Exercise 3. Answer the questions.
1. What is the biggest danger in the opinion of an Oxford philosophy professor?
2. What is called superintelligence?
3. What ways of artificial intelligence could be?
4. What could superintelligence influence?
5. What is compared in the books by Bostrom?
6. What can happen to humans?
7. What did Facebook create?
8. What is it working on?
9. How is this technology called?
10. What did Bostrom point in his interview?
Text 2
Exercise 1. Read the text.
Transplants from animals raise question of spreading disease
In 1993, an official with the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called a few employees into her office and asked the question: What was the CDC doing about the risk that animal-to-people transplants might introduce new germs into the human population? "My first reaction was – nothing", recalled Louisa Chapman, an expert on animal viruses that infect humans. Transplants from animals were so rare and recipients lived so briefly that it didn't seem a threat". But as she looked into the situation, she changed her mind. Interest in xenotransplants was heating up. Animals could not only ease the shortage of kidneys, hearts and livers for transplantation, but also supply brain tissue for treating diseases like Parkinson's. These days, drug and biotech companies have poured more than 100 million into xenotransplant research. Scientists report progress in overcoming rejection of animal organs. But the concern Chapman heard in that 1993 meeting has not gone away: Would xenotransplants give new germs a sneaky entree into the human population? In March, scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research in London reported that a virus – one that might be found even in healthy pigs – sprang out of pig tissue and infected human cells in a lab experiment. That showed that the idea of such infection in a pig-to-human transplant "is more plausible than a fanciful scare story", the researchers said. And federal regulators in the United States are now refining draft guidelines to minimise the risk to public health. Here's why Chapman and others say there's reason to worry:
• Animals do have germs that can infect people and then spread from person-to-person.
• The AIDS virus apparently came from monkeys long ago.
• Dangerous germs can hide in healthy-looking animals.
• People getting animal organs would be on drugs to suppress their immune systems.
• Genes from an animal virus could mingle with those of a human virus, creating a hybrid virus with unpredictable behaviour.
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• Keeping animals isolated from infection may not be enough. Some viruses aren't caught, they're inherited. They're just part of being a pig, for example.
So far, however, the limited experience with xenotransplants is encouraging. Dr Alan Dimick, who's put pigskin on severe burns since 1970, says there's no evidence treatment has infected anybody with pig germs. But Dimick notes that pigskin stays on for only a day or two. An implanted organ might pose more of a risk, he said. For instance, transgenic pigs may provide donor organs for humans.
Dr Schumacher, a neurosurgeon who has put foetal pig tissue into the brains of a dozen people with Parkinson's or Huntington's disease over the past two years, also reports no sign of infection. "We are extremely overzealous about studying these effects and looking for viruses in the long and short run, and we haven't to date found any problem", he said. While scientists ponder the risk of xenotransplantation, thousands of people die each year because they can't get a human organ. It's a difficult issue", said virus expert Jonathan Allan. There are people dying. You want to do everything possible to prevent that. But you certainly don't want to foster new infectious diseases that would make even greater suffering in the population".
Exercise 2. Answer the questions to the text.
1. What was Louisa Chapman's first reaction to the risk of animal transplants?
2. Why did she feel animal transplants weren't a threat?
3. Why did she change her mind?
4. How could animal transplants be used?
5. What are the possible dangers of animal to human transplant?
6. What is Dr Schumacher's opinion?
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