You have probably read about robots replacing human labor as a new era of automation takes root in one industry after another. But a report suggests humans are not the only ones who might lose their jobs.

In New Zealand, farmers are using drones (无人机) to herd and monitor livestock, assuming a job that highly intelligent dogs have held for more than a century.

The robots have not replaced the dogs entirely, Radio New Zealand reports, but they have appropriated one of the animal's most potent tools : barking.

The DJ-Innovations (DJI) Mavic Enterprise, a $3,500 drone favored by farmers, has a feature that lets the machine record sounds and play them over a loudspeaker, giving the machine the ability to mimic its canine counterparts.

Corey Lambeth, a shepherd at a farm with sheep and cows, told RNZ the machines are surprisingly effective.

“That’s the one thing I’ve noticed when you’re moving cows and calves --- that the old cows stand up to the dogs, but with the drones, they’ve never done that,” he said, noting that it means the drones move livestock faster, with less stress, than the dogs do.

Farmers told RNZ the drones come in handy for more than just herding cows and sheep. The robots allow farmers to monitor their land from afar, tracking water and fed levels and checking on livestock health without disturbing the animals.

Jason Rentoul told RNZ last spring that a two-hour herding job that used to require two people and two teams of dogs could be accomplished in 45 minutes using a single drone. “Being a hilly farm where a lot of stuff is done on foot, the drones really saved a lot of man-hours,” he said. “The drone does the higher bits that you can’t see from the ground, and you would have to walk half an hour to go and have a look and then go, ‘Oh, there was no sheep there.’”

Farmers around the world are using drones. In South Africa, they monitor crop health from above, which boosts harvests, according to CN. In California, winemakers use drones equipped with sensors to grow healthier grapes, according to MIT Technology Review. Because drones fly closer to the ground, they are able to provide high-resolution images that are less expensive than hiring someone to fly an aircraft over a field, the publication reported.

In New Zealand, farmers say some dogs are learning to work alongside drones, identifying the machines as more co-worker than foe.

“A good herding dog, he's already figured out if the drones are working on that side. I’ll go over here (to the other side) and work over here," Rentoul said.

“For now,” farmers say, “there is still a need for herding dogs, primarily because they have a longer life span than drones, can work in bad weather and do not require an electrical socket every few hours to recharge.

“There’s definitely going to be places for dogs always on farm," Lambeth said. “The one down side of the Mavic drones or anything electronic is that you still need to bring them in and charge them.”

As artificial intelligence(AI) systems become more advanced, we can expect them to be used more often in the world of human medicine and healthcare. AI is designed to imitate(模仿） the human brain in decision making and learning, so with the computing power to learn tasks in days or even hours, it is possible to create medical AIs that rapidly outperform doctors in certain tasks.

Data plays a hugely important role in helping AI systems learn about human medicine. AI systems are trained on large data sets gathered from real-life cases. Providing detailed patient information in quantities is a crucial factor for their success.

One of the most important areas for influencing global health is in the field of epidemiology(流行病学）。 Predicting disease outbreaks can save millions of lives by having resources ready should the worst happen. Startup AIME has successfully combined public health data with machine learning and AI to create a prediction engine capable of anticipating epidemics months in advance with great accuracy.

Another field where medical AIs are making rapid advances is in diagnostics(诊断学）。Doctors base a lot of decisions on information from X-ray, CT and MRI images. Speeding up. diagnoses from patient scans can rapidly improve patient care and outcomes. Computer vision AIs use pattern recognition to work through these images with incredible speed and accuracy. They have been able to outperform junior doctors and even senior specialists in some tests.

Cardiologist(心脏科医生）Rima Arnaout developed an AI that beat human experts at correctly interpreting echocardiograms(超声心动图）by 92 percent to 79 percent. She said that despite the result there is no prospect of AI replacing human doctors any time soon. “As cardiologists, we read the images and then go to see the patient,” she said. “So we're both reading images and practicing medicine. I don't think that the second piece will be taken over so quickly. ”

The acceptance of AI in medicine will continue to gather pace in the future as it becomes more widespread.

What exactly is a computer? That’s not always an easy question to answer. Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines a computer as “a programmable usually electronic device that can store, retrieve(检索), and process data”. 【小题1】

For thousands of years, people have tried to improve their lives by inventing machines to make certain tasks easier. Some people believe a simple mechanical device called an “abacus” was one of the earliest forms of a computer. 【小题2】 Archaeologists have found evidence that the ancient Greeks used the abacus as early as the 5th century B.C.

Modern computers were developed much more recently. The first modern electronic computer—known as the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer or ENIAC—became operational in 1946. Weighing more than 30 tons, ENIAC took up as much space as 1,800 square feet. 【小题3】 While ENIAC could perform 5,000 addition problems per second, many of today’s laptop computers weigh just a few pounds and can perform several billion operations per second.

【小题4】 Large desktop computers gave way to laptops. Laptops have developed into a wide variety of even smaller computing devices, such as netbooks and tablet computers. Many people even carry computers with them everywhere they go. Smartphones—cellular telephones with advanced computing capabilities—fit easily into a pocket and allow their users to make telephone calls, surf the Internet, and conduct business on the go.

So what’s the smallest computer available today? As of 2015, the smallest computer is just one cubic millimeter. However, today’s computer manufacturers are constantly producing newer and smaller models at a rate too fast to keep up with. 【小题5】