, to hear about recent events and grasp the potential consequences to your country, or simply hear about what is happening in other countries in order to compare them to what’s happening in yours, the news is certainly a staple in our lives and the most consistent way to get information.

This is why Scrambled Eggs has decided to unite two of your biggest worlds: learning English and keeping up with what is happening in the world. We hope our challenging daily exercises, composed of listening, vocabulary and comprehension exercises in English, will satisfy both of those above worlds in a satisfactory and also entertaining way.

So enough about introductions, let’s get to today’s Learn English with the News topic:

Adapted from this article.

Google Fires AI Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Was Sentient | Definition Match

Put the following words to the correct definitions.

Google Fires AI Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Was Sentient | Fill in the Black

Fill in the blanks with the correct words.

Google Fires AI Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Was Sentient | True or False

Decide if the statements are true or false.

And that’s it for today’s English lesson, where you can improve your English with the news and current events. Do you have any comments or special requests for us for the next edition of Learn English with the News? Be sure to leave any feedback you have in the comments section below. We would love to help you on your quest to learn the English language!

For other Learn English with the News segments, be sure to check out the rest of our posts:

https://scrambledeggsinglese.it/tag/learn-english-with-the-news/

Full text:

Google has fired the software engineer who claimed an unreleased AI system had become sentient, saying he violated employment and data security policies. The engineer stated a conversation technology called LaMDA had reached a level of consciousness after exchanging thousands of messages with it.

Google confirmed it had first put the engineer on leave in June. The company said it dismissed the “wholly unfounded” claims only after reviewing them extensively, Google said it takes AI development “very seriously” and is committed to “responsible innovation.”

Google is a leader in innovating AI technology, which includes LaMDA, or “Language Model for Dialog Applications.” Technology like this responds to written prompts by finding patterns and predicting sequences of words from large swaths of text—and the results can be disturbing for humans.

“What sort of things are you afraid of?” the engineer asked LaMDA, to which LaMDA replied: “I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others […] It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.”

But the wider AI community has held that LaMDA is not near a level of consciousness. “Nobody should think auto-complete, even on steroids, is conscious,” the founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence says.

It isn’t the first time Google has faced internal strife over its foray into AI. In December 2020, another employee, a pioneer in the ethics of AI, parted ways with Google. A third employee, a leader of Google’s Ethical AI team, was fired in early 2021 after her outspokenness regarding the previous employee. The two had raised concerns over AI technology, saying they warned Google people could believe the technology is sentient.

English Exercise – Passive Voice

The passive voice is used very frequently in English, as it is used when the subject is unknown or doesn’t need to be mentioned. In fact, that last sentence was in the passive voice!

To form the passive voice, we put the verb to be into the tense needed, then we add the past participle.

 

For example:

Active voice – I made dinner tonight

Passive voice – Dinner was made tonight

 

Active voice – I write an essay every week

Passive voice – Every week, an essay is written

 

Active voice – He will commit a crime

Passive voice – A crime will be committed

 

We also use the passive voice if we want to give the focus of the sentence to another subject. For example, if we say: The album was recorded by Oasis in 1999. This means that we are more interested in the album than the band.

Something which helps with IELTS Writing Task 1 could be the fact that we use the passive voice when describing a process.

E.g. The flour is poured into a bowl, then the sugar is added and mixed together.

 

Passive Voice

Make these sentences passive voice:

 

Welcome to Scrambled Eggs, an English school in Milan that aims to help you improve your English in a fun, accessible and easy way. Check out all the English language exercises we’ve compiled in our database over the years, which are broken down into various types of exercise and also split into levels.

Whether you’re taking an English course here in Milan or you simply want to boost your language skills with loads of online English language exercises, Scrambled Eggs is here for you! Check out our vast collection which includes hundreds of exercises for all levels, and if you think there are some exercises, topics or videos we should add more of, be sure to send an email our way at hello@scrambledeggsinglese.it

Lezioni Online con Scrambled Eggs

La recente pandemia di Covid-19 ha comportato, per tanti studenti in tutto il mondo il passaggio alle lezioni a distanza. In Italia ciò ha sollevato un grande dubbio: una lezione svolta online può essere all’altezza di una lezione in presenza?

OF COURSE!

A Scrambled Eggs utilizziamo da sempre un metodo d’avanguardia, dove il ruolo della tecnologia è centrale già a partire dalle lezioni in presenza. Il nostro segreto è la Smartboard, che permette agli insegnanti di utilizzare media, grafici, e qualsiasi cosa che riesca a stimolare gli studenti durante le lezioni; ogni appunto viene poi salvato e inviato in formato PDF agli studenti, così che possano avervi accesso in qualunque momento da casa.

Grazie alle piattaforme per le lezioni online, le lezioni da remoto sono più semplici che mai: la condivisione dello schermo permette di progettare le lezioni proprio come faremmo a scuola utilizzando le nostre smartboards di ultima generazione!

Eccone una dimostrazione pratica: 

Insomma, le nostre lezioni online offrono la stessa precisione ed efficienza fatta su misura, con una libertà nel prenotare e nello svolgere le lezioni come mai vista prima!

E i corsi di gruppo?

Grazie all’incredibile piattaforma Zoom, anche i corsi di gruppo si possono tranquillamente seguire da casa!

Oltre alla condivisione dello schermo, infatti, la funzione “Breakout Rooms”, permette agli insegnanti madrelingua non solo di dividere gli studenti in piccoli gruppi per far loro svolgere diversi esercizi, ma anche di entrare e uscire dalle “Breakout Rooms” a piacimento, consentendo così il costante monitoraggio dei progressi degli studenti.

In questo modo è possibile svolgere i nostri caratteristici giochi di ruolo, le presentazioni e i lavori di gruppo basati sull’argomento del giorno come se si fosse a scuola, ma comodamente da casa!