Are you feeling well, Sam? No headache or sore throat?
山姆，你感觉还好吗？没有头痛或喉咙痛？
Sam(山姆)
No, I feel fine thanks, Neil. Why do you ask?
不，我感觉很好，谢谢，尼尔。你为什么问？
Neil(尼尔)
Well, I’ve been reading some inspirational stories about the doctors and nurses fighting Covid. When I was a boy, I always dreamed of becoming a doctor.
Yes, I have, and I remember the nurse’s bedside manner – you know, the kind and caring way that doctors and nurses treat people who are ill.
是的，我有，我记得护士在床边的态度 —— 你知道，医生和护士对待病人的善良和关怀方式。
Sam(山姆)
Nowadays more and more of the jobs that humans do are being carried out by machines. But I doubt that a doctor’s bedside manner could easily be replaced by a robot.
如今，人类所做的越来越多的工作都是由机器完成的。但我怀疑医生的床边礼仪可以很容易地被机器人取代。
Neil(尼尔)
In this programme, we’ll be discussing whether the revolution in artificial intelligence, often shortened to ‘AI’, could replace human doctors and nurses. We’ll be asking: can you imagine a future without doctors?
In fact, machines are already doing some of the jobs traditionally done by doctors - scanning people’s bodies to detect skin cancer, for example.
事实上，机器已经在做一些传统上由医生完成的工作 —— 例如，扫描人们的身体以检测皮肤癌。
Neil(尼尔)
Yes, that’s true, Sam, and it links to my quiz question which is about human skin. It’s a well-known fact that skin is the human body’s largest organ – but how much skin does the average adult have? Is it: a) 2 square metres?; b) 3 square metres? or, c) 4 square metres?
OK, we’ll find out if that’s correct later. Every year in the UK over 5 million people are treated for skin cancer. Catch it early and your chances of survival are increased.
Usually a skin specialist, or dermatologist, will examine your skin using a handheld microscope. But in 2017, a team of researchers at Stanford Medical School made an exciting announcement.
A team of researchers at Stamford last year announced the development of a system that, if you give it a photo of a freckle it can tell you as accurately as twenty-one leading dermatologists whether or not that freckle is cancerous.
As it turned out the AI programme was better than human doctors at telling whether a freckle was harmless or cancerous – connected to some type of cancer.
事实证明，人工智能节目比人类医生更能判断雀斑是无害的还是癌性的 —— 与某种类型的癌症有关。
Sam(山姆)
So, it seems that artificial intelligence is already replacing humans when it comes to detecting cancer – and doing a better job of it.
因此，在检测癌症方面，人工智能似乎已经取代了人类，并且做得更好。
Neil(尼尔)
But Daniel Susskind isn’t convinced. One reason is that AI systems still need humans to programme them – and as it turns out, knowing exactly how doctors detect illness remains something of a mystery.
Here’s Daniel Susskind again in conversation with BBC World Service programme, The Big Idea:
以下是丹尼尔·萨斯金德再次与BBC世界服务节目“大创意”的对话：
Daniel Susskind(丹尼尔·萨斯金德)
If you ask a doctor how it is they make a diagnosis, they might be able to point you to particularly revealing parts of a reference book or give you a few rules of thumb, but ultimately they’d struggle… they’d say again it requires things like creativity and judgment, and these things are very difficult to articulate – and so traditionally it’s been thought very hard to automate – if a human being can’t explain how they do these special things, where on earth do we begin in writing instructions for a machine to follow?
Most doctors find it difficult to explain how they make a diagnosis – their judgement about what someone’s particular sickness is, made by examining them.
大多数医生发现很难解释他们是如何做出诊断的 —— 他们通过检查来判断某人的特定疾病是什么。
Sam(山姆)
Diagnosing someone’s illness is complicated but there are some rules of thumb. A rule of thumb is a practical but approximate way of doing something.
诊断某人的疾病很复杂，但有一些经验法则。经验法则是一种实用但近似的做某事的方式。
Neil(尼尔)
For example, when cooking, a good rule of thumb is two portions to water to one portion of rice.
例如，烹饪时，一个好的经验法则是将两份水浇在一份米饭中。
Sam(山姆)
Exactly. And because identifying sickness is so difficult, Daniel says “where on earth do we begin writing instructions for a machine?” We use phrases like where, how or what on earth to show feelings like anger, surprise or disbelief.
I might show surprise by asking Sam, ‘how on earth did you know the answer to that?’.
我可能会惊讶地问山姆，“你到底是怎么知道这个问题的答案的？
Sam(山姆)
Ha ha! I guess you’re talking about your quiz question, Neil? And you needn’t be surprised – I’m naturally brainy!
哈哈！我猜你说的是你的测验问题，尼尔？你不必感到惊讶 —— 我天生聪明！
Neil(尼尔)
Of course you are. In my quiz question I asked Sam how much skin there is on an adult human body.
你当然是。在我的测验问题中，我问山姆成年人身上有多少皮肤。
Sam(山姆)
And I said it was a) 2 square metres.
我说是 a） 2 平方米。
Neil(尼尔)
Which was… the correct answer! With your brains I think you’d make a good doctor, Sam, and I’m sure you’d have a good bedside manner too.
这是...正确答案！以你的大脑，我想你会成为一名好医生，山姆，我相信你也会有很好的床边态度。
Sam(山姆)
You mean, the kind and caring way that doctors and nurses treat their patients. OK, let’s recap the rest of the vocabulary, starting with freckle – a small brown spot on someone’s skin.
That’s all for this programme but join us for the next edition of 6 Minute English when we’ll discuss another trending topic and the related vocabulary.
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