【推荐3】A robot with a sense of touch may one day feel “pain”, both its own physical pain and sympathy for the pain of its human companions. Such touchy-feely robots are still far off, but advances in robotic touch-sensing are bringing that possibility closer to reality.

Sensors set in soft, artificial skin that can detect both a gentle touch and a painful strike have been hooked up to a robot that can then signal emotions, Asada reported February 15 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This artificial “pain nervous system,” as Asada calls it, may be a small building block for a machine that could ultimately experience pain. Such a feeling might also allow a robot to “sympathize” with a human companion’s suffering.

Asada, an engineer at Osaka University, and his colleagues have designed touch sensors that reliably pick up a range of touches. In a robot system named Affetto, a realistic looking child’s head, these touch and pain signals can be converted to emotional facial expressions.

A touch-sensitive, soft material, as opposed to a rigid metal surface, allows richer interactions between a machine and the world, says neuroscientist Kingson Man of the University of Southern California. Artificial skin “allows the possibility of engagement in truly intelligent ways”.

Such a system, Asada says, might ultimately lead to robots that can recognize the pain of others, a valuable skill for robots designed to help care for people in need, the elderly, for instance.

But there is an important distinction between a robot that responds in a predictable way to a painful strike and a robot that’s able to compute an internal feeling accurately, says Damasio, a neuroscientist also at the University of Southern California. A robot with sensors that can detect touch and pain is “along the lines of having a robot, for example, that smiles when you talk to it,” Damasio says. ‘It’s a device for communication of the machine to a human.” While that’s an interesting development, “it’s not the same thing” as a robot designed to compute some sort of internal experience, he says.

【推荐1】Artificial Intelligence Develops an Ear for Birdsong

We can learn a lot from nature if we listen to it more — and scientists around the world are trying to do just that. From mountain peaks to ocean depths, biologists are planting audio recorders to eavesdrop (窃听) on the whistles and songs of whales, elephants, bats and especially birds. This summer, for example, over 2,000 electronic ears will record the sound scape of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range.     1    

“Audio data is a real treasure because it contains vast amounts of information,” says ecologist Connor Wood, a Cornell University postdoctoral researcher, who is leading the Sierra Nevada project. “We just need to think creatively about how to share and access that information.”     2     Fortunately the latest generation of machine-learning AI systems can process thousands of hours of data in less than a day.

Stefan Kahl, a machine-learning expert at Cornell’s Center for Conservation Bioacoustics and Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany, built BirdNET, one of the most popular avian-sound-recognition systems used today. Wood’s team will rely on BirdNET to analyze the Sierra Nevada recordings.     3     The neural network then teaches itself which features can be used to associate an input (in this case, a bird’s call) with a label (the bird’s identity).

    4     Although they analyze audio much more quickly than humans, they still lag behind in filtering out overlapping sounds to home in on a signal of interest. Some researchers see this as the next problem for AI to tackle. Even the current imperfect versions, however, enable sweeping projects that would be far too time-consuming for humans to tackle alone. “As ecologists,” Wood says, “tools like BirdNET allow us to dream big.”

【推荐2】The term “metaverse (元宇宙)” is the latest popular word to catch the tech industry’s imagination. Neal Stephenson coined this term in his novel Snow Crash:“In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the metaverse. Hiro spends a lot of time in the metaverse.” In its current meaning, it generally refers to the concept of a world of endless, interconnected virtual communities where people gather to socialize, play and work, using VR headsets, AR glasses, smartphone apps or other devices. It is a “virtual environment” you can go inside of — instead of just looking at on a screen. It also could be a game-changer for the work-from-home shift during the COVID-19 epidemic. Instead of seeing co-workers on a video call, employees could join them in a virtual office.

A big reason why metaverse is popular with young people is the more real gaming experience.Gamers will feel that they themselves are playing in an alternate world rather than controlling a game character.This creates a real-time experience for all the players.

In addition, it has more far-reaching significance. Some advocates believe that blockchain (区域链) technology and decentralized (分散式的) apps will be the keys to unlocking the next big step forward for the Web: the metaverse, a place where AR, VR, next-generation data networks and decentralized financing and payment systems contribute to a more realistic digital world where people can socialize, work and trade digital goods. It is known that many products need to be tested and it costs a lot. With metaverse, the variables and environment can be changed within the digital world to obtain more comprehensive results and the new product will be tested with minimum cost. In the medical field, using metaverse patients just do not have any need to visit doctors physically. They can just interact with them face to face in real-time in the digital world. Additionally, the newcomer to medicine can learn and practice inside the alternate world by gaining experience before they can take on real-world tasks.

Metaverse brings many new and advanced technologies such as VR headsets, blockchain and other requirements. However, every individual on this planet does not have access to advanced technologies. For example, fast Internet connectivity is one of the mandatory (强制性的) requirements for participating in the metaverse. Majority of people worldwide cannot access fast Internet and cannot capitalize on the full potential of the metaverse. Furthermore, with the objective of introducing immersive experiences to users, the metaverse makes the gap between real and virtual worlds less clear. It also brings the possibilities of influencing the ways in which people perceive real relationships and interactions.

Despite the arguing, metaverse is a new windfall for the future development of the Internet. The companies can seize the opportunity that the metaverse presents to connect with audiences in ways that were never possible before and provide exciting and memorable brand experiences.