A United Nations report warns that technology in classrooms may not help as much as many believe. The report suggests that technology should be used less in schools, and that smartphones should be banned (禁止) from classrooms.

The goal of the report was to improve how technology is used in education. The report says that technology can be helpful, but it shouldn’t be the focus. Instead, technology should be used to support learning.

UNESCO says that technology changes so fast that it’s hard to study how it really affects students. Many of the studies showing that technology helps students come from rich countries.

The report also points out that some of the studies in favor of technology come from companies that sell technology to schools. UNESCO agrees that technology can help in many ways. It can allow students to learn in ways that are more interesting; it can help teachers explain difficult ideas; it can also help students who have special needs. But UNESCO says technology can also be very distracting (使人分心的). When students use phones in class, it can disturb their learning. One study that was carried out in 14 countries showed that even just having a smartphone nearby can be distracting. Even so, UNESCO says that less than 25% of the world’s countries ban phones in schools.

“We need to teach children to live both with and without technology,” said John Smith, the director behind the UNESCO report. The report suggests that the best way to learn is still to work closely with teachers. Working with other classmates also helps students learn. UNESCO says that most schools should spend more money on things like books, classrooms, and teachers.

Artificial intelligence (Al) technology may soon be a useful tool for doctors. It may help them better understand and treat diseases like breast cancer(癌症)in ways that were never before possible.

Rishi Rawat teaches Al at the University of Southern California's (USC) Clinical Science Center in Los Angeles. He is part of a team of scientists who are researching how Al and machine learning can more easily recognize cancerous growths in the breast. Rawat provides information about cancer cells to a computer. He says this data helps the machine learn."…You can put the data into them and they will learn the patterns and the pattern recognition. That's important to make decisions.”

David Agus is another USC researcher. He believes that "machines are not going to take the place of doctors." Computers will not treat patients, but they will help make certain decisions and look for things that the human brain can't recognize these patterns by itself." Once a confirmed cancerous growth is removed, doctors still have to treat the patient to reduce the risk of cancer returning. The form of treatment depends on the kind of cancer. Currently, researchers take a thin piece of tissue (动植物细胞的组织)，put it on a small piece of glass and add color to better see the cells .

That process could take days or even longer. Scientists say Al can do something better than just count cells. Through machine learning, it can recognize complex patterns or structures, and learn how the cells are organized. The hope is that machines will soon be able to make a quick identification of cancer that is free of human mistakes. "A11 of a sudden, we have the computing power to really do it in real time... We couldn't have done this, we didn't have the computing power to do this several years ago, but now it's all changed." Agus adds that the process could be done "for almost no cost in the developing world.” He says that having a large amount of information about patients is important for a machine to effectively do its job in medicine .

The University of Southern California researchers are now only studying breast cancer. But doctors predict Al will one day make a difference in all forms of cancer.

Facial recognition is becoming increasingly common in China, where it has been installed at ATM machines and KFC restaurants. Now the technology has arrived in university classrooms to track student attendance.

Shen Hao, a professor with Communication University of China, is using facial recognition in his six courses to keep track of the attendance of more than 300 students.

Before every class, Shen activates a new attendance system installed on his tablet computer. Students stand in front of the screen one by one to have their photos taken and matched with those in the school’s database.

The system is based on facial recognition technology from Chinese Internet giant Baidu’s open AI platform. Currently, the platform has offered more than 80 different technological services to the public, helping program developers like Shen to develop their own applications.

“The traditional way of tracking attendance is through a roll call. The new system saves time and reduces the workload of teachers,” said Shen.

Students have joked that facial recognition is harsh as it doesn’t allow for skipping classes. “But they support the technology to enter colleges,” said Cui Yuqin, a student majoring in data journalism with the university.

China’s Forward-looking Industry Institute said that the facial recognition market in China surpassed 1 billion yuan (about 150 million U.S. dollars) in 2016 and is expected to hit 5.1 billion yuan by 2021.

Facial recognition technology has already been put to creative use. Beijing’s Temple of Heaven has used it in toilets to deter toilet paper theft. In eastChina’s Jinan, traffic police installed facial scanners at intersections to catch and shame jaywalkers, and a Beijing university has used the technology to guard its dorms.