【推荐2】Given how valuable intelligence and automation are, we will continue to improve our technology if we are at all able to. At a certain point, we will build machines that are smarter than we are. Once we have machines that are smarter than we are, they will begin to improve themselves. The concern is really that we will build machines that are much more competent than we are. And the slightest divergence (分歧) between their goals and our own could destroy us.

Just think about how we relate to ants. We don’t hate them. We don’t go out of our way to harm them. In fact, sometimes we take pains not to harm them. We step over them on the sidewalk. But whenever their presence seriously conflicts with one of our goals, we will kill them without hesitation. The concern is that we will one day build machines that, whether they’re conscious or not, could treat us with similar disregard.

The bare fact is that we will continue to improve our intelligent machines. We have problems that we desperately need to solve. So we will do this, if we can. The train is already out of the station, and there’s no brake to pull. If we build machines that are more intelligent than we are, they will very likely develop in ways that we can’t imagine, and transcend us in ways that we can’t imagine.

So imagine we hit upon a design of super intelligent AI that has no safety concerns. This machine would be the perfect labor-saving device. It can design the machine that can build the machine which can do any physical work, powered by sunlight, more or less for the cost of raw materials. So we’re talking bout the end of human labour. We’re also talking about the end of most intellectual work. So what would apes like ourselves do in these circumstances?

But the moment we admit that information processing is the source of intelligence, we have to admit that we are in the process of building some sort of god. Now would be a good time to make sure it’s a god we can live with.

【推荐1】Do you need a human to create a beautiful scent (气味)? That’s the question being asked as artificial intelligence (AI) starts to enter the perfume(香水) industry.

Companies are increasingly turning to technology in order to create more bestselling, unique fragrances that can be produced in just minutes. Last year, Swiss-based fragrance developer Givaudan Fragrances launched Carto, an artificial intelligence-powered tool to help perfumers(调香师). Through machine learning (a way computers improve outcomes automatically by learning from past results) Carto can suggest combinations of ingredients.

Using a touch screen, the perfumer can pull together different scents using data from the brand’s vast library of fragrance formulas (配方) — a much more efficient process than using traditional forms. A small robot immediately processes the fragrances into perfumes, making it easier for perfumers to test their new scents.

German fragrance house Symrise has gone one step further and teamed up with IBM Research to create an AI called Philyra. Like Carto, Philyra can’t actually sniff anything. But it is not designed to replace perfumers.

“It’s machine-learning and sometimes the results have been wrong,” says Claire Viola, vice president of digital strategy fragrance at Symrise. “It’s still a project, the more we test, the more it continues to improve. It constantly needs training.”

【推荐2】Almost 80% of the Americans have stated their opposition to cloning pet animals such as cats and dogs, yet companies still try to make a business out of selling cloned pets. Pet cloning has been promoted as a way to “bring back” or “copy” a beloved companion animal. However, studies have shown that cloning remains an experimental technology with many failures.

Behind each lovely picture of a cloned cat or dog lie hundreds of animals that were kept in lab cages, receiving bad treatment to produce just that one cloned animal. For all that, you end up with a cloned animal who is unlikely to appear like the original physically or behaviorally and may experience serious health problems. Also, while pet cloning companies are charging customers up to $150,000 for a cloned pet, millions of homeless animals of the same species are available in US animal shelters for around $100. Unfortunately, most of these animals are killed for lack of adopting homes.

With No Pet Cloning campaign, the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) tries to protect both animals and people from harm. They campaigned until the US companies that sold cloned animals closed their doors. First it was Genetic Savings & Clone Inc. and then it was BioArts International.

When BioArts was closed, its owner, Lou Hawthorne, finally had to acknowledge the problems of pet cloning. According to Hawthorne, he has seen numerous failures during his pet cloning attempts, “One clone—which was supposed to be black and white—was born greenish-yellow where it should have been white (we still have no good explanation for how that happened).”

The AAVS is educating the public about the animal suffering and is seeking regulation of cloning activities. They will continue to take the lead in protecting animals from the threats of pet cloning.

【推荐3】There’s a new frontier in 3D printing that’s beginning to come into focus: food. Recent development has made possible machines that print, cook, and serve foods on a mass scale. And the industry isn’t stopping there.

With a 3D printer, a cook can print complicated chocolate sculptures and beautiful pieces for decoration on a wedding cake. Not everybody can do that — it takes years of experience, but a printer makes it easy. A restaurant in Spain uses a Foodini to “re-create forms and pieces” of food that are “exactly the same”, freeing cooks to complete other tasks. In another restaurant, all of the dishes and desserts it serves are 3D-printed, rather than farm to table.

The global population is expected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2050, and some analysts estimate that food production will need to be raised by 50 percent to maintain current levels. Sustainability is becoming a necessity. 3D food printing could probably contribute to the solution. Some experts believe printers could use hydrocolloids (水解胶体) from plentiful renewables like algae (藻类) and grass to replace the familiar ingredients (烹饪原料). 3D printing can reduce fuel use and emissions. Grocery stores of the future might stock “food” that lasts years on end, freeing up shelf space and reducing transportation and storage requirements.

Future 3D food printers could make processed food healthier. Hod Lipson, a professor at Columbia University, said, “Food printing could allow consumers to print food with customized nutritional content like vitamins. So instead of eating a piece of yesterdays bread from the supermarket, you’d eat something baked just for you on demand.”

Despite recent advancements in 3D food printing, the industry has many challenges to overcome. Currently, most ingredients must be changed to a paste (糊状物) before a printer can use them, and the printing process is quite time-consuming, because ingredients interact with each other in very complex ways. On top of that, most of the 3D food printers now are restricted to dry ingredients, because meat and milk products may easily go bad. Some experts are skeptical about 3D food printers, believing they are better suited for fast food restaurants than homes and high-end restaurants.

【推荐3】On a bright summer morning, many young swimmers gather at a local swimming pool in the state of Maryland. They are members of a competitive summer swim team. As they practice their strokes and cut seconds off of their times, they are getting lots of physical exercise and vitamin D from the sun. However, the benefits of belonging to a sports team are not just health-related. Team sports also help to build many life skills.

The coach of the swim team is Paul Waas. He explains how swim team teaches the team members skills like discipline (纪律) and focus. “I think the discipline comes into play when you’re talking about focusing on the details that your coaches are saying as it makes you faster rather than just going up and down the pool the same way you have every time. So, when you can focus on what you’re doing right and what you can do better, then you’ll see the improvement. I think they see that from their peers and then it challenges them to do better themselves.”

But discipline and focus are just two of the life skills that team sports can teach. There is also responsibility, goal-setting and working within a group.

Again, here is Coach Waas. “I’ve had kids who, as 7-year-olds on the team, could barely pay attention in practice and were only interested in who was going first. And now they’ve come back as 8-year-olds and they’ve set some goals. And now they have things that they want to achieve. They see the record board and they want their name up there.”

These life skills can help a child later in life. An article published in the magazine Fast Company notes reasons why a company should consider employing former athletes. The writers argue that people who played sports in school are: focused on goals, strong communicators, team players, good at managing their time, and resilient-meaning they do not give up when things get difficult.

Some studies have found that team sports could be especially good for women. A series of studies by the company Ernst Young found that 90 percent of women in so-called “C-suite” positions (like chief executive officer, or CEO and chief financial officer, or CFO) at several major companies had played sports.