高雄醫學大學（後西醫）
111年
英文
第 50 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 can be inferred from the article?
- A This is not the first time that Ishiguro deals with themes related to loss.
- B Kazuo Ishiguro is without a doubt a sci-fi novelist who only works on the topic.
- C The writer believes the author has patronized his readers with an unrealistic vision about the future.
- D Klara and the Sun condemns how artificial intelligence would take over the world ultimately.
- E Klara and the Sun puts forward technological advancement in order to avoid controversies.
思路引導 VIP
當我們想在評論文章中確認一位作者「過去」是否寫過特定主題時，你會傾向在段落中尋找哪些代表「重複性」或「熟悉感」的關鍵詞彙？這類詞彙如何幫助我們連結這部新作品與他早期的創作歷程？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
哼，算你運氣好，野猴子
你的戰鬥力是 53 萬，你的智商看來也有 53...不，530 吧。這題答對了，但別得意，這不過是熱身而已。
- 精確的文本剖析
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