The world of live action role-playing

For many people, the days of playing make-believe (假扮) ended in childhood. But for some, the game of make-believe lives on in Live Action Role-Playing, or LARP. This is a game where people act out characters in a(n)     1     plot. A gamemaster creates the plot and then puts together an event where people     2     the story. Those who find a particular plot interesting sign up for the event. Then the gamemaster, or the players themselves, make up their characters for the story. At the event, each person comes in costume and behaves as their character.

Although pretty much anything goes in LARP, nearly every event involves players completing a(n)     3     together. A gamemaster writes a goal into the plot and usually prepares challenges for the players. For example, a character may hold up the mission, making it hard to     4     the goal. LARP events can be as long as the gamemasters want them to be. They can last anywhere from a few hours to several days.

The genius of LARP is that each event can be any kind of story. The most     5     ones come from fantasy, historical, horror or science fiction genres (体裁). With such a variety of story types, LARP attracts all kinds of people. Some players enjoy LARP as a(n)     6     to practice creating or costume-making. Other players enjoy the challenge of going into different worlds and using their brains to solve puzzles. There are also those who simply want to have fun and make friends.

One     7     LARP players have is coming out of their LARP experiences and returning to the real world. This is especially common after a long event. Most players experience a “bleed,” which describes parts of their LARP experience     8     into their everyday life. Since all the senses — seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting — are at work,     9     becomes difficult. However, researchers agree that the overall effects of LARP are     10    . People of different backgrounds come together to grow their skills, play and express creativity.

3 . Facing AI extinction

In a recent White House press conference, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre couldn’t suppress her laughter at the question: Is it “crazy” to worry that “literally everyone on Earth will die” due to artificial intelligence? _________, the answer is no.

While AI pioneer such as Alan Turing cautioned that we should expect “machines to take control”, many contemporary researchers _________ this concern. In an area of unprecedented growth in AI abilities, why aren’t more expects weighing in?

Before the deep-learning revolution in 2012, I didn’t think human-level AI would emerge in my lifetime. I was familiar with arguments that AI systems would insatiably seek power and resist shutdown — and obvious _________ to humanity if it were to occur. But I also figured researchers must have good reasons not to be worried about human _________ risk (x-risk) from AI.

Yet after 10 years in the field, I believe the main reasons are actually cultural and historical. By 2012, after several hype cycles that didn’t pan out, most AI researchers had stopped asking ‘what if we succeed at replicating human intelligence’, _________ their ambitions to specific tasks like autonomous driving.

When concerns resurfaced outside their community, researchers were to quick to dismiss outsiders as _________ and their worries as science fiction. But in my experience, AI researchers are themselves often ignorant of arguments for AI x-risk.

One basic argument is by analogy: humans’ _________ abilities allowed us to out-compete other species for resources, leading to many extinctions. AI systems could likewise deprive us of the resources we need for our survival. Less _________, AI could displace humans economically and, through its powers of manipulation, politically.

But wouldn’t it be humans wielding AIs as tools who end up in control? Not necessarily. Many people might choose to deploy a system with a 99 per cent chance of making them phenomenally rich and powerful, even if it had a 1 per cent chance of _________ their control and killing everyone.

Because no safe experiment can definitively tell us whether an AI system will actually kill everyone, such concerns are often dismissed as unscientific. But this isn’t an excuse for ignoring the risk. It just means society needs to reason about it in the same way as other complex social issues. Researchers also emphasize the difficulty of predicting when AI might _________ human intelligence, but this is an argument for caution, not complacency.

Attitudes are changing, but not quickly enough. AI x-risk is admittedly more _________ than important social issues with present-day AI, like bias and misinformation, but the basic solution is the same: regulation. A robust public discussion is long overdue. By refusing to engage, some AI researchers are neglecting _________ responsibilities and betraying public trust.

Big tech sponsors AI ethics research when it doesn’t hurt the bottom line. But it is also lobbying to exclude general-purpose AI from E. U. regulation. Concerned researchers recently called for a(n) _________ in developing bigger AI models to allow society to catch up. Critics say this isn’t politically realistic, but problems like AI x-risk won’t _________ just because they are politically inconvenient.

This brings us to the ugliest reason researchers may dismiss AI x-risk: funding. Essentially every researcher (myself included) has received funding from big tech. At some point, society may stop believing reassurances from people with such strong conflicts of _________ and conclude, as I have, that their dismissal betrays wishful thinking rather than good counterarguments.

Even Very Young Children Can Be Depressed

If you doubted it, I would introduce you to Susan, who came to my office and talked constantly about her “bad feeling”. Susan     1     (lose) interest in her favorite activities, stopped playing with her friends, and told her parents that she wanted to be dead. She’d spent more time in the school nurse’s office than in her classroom.

Susan was six years old and     2     (suffer) from depression. Proper treatment helped Susan recover. Without it, she might still be an unhappy child, alone and in pain.

The risk for depression does tend to increase as we grow older. Depression in young children is rare but real. Rene Spitz, a     3     (note) psychological researcher, found that infants who were in an institutional orphanage after World War II refused to eat and eventually died     4     they weren’t held by their caretakers. Children have an innate need     5     (hold) and comforted. If those needs aren’t met, then even very young children can fail to thrive and may become sick and die.

Approximately 1% of preschoolers experience depression; they often have great difficulty expressing their feelings, because not all of their language skills     6     (develop) sufficiently. Instead of expressing their feelings in language, the depressed preschool children are likely to show emotions by exhibiting significantly aggressive, fearful, or crying behavior.     7     most preschool children may get angry if they’re hungry, sleepy, afraid     8     their parents go away, or fail to get Daddy to buy them the latest toys, these behaviors are often carried to extremes of intensity and frequency in depressed children.

Although a diagnosis of clinical depression is rare in preschool children, there are times when it is appropriate. In most cases, the child who     9     (experience) significant frustrations resulting from the death or absence of a parent, has witnessed or been victims of violence, or has had a significant health problem     10     has interrupted normal emotional or physical development. I find preschool children to be more resilient (适应力强的) than older children in dealing with these events, as long as they have a supportive parent and receive timely treatment.