CAT 2024 Slot 1 — VARC Question 23
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
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?
There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: This reality is putting stress on employees who have to pay for transport, desk lunches, more childcare, clothing and that after-work socialisation – costs they haven’t incurred for nearly two years.
Paragraph: ___(1)___. Prices are rising at their fastest rate in 40 years, consequently, return-to-office-related costs have shot up – think petrol and food, for instance. ___(2)___. Yet wages haven’t kept up with inflation – even despite the salary growth many workers have enjoyed during a favourable pandemic labour market. ___(3)___. This is especially jarring for workers who were able to save during remote work, when these expenditures weren’t a factor. ___(4)___. In April 2022, Umus, a London university lecturer, told BBC Worklife that they were spending nearly a quarter of what they made every day on return-to-work costs.
Answer & solution
- A
Option 1
- B
Option 4
- C
Option 2
Option 3
Medium
The missing sentence says "This reality is putting stress on employees who have to pay for transport, desk lunches, childcare, clothing and after-work socialisation—costs they haven't incurred for nearly two years." It needs (a) a preceding "reality" for "This reality" to point to, and (b) a following line that builds on the new return-to-office expenditure.
Option 1. Gap (1) is the paragraph opener, with nothing before it for "This reality" to refer back to. The sentence's demonstrative would be left dangling. Reject.
Option 2. Gap (2) sits between the rise of return-to-office costs and "Yet wages haven't kept up with inflation". Inserting the stress-on-employees sentence here pre-empts the wage point and breaks the cost-then-wage contrast. Reject.
Option 3. Gap (3) follows "wages haven't kept up with inflation" and precedes "This is especially jarring for workers who were able to save during remote work, when these expenditures weren't a factor." The fit is exact: the missing sentence names the new "expenditures… they haven't incurred for nearly two years", and the next line picks up "these expenditures… weren't a factor" during remote work. "This reality" also captures the rising-costs-but-flat-wages situation just described. Accept.
Option 4. Gap (4) comes just before the concrete BBC example of the London lecturer. Placing the general "stress on employees" sentence here would orphan the "these expenditures" link in the line before gap (4) and sever the lead-in to the example. Reject.
Option 3. The missing sentence introduces the new return-to-office "expenditures", which the very next line refers back to as "these expenditures… weren't a factor" during remote work.