104-2 Week 5: AlphaGo勝棋王

Google AI to play live Go match against world champion

5 February 2016

Google's artificial intelligence (AI) software will go head-to-head with the world's highest ranked Go player Lee Sedol, the firm has said.

It comes a week after the search giant announced that AlphaGo had beaten French Go champion Fan Hui. That was seen as a pivotal moment for AI, similar to IBM's Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov at chess. The match will take place in Seoul, South Korea, and will be live-streamed via YouTube. Demis Hassabis, head of Google's DeepMind lab, announced the news in a tweet. Mr Sedol said in a statement that although AlphaGo appeared to be a strong player, he was "confident" that he could win the match. Go is widely regarded as a more complicated game than chess, because of the larger choice of moves, making it a good measure of how AI technology is developing. Computers have played Go and beaten amateurs but, before Google's victory against the French champion, experts had predicted that it would take another 10 years until a computer could beat the world's best Go professionals. There has been a long tradition of AI software going head-to-head with human players. In 1996, IBM's Deep Blue took on chess world champion Garry Kasparov and won, although Mr Kasparov went on to win three and draw two of the following five games. Then in 2011, IBM's cognitive platform Watson took on the world's best Jeopardy players, a popular American quiz show and scooped the $1m prize. Watson had access to 200 million pages of structured and unstructured content but was not connected to the internet during the game.

http://www.bbc.com/news/35501537

Structure of the lead:

WHO- Lee Sedol

WHAT-AlphaGo

WHEN-5 February 2016

WHERE- Seoul, South Korea

HOW-AlphaGo is going to have a match with the world’s highest ranked Go player

WHY- not given

Vocabulary

 1.         Pivotal:關鍵的

2.         AI:人工智慧

3.         Live-streamed:直播

4.         Complicated:複雜的

5.         Amateurs:業餘

6.         But: 任何人(代詞)

7.         Predicted:預測的

8.         Head-to-head:肉搏戰

9.         Cognitive:認知

10.    Scooped:掏出

104-2 Week 4: 台灣霸王寒流

Cold weather brings snow to nation

Mon, Jan 25, 2016

A rare sight of snow wowed people nationwide yesterday, from Taipei to Pingtung County. Under the influence of a strong cold air mass, many places in Taiwan — even those located at an altitude of only 400m to 500m — received a covering of snow or soft hail overnight, exciting locals, who likely have never seen snow in real life since they were born. Despite low temperatures, people were seen swarming to elevated areas, including Keelung’s 726m-high Jiangziliaoshan (姜子寮山), Taipei’s Yangmingshan (陽明山) and New Taipei City’s Linkou (林口) and Pinglin (坪林) districts, to appreciate the natural beauty of the snow. As of yesterday morning, the accumulated snow had reached 20cm in Taoyuan’s Lalashan (拉拉山) Forest Recreation Area. The Motian (摩天嶺-) mountain area along the Southern Cross-Island Highway also reported showers of snow started at 4am yesterday, as well as on Yunlin County’s Jiananyun Peak (嘉南雲峰), where snow began falling at about 11am yesterday at an altitude of about 1,500m. Under the influence of a cold air mass, the outlying island group of Penghu experienced soft hail yesterday morning.

Pingtung County’s Dawushan (大武山) also reported soft hail from halfway up the mountain to the summit at midnight on Saturday. The Central Weather Bureau said 27 weather stations in different parts of Taiwan registered their lowest temperatures yesterday. The temperature in Taipei fell to 4 ºC, the lowest level detected in the capital in 44 years and the second-lowest since 3.2 ºC degrees was recorded in 1972.

It was minus-3.1 ºC in the Yangmingshan area, 5.8 ºC in Yilan County’s Suao (蘇澳), and 4.2 ºC in Taoyuan’s Sinwu District (新屋) — all new lows for these places. In New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋), it was 3.8ºC yesterday morning — the second-lowest level in history. The temperature in Taipei is forecast to dip to 3ºC early today, while central and southern regions are expected to experience temperatures of 4ºC and 6ºC respectively, the bureau said. Chances of precipitation are expected to be low across the nation today, apart from in mountainous regions higher than 600m. The bureau urged people to be aware of icy road conditions. The bureau has issued special warnings for low temperatures and heavy rain across Taiwan, urging the public to take precautions and keep warm before the cold wave leaves Taiwan tomorrow, when temperatures across the nation are expected to rebound noticeably.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/01/25/2003637998

Structure of the lead:

WHO- Taiwanese

WHERE- Taiwan, from Taipei to Pingtung County

WHAT- Snow, low temperature

WHEN- Jan. 24, 2016

HOW- Taiwan was in low temperature, lots of plain snowed, and made a new record of low temperature.

WHY-not given.

Vocabulary:

1.         Nationwide : 全國性的

2.         Altitude : 海拔

3.         Swarming : 擠滿

4.         Elevated : 上升

5.         Accumulated : 累積

6.         Hail : 冰雹

7.         Summit : 頂點

8.         Bureau : 局；辦公處

9.         Precipitation : 降水量

10.    Rebound: 恢復