Passage:
In the summer of 2022, subscribers to the US streaming service HBO MAX were alarmed to discover that dozens of the platform’s offerings had been quietly removed. The news seemed like vindication to those who had long warned that streaming was more about controlling access to the cultural commons than expanding it…
What’s less clear is whether the commonly prescribed cure for these cultural ills – a return to the material pleasures of physical media – is the right one. Blu-ray discs and DVDs come with their own limitations, including data decay, storage conditions, and availability of playback equipment. Digital movie purchases provide even less security due to restrictions like geo-blocking and digital rights management (DRM).
Question:
Which one of the following statements, if true, would best invalidate the main argument of the passage?
- Recent research has irrefutably proven that Blu-Ray discs have a shelf life of at least 100 years.
- When moving to a different geographical location, customers can easily use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to bypass geo-blocking and regain access to their content on any streaming service.
- Improved cloud storage services have made it possible for movie collections to now be preserved in perpetuity, without the need to keep migrating the files.
- Studios and streaming services have committed to giving customers perpetual and platform-independent access to the original digital content they have paid for.
Solution:
Analysis:
The main argument of the passage is that digital media suffers from issues like impermanence, restricted access, and DRM, which limit users’ control over their purchased or favorite content. A statement that addresses and resolves these issues would invalidate the argument.
Option Analysis:
- Option 1: Incorrect. While this addresses the longevity of Blu-ray discs, it does not resolve the issues of geo-blocking, DRM, or content removal by streaming platforms.
- Option 2: Partially correct. VPNs can address geo-blocking but do not resolve DRM restrictions or other issues related to platform-dependent access.
- Option 3: Incorrect. Improved cloud storage helps with file preservation but does not address the lack of control over DRM-protected files or geo-blocking.
- Option 4: Correct. If studios and streaming services commit to providing perpetual, platform-independent access, this resolves the central issues of impermanence and restricted control highlighted in the passage.
Correct Answer: Option 4
Passage:
In the summer of 2022, subscribers to the US streaming service HBO MAX were alarmed to discover that dozens of the platform’s offerings had been quietly removed. The news seemed like vindication for those who had warned that streaming was more about controlling access to the cultural commons than expanding it. The debate about access to art in the digital age remains a pressing concern.
Question:
Which one of the following statements about art best captures the arguments made in the passage?
- In the age of online subscription services, it is time to change our understanding of classic works of art being primarily immutable and easily available to the public.
- As art is increasingly created, stored and distributed digitally, access to it is counterintuitively likely to be made more difficult by the rapid churn in technology and the whims of host platforms.
- Works of art belong to the cultural commons and hence must remain available in perpetuity, irrespective of who pays for access to them.
- Accepting retroactive changes to works of art is dangerous because it will encourage creators to not put enough effort into the original attempt, given that they can always edit or update their work later.
Solution:
Analysis:
The passage critiques how digital platforms complicate access to art by imposing restrictions like DRM, geo-blocking, and content removal. It argues that technology has paradoxically limited access rather than expanded it, even as more art is digitized and distributed online.
Option Analysis:
- Option 1: Incorrect. While the passage mentions retroactive changes, its focus is not on redefining art as mutable but on issues of restricted access.
- Option 2: Correct. This option captures the paradox of digital technology restricting access to art due to technical and corporate barriers.
- Option 3: Incorrect. The passage critiques access restrictions but does not argue that art should be universally free or perpetually accessible.
- Option 4: Incorrect. The passage mentions retroactive edits but does not suggest they undermine artistic effort; its focus is on access and preservation.
Correct Answer: Option 2
Interactive Quiz
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Passage:
The history of any major technological or industrial advance is inevitably shadowed by a less predictable history of unintended consequences and secondary effects — what economists sometimes call “externalities.” Sometimes those consequences are innocuous ones, or even beneficial. Gutenberg invents the printing press, and literacy rates rise, which causes a significant part of the reading public to require spectacles for the first time, which creates a surge of investment in lens-making across Europe, which leads to the invention of the telescope and the microscope.
Oftentimes the secondary effects seem to belong to an entirely different sphere of society. When Willis Carrier hit upon the idea of air-conditioning, the technology was primarily intended for industrial use: ensuring cool, dry air for factories that required low-humidity environments. But…it touched off one of the largest migrations in the history of the United States, enabling the rise of metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Las Vegas that barely existed when Carrier first started tinkering with the idea in the early 1900s.
Sometimes the unintended consequence comes about when consumers use an invention in a surprising way. Edison famously thought his phonograph, which he sometimes called “the talking machine,” would primarily be used to take dictation….But then later innovators… discovered a much larger audience willing to pay for musical recordings made on descendants of Edison’s original invention. In other cases, the original innovation comes into the world disguised as a plaything…the way the animatronic dolls of the mid-1700s inspired Jacquard to invent the first “programmable” loom and Charles Babbage to invent the first machine that fit the modern definition of a computer, setting the stage for the revolution in programmable technology that would transform the 21st century in countless ways.
We live under the gathering storm of modern history’s most momentous unintended consequence….carbon-based climate change. Imagine the vast sweep of inventors whose ideas started the Industrial Revolution, all the entrepreneurs and scientists and hobbyists who had a hand in bringing it about. Line up a thousand of them and ask them all what they had been hoping to do with their work. Not one would say that their intent had been to deposit enough carbon in the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect that trapped heat at the surface of the planet. And yet here we are.
Ethyl (leaded fuel) and Freon belonged to the same general class of secondary effect: innovations whose unintended consequences stem from some kind of waste by-product that they emit. But the potential health threats of Ethyl (unleaded fuel) were visible in the 1920s, unlike, say, the long-term effects of atmospheric carbon build up in the early days of the Industrial Revolution….
Indeed, it is reasonable to see CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) as a forerunner of the kind of threat we will most likely face in the coming decades, as it becomes increasingly possible for individuals or small groups to create new scientific advances — through chemistry or biotechnology or materials science — setting off unintended consequences that reverberate on a global scale.
Question: We can assume that the author would support all of the following views EXCEPT:
Solution:
Analyzing the options:
- Option 1: The author clearly believes that the health threats of leaded fuel were visible earlier and should have been addressed sooner. This is consistent with the passage. Eliminate.
- Option 2: The author argues that modern advances can lead to more threatening consequences globally, compared to earlier technological advances. This aligns with the passage. Eliminate.
- Option 3: The passage does not support the idea that the by-products of leaded fuel, rather than the fuel itself, caused the carbon-related gas build-up. The author highlights the broader carbon-based emissions from industrial progress. This is inconsistent with the author’s views. Keep this option as the correct answer.
- Option 4: The author notes that it has become easier for individuals or small groups to create advances with dire global consequences. This aligns with the passage. Eliminate.
Correct Answer: Option 3. The by-products of leaded fuel, rather than the fuel itself, were responsible for the build-up of carbon-related gases in the atmosphere.
Fears of artificial intelligence (AI) have haunted humanity since the very beginning of the computer age. Hitherto these fears focused on machines using physical means to kill, enslave or replace people. But over the past couple of years new AI tools have emerged that threaten the survival of human civilisation from an unexpected direction. AI has gained some remarkable abilities to manipulate and generate language, whether with words, sounds or images. AI has thereby hacked the operating system of our civilisation.
Language is the stuff almost all human culture is made of. Human rights, for example, aren’t inscribed in our DNA. Rather, they are cultural artefacts we created by telling stories and writing laws. Gods aren’t physical realities. Rather, they are cultural artefacts we created by inventing myths and writing scriptures….What would happen once a non-human intelligence becomes better than the average human at telling stories, composing melodies, drawing images, and writing laws and scriptures? When people think about ChatGPT and other new AI tools, they are often drawn to examples like school children using AI to write their essays. What will happen to the school system when kids do that? But this kind of question misses the big picture. Forget about school essays. Think of the next American presidential race in 2024, and try to imagine the impact of AI tools that can be made to mass-produce political content, fake-news stories and scriptures for new cults…
Through its mastery of language, AI could even form intimate relationships with people, and use the power of intimacy to change our opinions and worldviews. Although there is no indication that AI has any consciousness or feelings of its own, to foster fake intimacy with humans it is enough if the AI can make them feel emotionally attached to it….
What will happen to the course of history when AI takes over culture, and begins producing stories, melodies, laws and religions? Previous tools like the printing press and radio helped spread the cultural ideas of humans, but they never created new cultural ideas of their own. AI is fundamentally different. AI can create completely new ideas, completely new culture…. Of course, the new power of AI could be used for good purposes as well. I won’t dwell on this, because the people who develop AI talk about it enough….
We can still regulate the new AI tools, but we must act quickly. Whereas nukes cannot invent more powerful nukes, AI can make exponentially more powerful AI.… Unregulated AI deployments would create social chaos, which would benefit autocrats and ruin democracies. Democracy is a conversation, and conversations rely on language. When AI hacks language, it could destroy our ability to have meaningful conversations, thereby destroying democracy….And the first regulation I would suggest is to make it mandatory for AI to disclose that it is an AI. If I am having a conversation with someone, and I cannot tell whether it is a human or an AI—that’s the end of democracy. This text has been generated by a human. Or has it?
Question 7: We can infer that the author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?
Detailed Solution:
The correct answer is 4. One of the biggest casualties from the spread of unregulated AI is likely to be the democratic process.
Explanation:
- Option 1: Incorrect. The author explicitly states that fears of AI’s impact on students’ behavior are small compared to broader issues such as democracy.
- Option 2: Incorrect. While the author acknowledges the potential for positive uses, the passage focuses on the risks, particularly to culture and democracy.
- Option 3: Incorrect. The author does not dismiss fears about AI’s potential harm; rather, they emphasize the risks of unregulated AI, particularly to democracy.
- Option 4: Correct. The author clearly states that AI’s ability to manipulate language poses a significant threat to democracy, making this the best inference.
Thus, the most plausible inference based on the passage is Option 4.
There is a group in the space community who view the solar system not as an opportunity to expand human potential but as a nature preserve, forever the provenance of an elite group of scientists and their sanitary robotic probes. These planetary protection advocates [call] for avoiding “harmful contamination” of celestial bodies. Under this regime, NASA incurs great expense sterilizing robotic probes in order to prevent the contamination of entirely theoretical biospheres. . . .
Transporting bacteria would matter if Mars were the vital world once imagined by astronomers who mistook optical illusions for canals. Nobody wants to expose Martians to measles, but sadly, robotic exploration reveals a bleak, rusted landscape, lacking oxygen and flooded with radiation ready to sterilize any Earthly microbes. Simple life might exist underground, or down at the bottom of a deep canyon, but it has been very hard to find with robots. . . . The upsides from human exploration and development of Mars clearly outweigh the welfare of purely speculative Martian fungi. . . .
The other likely targets of human exploration, development, and settlement, our moon and the asteroids, exist in a desiccated, radiation-soaked realm of hard vacuum and extreme temperature variations that would kill nearly anything. It’s also important to note that many international competitors will ignore the demands of these protection extremists in any case. For example, China recently sent a terrarium to the moon and germinated a plant seed—with, unsurprisingly, no protest from its own scientific community. In contrast, when it was recently revealed that a researcher had surreptitiously smuggled super-resilient microscopic tardigrades aboard the ill-fated Israeli Beresheet lunar probe, a firestorm was unleashed within the space community. . . .
NASA’s previous human exploration efforts made no serious attempt at sterility, with little notice. As the Mars expert Robert Zubrin noted in the National Review, U.S. lunar landings did not leave the campsites cleaner than they found it. Apollo’s bacteria-infested litter included bags of feces. Forcing NASA’s proposed Mars exploration to do better, scrubbing everything and hauling out all the trash, would destroy NASA’s human exploration budget and encroach on the agency’s other directorates, too. Getting future astronauts off Mars is enough of a challenge, without trying to tote weeks of waste along as well.
A reasonable compromise is to continue on the course laid out by the U.S. government and the National Research Council, which proposed a system of zones on Mars, some for science only, some for habitation, and some for resource exploitation. This approach minimizes contamination, maximizes scientific exploration . . . Mars presents a stark choice of diverging human futures. We can turn inward, pursuing ever more limited futures while we await whichever natural or manmade disaster will eradicate our species and life on Earth. Alternatively, we can choose to propel our biosphere further into the solar system, simultaneously protecting our home planet and providing a backup plan for the only life we know exists in the universe. Are the lives on Earth worth less than some hypothetical microbe lurking under Martian rocks?
Question 14: The contrasting reactions to the Chinese and Israeli “contaminations” of lunar space
Solution:
The contrasting reactions highlight the lack of criticism toward China’s germination experiment and the strong backlash against Israel’s contamination with tardigrades. This suggests different sensitivities among scientists from various nations toward biosphere protection issues. Thus, the correct answer is: Option 3.
