1 . Artificial intelligence (AI) plays an important role in the Asian Games Hangzhou 2022 and Asian Para Games. AI usually refers to the advanced technologies, such as the naked-eye 3D, VR, AR and so on. These terms might sound familiar, but how smart are they when applied to the 56 Asian Games venues (场地)?

Their smartness can be found in running the venues with less human labor forces and with more connections between man and machines. At the Huanglong Sports Center, a system called Smart Stadium Brain is 1debuilt. The Brain, a 25-square-meter high-definition screen in the venue’s information center, displays the entire venue in 3D visualization to keep an eye on the temperature, the lighting, the energy consumption, and the facilities to ensure a friendly environment for the athletes and audiences. For the benefit of audiences, a small screen on each seat is designed to be at the audience’s service. By finger touching, the audience can control it from three parts—angle, speed, and size to watch and keep contact with the event. What’s more, supported by the 5G technology, a 360° playback function is fixed.   

AI also means further protection on environment. At the Fuyang sports Center, although it has been raining for days, the roof of the venue still remains dry. And the secret lies in its attractive sky garden. The garden, covering the roof, is not only eye-catching but also useful. It allows the greening rate of the entire stadium to reach as high as 45%, being energy-saving. Under the cobblestones (鹅卵石) of the sky garden, a recovery system is filtering (过滤) and collecting rainwater for the venue’s water system, fountain, and irrigation water.

Smart devices are employed both inside and outside the venues. For example, the Tonglu sports Center starts a WeChat mini-program for any follower to learn about the venue through VR games and videos before the Hangzhou Asian Games. During the Games, the program will allow the athletes and audiences to place orders online, waiting in the venue for a robot waiter to deliver and serve their food.

2 . Is future you? It might seem like a strange philosophical question. But the answer to how you think about your future self could make the difference between decisions you ultimately find satisfying and ones you might eventually regret.

The brain patterns that emerge on an MRI (核磁共振成像) when people think about their future selves most like the brain patterns that arise when they think about strangers. This finding suggests that, in the mind’s eye, our future selves look like other people. If you see future you as a different person, why should you save money, eat healthier or exercise more regularly to benefit that stranger?

However, if you see the interests of your distant self as more like those of your present self, you are considerably more likely to do things today that benefit you tomorrow. A paper in the journal PLoS One revealed that college students who experienced a greater sense of connection and similarity to their future selves were more likely to achieve academic success. Relationships with our future selves also matter for general psychological well-being. In a project led by Joseph Reiff, which includes 5, 000 adults aged 20 to 75, he found that those who perceived a great overlap (重叠) in qualities between their current and future selves ended up being more satisfied with their lives 10 years after filling out the initial survey.     

So how can we better befriend our future selves and feel more connected to their fates? The psychological mindset with what we call ”vividness interventions“ works. We have found, for instance, that showing people images of their older, grayer selves increases intentions to save for the long term. Besides, you might try writing a letter to-and then from-your future self. As demonstrated by Yuta Chishima and Anne Wilson in their 2020 study in the journal Self and Identity, when high-school students engaged in this type of ”send-and-reply“ exercise, they experienced elevated (升高的) levels of feelings of similarity with their future selves.

Letter-writing and visualization exercises are just a couple of ways we can connect with our future selves and beyond, but the larger lesson here is clear: If we can treat our distant selves as if they are people we love, care about and want to support, we can start making choices for them that improve our lives-both today and tomorrow.

4 . A Swiss radio station recently, carried out a social experiment on air, testing robot-created voices and content. The 13-hour experiment took place at the French language. station Couleur3. During the period, listeners heard the cloned voices of five human presenters. The station s programming also included music created by artificial intelligence ( AI) methods. The programming informed listeners about the experiment every 20 minutes. “AI is taking your favorite radio by storm,” a voice said. “Our voice clones and AI are here to unsettle, surprise and shake you. And for that matter, this text was also written by a robot.”

Recent AI developments have led to the creation of a series of tools that permit robots to lead different human activities. These tools belong to a group of systems known as “generative AI”. The tools use machine learning methods to train AI systems on huge amounts of data to produce human-quality results. One of the most highly publicized “generative AI” tools received wide attention by showing the ability to quickly produce written answers to questions at a level and quality similar to humans. However, the development of “generative AI” systems has led to some criticism of the technology. Critics have alerted people to the dangers of such systems. They say if used incorrectly, the systems can have economic, cultural and social harms.

The Swiss station’s chief, Antoine Multone, defended the project as a lesson on how to live with AI. Antoine said if we became ostriches(鸵鸟), we would put our heads in the sand, blindly worrying about the new technology. He thought when AI was coming, we should study the technology, so we could then properly put limits on it. He added that about90 percent of the listener reactions suggested the experiment was a good idea. But many said they found the human element missing and noted, “You can sense these are robots, and there are fewer surprises, less personality

China’s “Cultural and Natural Heritage Day" falls on the second Saturday of June every year. Many celebrations are held, and all cultural relic protection sites are _______ to open free to the public on the day. There is no_________ that various celebrating activities across the country will arouse public _________of the importance of cultural heritage protection and _________the young people to love the fine_________ culture of the motherland.

China faces a heavy task in protecting and rescuing its cultural_______. We need to seriously consider the _________ of the lack of awareness about cultural heritage protection. Thus, Heritage Education is one of our main approaches. People cannot _________ value cultural heritage if they do not know why it is important or how to protect it. Over the past seven years, CHP has _________ over a hundred educational __________ to various groups, such as schools, government offices, and the general public. Many people have attended CHP seminars. Typically, each seminar lasts two or three hours and __________ of an informative presentation, __________by a longer question-and-answer session and discussion. Attendees with __________ knowledge of cultural heritage __________ it to be just the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. People often think that the duty only __________ to the government. So “Cultural and Natural Heritage Day” will be a welcome opportunity to educate the public on world heritage conservation.

7 . Liu Jichen, 23, a student from Tsinghua University, has developed a WeChat mini-program called “Clear Your Plate”. After a meal, users can open the mini-program and take a picture of their empty plates. Once the image is recognized by the AI(Artificial Intelligence), students can collect points and use them to buy gifts or purchase charity meals to children in impoverished(贫困的) rural areas.

Liu and his team, together with other organizations, launched the “Clear Your Plate” campaign in November for the third year. It has swept over 1,017 universities across the country. The one-month campaign attracted almost 1.6 million participants and collectively reduced food waste by 862 tons and carbon emissions(碳排放) by 3,337 tons.

“Technological innovation is a good way to reduce food waste,” Liu thought. He organized a team of 20 members to work on the project at the end of 2017. To solve the AI’s problem of identifying photos of empty plates, the team spent half a year collecting over 100,000 samples in canteens and restaurants. In 2018, the mini-program was officially put into operation on Oct 16, World Food Day. They then launched a campaign later that year.

“There were so many unknowns in research and development. For our team members, the biggest challenge was whether we were confident enough to complete it,” Liu said. They not only achieved their goal, but now, the mini-program has more than 5 million registered users, according to Liu. “We hope our efforts can start a new trend among the younger generation by encouraging them to cherish(珍惜) their food and develop the habit of thrift(节约),” Liu added.

8 . The expression, “Everybody’s doing it,” is very much at the center of the concept of peer pressure. It is a social influence applied on an individual in order to get that person to act or believe in a(n) ______ way as a larger group. This influence can be negative or positive, and can exist in both large and small groups.

People are social creatures by nature, and so it is hardly ______ that some part of their self-respect comes from the approval of others. This instinct explains why the approval of peers, and the fear of ______, is such a powerful force in many people’s lives. This instinct drives people to dress one way at home and another way at work, or to answer a simple “fine” when a stranger asks “How are you?” even if it is not necessarily true. There is a(n) ______ aspect to this: It helps society to function efficiently, and encourages a general level of self-discipline that ______ day-to-day interaction between people.

For certain individuals, seeking social acceptance is so important that it becomes a(n) ______: in order to satisfy the desire, they may go so far as to ______ their sense of right and wrong. Teens and young adults may feel forced to use drugs, or join gangs that _______criminal behavior. Mature adults may sometimes feel ______ to cover up illegal activity at the company where they work, or end up in debt because they are unable to hold back the desire to buy a house or car that they can’t afford in an effort to ______ the peers.

However, peer pressure is not always negative. A student whose friends are good at contests may be ________ to work harder and get good grades. Players on a sports team may feel driven to play harder in order to help the team win. This type of ______ can also get a friend off drugs, or to help an adult take up a good habit or drop a bad one.

Although peer pressure is sometimes quite obvious, it can also be so ______ that a person may not even notice that it is affecting his or her behavior. For this reason, when making important decisions, simply going with a(n) ______ is risky. Instead, people should seriously consider why they feel drawn to taking a particular action, and whether the real ______ is simply that everyone else is doing the same thing.