【推荐1】Ever since the beginning of artificial intelligence (AI), people have feared that it will one day take over the world.     1     After all, the BBC estimates that up to 20 million factory jobs will be replaced with machines by 2030, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that in Europe, 1,000 people’s jobs had been replaced by just one robot.

However, the truth is that AI is not taking over our society. While AI may be able to take over some jobs in different industries, it cannot completely replace people.     2    

AI cannot feel emotions. While AI may be able to deal with issues in a humanlike way, it is not able to feel emotions like sympathy (同情) or understanding.     3    

AI cannot invent something new. It can follow a set of guidelines and rules while simulating humanoid intelligence, but it cannot really create something.     4     But the way that AI creates poetry is by adding existing poems to its database and then trying to write lines that match the poem’s style.

    5     The importance of human contact can be seen through numbers. According to Forbes, 55% of customers prefer speaking to a human rather than a robot and 73% press “0” and speak with an operator when faced with a phone tree, which is a type of robocall where you press numbers to reach different services.

All in all, AI will not replace us in the future and will always need people to continue to function.

【推荐2】From teenage to adulthood, you go through a basket of changes—graduation, jobs and relationships that come and go. But as you grow older, does your personality change?

People tend to think of personality as fixed. But that is not how it works. “Personality is a developmental phenomenon instead of something that you’re stuck with and can’t get over,” said Brent Roberts, a psychologist at the University of Illinois.

Roberts and other researchers have surveyed the personalities of participants regularly over many years, showing that our personality is actually stable within each decade of life. You don’t notice it on a 1-to-5-yeartime range, but in the long term, it becomes pronounced(显著的).

In 1960, psychologists surveyed over 440,000 high school students who answered questions about everything from how they reacted to emotional situations to how efficiently they got work done. Fifty years later, researchers tracked down 1,952 of these students and gave them the same survey. The results found that in their 60s, participants scored much higher than they did as teenagers on questions measuring calmness, self-confidence, leadership and social sensitivity(敏感度).

Over again, studies have found similar results. Personality tends to get “better” over time. Psychologists name it “the maturity principle(成熟定律)”. People become more extroverted(外向), emotionally stable, agreeable and gentle as they grow older. In general, “the maturity principle” applies to most people.

So what causes the change? Evidence suggests it’s not dramatic life events, such as marriage, the birth of a child or loss of a loved one. Instead, changing expectations placed on us—as we adjust to university, the work force, starting a family—slowly wear us in, almost like a pair of shoes, Roberts said. “Over time, you are asked to do things differently and thus learn how to behave in these situations.” So we adapt.

【推荐3】Climate change is causing more areas to turn into deserts. This issue is affecting the lives of 250 million people as land that used to be good for farming becomes dry and unproductive. Around one-third of the world’s land is impacted, including regions in Africa, southern Europe, Asia and America.

Sand to Green is a Moroccan company that can transform a patch of desert into a sustainable (可持续的) and profitable plantation in five years, according to Wissal Ben Moussa, its co-founder and chief agricultural officer. The solution is using agroforestry (农林业)to create a new kind of agriculture that is sustainable and that can be resilient (有适应力的) in front of climate change.

The system can be set up close to any source of salty water, which Sand to Green cleans using energy from the sun. It then grows different types of fruit trees and plants together in the same area—a method called mixed planting—and waters the plants’ roots directly with the cleaned water, to reduce water loss to the air. The soil is regenerated using what Sand to Green calls “green manure”, a mixture that includes compost, biochar(生物炭)and microorganisms that help the soil “wake up”. Biochar is a form of charcoal that can help dry soil hold on to water.

In a five-hectare trial in southern Morocco that’s been running since 2017, Sand to Green has tried out a variety of plants in search of the best performers. Among the intercropping herbs (草本植物) that have been successfully trialed are rosemary, geranium, vetiver and citronella, which Ben Moussa describes as “very low-maintenance and very high-profit”.

Sand to Green is now working to scale up to a 20-hectare commercial site, also in southern Morocco. It says a site of that size would cost around $475,000 to set up and would start bringing financial returns in about five years.

According to Ben Moussa, with this system they create biodiversity, which means better soil, healthier crops and a bigger yield. The plantation can generate 1.5 times more yield, thus making more money than a farm that grows only one type of crop in the same space.