Ammaar Reshi, 28, has been fascinated by technology since he was a child. One day, when he was experimenting with an AI-powered chatbot, he began to consider how artificial intelligence could be used to create a basic children’s book to give to his friends. Without ever picking up a pen and paper, he created a 12-page picture book.

Just 72 hours later, Reshi self-published his book on Amazon’s digital bookstore. The next day he got the paperback (平装书), which was made available for free through another Amazon service called KPD.

Reshi said he paid nothing to have the book created and published, although he has already paid for a $30-per-month Midway subscription. Impressed by the speed and results of his project, Reshi shared the experience in a Twitter thread that attracted more than 2,000 comments and 5,800 retweets (转发).

Reshi stated that he received great feedback (反馈) from users, who lauded his creative work at first. But the next day, the replies were negative. “There was this incredibly passionate reaction,” Reshi said. “At 4 am, I was woken up by my phone exploding every two minutes with a new tweet saying things like ‘We hate you’.”

Reshi was taken aback by the outpouring of emotion in response to what was supposed to be a present for some friends’ children. He didn’t realize he had landed in the heart of a much broader argument.

Some artists have expressed concern that AI art generators are stealing their work in response to Reshi’s book. And some artists claim that their work has been used without their permission to train AI picture generators.

“I wouldn’t even call myself an author,” Reshi said. “The AI is essentially the ghostwriter (代笔者), and the other AI is the illustrator.” But he thought the process was creative.

Diplomacy (外交) is an art. It requires not only strategy, but also other aspects, including intuition, persuasion, and even tricks, human skills that have long been unreachable to even the most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) approaches. Now, an AI algorithm (算法) from a high-tech company has shown it can beat many humans in a game of diplomacy, which required both strategic planning and negotiations with other players. The work, researchers said, could point the way toward virtual exercise coaches and conflict mediators (调解员) .

AI has already beaten humans in some games of strategy. It is also proving powerful at natural-language processing, in which it can generate humanlike text and carry on conversations. In the game of diplomacy, seven players vied for control of Europe. On each turn, players issued orders regarding the movement of army and naval units, following discussion with other players, whom they could attack or support.

There are two technical innovations noted by Jonathan Gratch, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California who studies negotiation agents. First, the Al agent’s com-munication is grounded in multistep planning. Second. the Al agent keeps its remarks and game play within the range of human common practice.

To test its skill, the researchers had the Al agent play 40 online games against humans. It placed in the top 10% of players who’d played at least two games. “In a game that involves language and negotiation, that agents can reach human equal level is very exciting,” said Yu, a computer scientist at Columbia University.

According to Brown, a computer scientist at the company who co-authored the paper, the work could lead to practical applications in fields that now require a human touch. One specific example is that virtual personal assistants might help consumers negotiate for better prices on plane tickets. Gratch and Yu both see opportunities for agents that persuade people to make healthy choices or open up during therapy.

This summer, a $2. 10 billion energy storage project called Nant de Drance opened in Valais, Switzerland. The project, which some people call a “water battery”, can store more energy than 400, 000 car batteries. The system works by gravity. There are two large water reservoirs (水库)high in the Swiss mountains. One is much higher than the other. The two are connected by a system of tunnels.

When there is too much electricity, Nant de Drance can use that energy to pump water from the lower reservoir to the upper one. As long as the water remains in the upper reservoir, the energy is stored, ready to be used. To produce power, water is released from the upper reservoir. Gravity pulls the water down into the tunnels, where it rushes through six large turbines (涡轮机), The turbines produce electricity, which is sent back out.

Though the system is a fairly simple one, building it took 14 years and a lot of effort. The upper reservoir had to be doubled in size. Workers had to create 10. 5 miles (17 kilometres) of large tunnels connecting the two reservoirs. That meant carving out huge amounts of rock from inside the mountains. The turbines are located over a third of a mile (0. 6 kilometres) underground.

By 2030, Europe aims to have four times as much power storage as it has now. The Nant de Drance project is a big step in the right direction. The project is far bigger than Switzerland needs on its own, so it’s expected to help balance Europe’s energy supplies. Nant de Drance can switch between storing energy and producing it in just a few minutes.

Using water to store and create energy isn’t a new idea. But in the past, many pumped water storage projects involved seriously changing or damaging rivers. Because Nant de Drance is almost entirely underground, it’s much more friendly to the local environment. As an added bonus, the system is expected to be reliable and shouldn’t require much effort to keep going.