2018考研英语双语阅读：聊天机器人

　　2018考研复习进行时，考研英语阅读真题中的文章，多摘自英美主流外刊，有时候你认识所有单词、搞清全部语法还不够，还需要了解英美文化，掌握他们的表达方式，这就是阅读的潜台词。下面新东方在线考研整理《2018考研英语双语阅读精选》，速来学习吧！

　　Amazon rolls out chatbot

　　亚马逊推出新功能——聊天机器人

　　Amazon.com Inc’s chief technology officer is working toward a day when people can control almost any piece of software with their voice.

　　亚马逊公司的技术总管正朝着人们可以有朝一日用语音控制几乎所有软件的方向努力着。

　　The company on Wednesday rolled out the technology powering Alexa, its voice assistant that competes with Apple Inc’s Siri, to developers so they can build chat features into their own apps, CTO Werner Vogels said in an interview.

　　亚马逊首席技术官维纳·沃格尔斯(Werner Vogels)在采访中说道，“公司在周三推出了驱动技术发展的Alexa语音助理，帮助开发者将此功能集成到他们自己的应用中，Alexa目前正在与苹果语音助理Siri进行竞争。”

　　The service, Amazon Lex, was in a preview phase since late 2016.

　　“Amazon Lex”服务自2016年晚些时候以来一直处于预览阶段。

　　The move underscores how Amazon is racing to be the top player in voice-controlled computing, after losing out in mobile to Apple and Alphabet Inc’s Google.

　　此举表明，在移动行业的竞争中败于苹果和Alphabet旗下的谷歌公司后，亚马逊正想要竞争成为语音控制计算领域的领头者。

　　Vogels said that Amazon’s headway in processing how humans write and speak would make conversational assistants or "chatbots" more helpful than the clunky tools they’ve been in the past.

　　沃尔格斯说亚马逊在人类文字和语言方面的强大处理能力可以让语音助手或聊天机器人不再像以前一样那么笨重，从而变得更有帮助。

　　"There’s massive acceleration happening here," he said before speaking at Amazon’s cloud-computing summit in San Francisco. "The cool thing about having this running as a service in the cloud instead of in your own data center or on your own desktop is that we can continuously make Lex better with the help of the millions of customers that are using it."

　　沃尔格斯在旧金山举办的亚马逊云计算峰会上发言之前说：“新技术的处理速度会大幅加快。通过云计算服务运行，而不是在你自己的数据中心或是计算机上运行的妙处在于，我们可以借助正在使用它的数百万用户来不断改进Lex。”

　　Processing vast quantities of data is key to artificial intelligence, which lets voice assistants decode speech. Amazon will take the text and recordings people send to apps to train Lex - as well as Alexa - to understand more queries.

　　处理海量数据是人工智能的关键，而人工智能可以让语音助手解码语音信息。亚马逊会利用人们发送到应用中的文本和录音来训练Lex和Alexa,以便领悟更多的请求。

　　That could help Amazon catch up in data collection. As popular as Amazon’s Alexa-powered devices are, such as Echo speakers, the company has sold an estimated 10 million or more. Apple has sold hundreds of millions of iPhones and other devices with Siri.

　　这可以帮助亚马逊加快数据收集的速度。尽管Echo智能音箱等基于亚马逊Alexa打造的设备很受欢迎，亚马逊公司只卖出大约1000多万台。而苹果售出了上亿台iPhone和其他带有Siri的设备。

　　Vogels said people use Alexa for many tasks, from helping them cook to playing music, while they talk to assistants on their phones in fewer scenarios like when driving a car.

　　沃尔格斯说人们可以用Alexa完成很多任务，从帮他们做饭到演奏音乐。但他们可以与语音助手对话的场景则比较少，比如在开车的时候。

　　As with other cloud-based services, Amazon will charge developers based on how many text or voice requests Lex processes.

　　与其他云计算服务一样，亚马逊会根据开发者要求Lex处理文本和语音的数量来收费。

　　Still, the biggest payoff may come from e-commerce, which has already attracted many to build chatbots. Amazon has begun offering Alexa-only shopping deals to encourage purchases by voice, and Facebook Inc this week said its virtual assistant, called M, can help users order food from delivery.com.

　　不过，最大的回报可能来自电子商务领域，这一领域已经吸引很多企业开发聊天机器人。亚马逊已经开始提供仅支持Alexa的优惠购物活动，以此来鼓励语音购物。Facebook本周表示它的虚拟助手M 可以帮助用户从delivery.com上面叫外卖。

　　"Voice is a big part of the computer interface of the future," said Gene Munster, a veteran equity analyst and now head of research at Loup Ventures.

　　“语音是未来计算机接入口的重要组成部分，”资深资本分析师和Loup Ventures的研究主管Gene Munster说。

　　"Whoever owns voice will be the gateway of commerce," said Munster.

　　“谁掌握了语音技术谁就能掌控电子商务的大门，”Munster说。

　　Other development

　　其他发展情况

　　Wells Fargo & Company is testing a "chatbot," an automated program that can communicate with the bank’s customers on Facebook’s messaging platform to give them information on their accounts and help them reset their passwords.

　　美国富国银行集团正在测试一款“聊天机器人”，一个可以在Facebook信息平台上与银行客户交流的自动程序，从而可以向客户们提供他们账户的信息并帮他们重设密码。

　　The US bank said on Tuesday that it is piloting the virtual assistant with several hundred employees, and plans to extend testing to a few thousand customers later this spring.

　　美国银行表示其在周二让上百位员工试用虚拟助手，并且计划在这个春季晚些时候将测试范围扩大到几千名客户。

　　Wells Fargo’s chatbot will use artificial intelligence to respond to natural language messages from users, such as how much money they have in their accounts, and where the nearest bank ATM is.

　　美国富国银行的聊天机器人会通过人工智能来回复用户的自然语言信息，比如他们的账户里还有多少钱、最近的银行ATM机在哪。

　　Chatbots have risen in popularity in finance and other industries over the past few months because recent improvements in artificial intelligence have made them better at interacting and interpreting human languages.

　　聊天机器人最近几个月在经济和其他行业热度有所提升，因为人工智能最近的技术改进可以使这些机器人更好地解读人类语言并与其互动。

　　Banks and other financial firms are hopeful that chatbots can be used to provide better and continuous customer service at the fraction of the cost of large call centers populated by humans.

　　银行和其他金融机构希望聊天机器人可以以原来人工接线中心几分之一的成本提供更好和更持久的客户服务。

　　French bank Societe Generale, for example, recently revealed that it was working with start-up Personetics Technologies to develop chatbots that could answer queries about equity funds in its Romanian banking unit.

　　比如说，法国兴业银行最近透露，其正在与新兴企业Personetics Technologies合作，来开发出可以在罗马尼亚银行单位回答有关股票基金的咨询问题的聊天机器人。

　　Wells Fargo’s chatbot, which does not yet have a name, comes as the bank is investing heavily in the development of AI-based technology.

　　美国富国银行的聊天机器人，暂时还没有名字，在这家银行正在重点投资基于人工智能的技术发展时现身。

　　Facebook opened up its Messenger app to developers to create chatbots in April 2016 in a bid to expand its reach in customer service and enterprise transactions.

　　2016年4月，Facebook为了让开发者们可以开发聊天机器人，向开发者开放Messenger应用，企图拓展其客户服务和企业交易。

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