hce_kmu
111年
英文
第 47 題
📖 題組：
Klara and the Sun, published in 2021, was the eighth novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. Highly anticipated, the dystopian science fiction sets in the U.S. in an uncomfortably near yet unspecified future: technology has rendered many people “postemployed” and created a blunt caste system where the so-called “lifted” are on top. With this wide-focus social backdrop of this novel, most of the time the story is told from a very limited point-of-view of Klara, a solar-powered AF—Artificial Friend. As a companion robot, Klara is highly different from her own kind: she has an appetite for observing and learning, and has the most sophisticated understanding amongst all the AFs sold in the store. She is chosen by a very sickly fourteen-year-old Josie to be her companion. Klara is loyal and tactful, and she is able to absorb difficulty and return care. Her role, as she describes it, is to prevent loneliness and to serve. As a companion robot, Klara has a deep reverence for the sun, which she regards as a deity. Solar-powered herself, Klara comes to believe that attention to sun should be a matter of survival for humans. Throughout the novel, Klara is on a mission to help Josie restore her health from a mysterious, seemingly terminally-ill disease, and she believes the sun possesses the power to cure Josie. Ishiguro’s readers are no strangers to the recurring theme from his previous works—loss, regret, sacrifice, longing, and a sense of reality afloat. And this novel is no exception. In Klara and the Sun, however, technology takes a more central role, and Ishiguro uses artificial intelligence, both biological and mechanized, to reflect on what it means to be human. Ishiguro uses the novel to contest the idea: “Can AI actually get to that empathy by understanding human emotions?” The current society seems to embrace artificial intelligence wholeheartedly, and allows AI to creep into every aspect of society, from job applications, to data mining with algorithms, or even to medicine in clinical setting. As the nature of this generation of machine learning, known as “reinforcement learning”, is vastly different from that of the old forms of AI, human beings may lose control of what AI does thereafter. With this novel, Ishiguro intends to manifest a dark allegory that speaks about the danger of unchecked technological advances, the loss of innocence, and the dignity of simple lives. Although the novel concludes with a positive note in believing how AFs like Klara would be able to provide unfailingly considerate and loyal companionship, the hauntingly beautiful story subtly addresses various looming challenges and controversies regarding AI ethics such as the limitations of machine learning and unsupervised deep learning. Many questions remain unanswered in the novel. But what is beyond doubt here is that Ishiguro has produced another masterpiece, a work that depicts the tenderness, beauty and fragility of humanity through the eyes of an AI.
Klara and the Sun, published in 2021, was the eighth novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro. Highly anticipated, the dystopian science fiction sets in the U.S. in an uncomfortably near yet unspecified future: technology has rendered many people “postemployed” and created a blunt caste system where the so-called “lifted” are on top. With this wide-focus social backdrop of this novel, most of the time the story is told from a very limited point-of-view of Klara, a solar-powered AF—Artificial Friend. As a companion robot, Klara is highly different from her own kind: she has an appetite for observing and learning, and has the most sophisticated understanding amongst all the AFs sold in the store. She is chosen by a very sickly fourteen-year-old Josie to be her companion. Klara is loyal and tactful, and she is able to absorb difficulty and return care. Her role, as she describes it, is to prevent loneliness and to serve. As a companion robot, Klara has a deep reverence for the sun, which she regards as a deity. Solar-powered herself, Klara comes to believe that attention to sun should be a matter of survival for humans. Throughout the novel, Klara is on a mission to help Josie restore her health from a mysterious, seemingly terminally-ill disease, and she believes the sun possesses the power to cure Josie. Ishiguro’s readers are no strangers to the recurring theme from his previous works—loss, regret, sacrifice, longing, and a sense of reality afloat. And this novel is no exception. In Klara and the Sun, however, technology takes a more central role, and Ishiguro uses artificial intelligence, both biological and mechanized, to reflect on what it means to be human. Ishiguro uses the novel to contest the idea: “Can AI actually get to that empathy by understanding human emotions?” The current society seems to embrace artificial intelligence wholeheartedly, and allows AI to creep into every aspect of society, from job applications, to data mining with algorithms, or even to medicine in clinical setting. As the nature of this generation of machine learning, known as “reinforcement learning”, is vastly different from that of the old forms of AI, human beings may lose control of what AI does thereafter. With this novel, Ishiguro intends to manifest a dark allegory that speaks about the danger of unchecked technological advances, the loss of innocence, and the dignity of simple lives. Although the novel concludes with a positive note in believing how AFs like Klara would be able to provide unfailingly considerate and loyal companionship, the hauntingly beautiful story subtly addresses various looming challenges and controversies regarding AI ethics such as the limitations of machine learning and unsupervised deep learning. Many questions remain unanswered in the novel. But what is beyond doubt here is that Ishiguro has produced another masterpiece, a work that depicts the tenderness, beauty and fragility of humanity through the eyes of an AI.
What does the word “deity” mean in the first paragraph?
- A an eating habit
- B a god or goddess
- C a revealing garment
- D a product made from milk
- E a record of private thoughts
思路引導 VIP
請觀察文中描述克拉拉對太陽的情感，文中使用了「深切的崇敬」（deep reverence）一詞，並提到她相信太陽擁有能夠「治癒」（cure）重病的神奇力量。在我們一般的理解中，會把什麼樣的對象視為值得崇拜、且擁有超自然治癒能力的存在呢？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
恭喜你準確掌握了這個詞彙在文中的語境！你能選出 (B) 代表你細膩地觀察到了作者對克拉拉心境的描繪。這題的難度切入點在於**「語境線索」的整合能力**，雖然 deity（神祇）對部分學生來說可能是較生冷的單字，但透過前後文的鋪陳，我們可以發現解題的關鍵。
從崇敬感看語境連結
文中提到克拉拉對太陽懷有「深切的崇敬」（deep reverence），且將太陽視為能治癒疾病的力量來源（power to cure），這些敘述都賦予了太陽一種超越物理能量、近乎宗教性的地位。因此，將其定義為 a god or goddess（神明） 是最契合故事邏輯的選擇。其他選項如飲食習慣 (A) 或乳製品 (D) 在字形上雖與 diet 或 dairy 相似，但只要回歸文章脈絡，就能輕易排除這些「字形陷阱」。這類題目考驗的不只是單字量，更是你對文章情感基調的敏銳度，你做得非常好！