In November, “NFT” was chosen as 2021's “Word of the Year” by Collins Dictionary. NFT is short for Non-Fungible Token. It is a “one-of-a-kind” property in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other piece of property but has no tangible (可触摸的) form. Now, NFTs are becoming popular in the art world.

Unlike the traditional artworks that are made by hand and have their own special technique, digital arts can be copied and gained for free. But NFTs could provide a digital certificate (证明), showing the ownership of a unique virtual or physical artwork.

“In the digital world, you wouldn't know if something is a copy of something else because the copy is almost perfect. The NFT was the first to prove who owns this property,” said Pindar Wong, chairman of Internet financial infrastructure consultancy VeriFi.

Along with protecting ownership, NFTs allow the owner to get a payment each time his/her work is sold. The artwork itself still belongs to the owner, and the buyers can get limited rights to show the digital artwork. So whenever the NFTs are sold, each transaction (交易) can only be made with the owner.

“NFTs can ensure that owners, including artists or musicians, can have a part of the income from every transaction, which could encourage their creations,” said Sylvia Wang, a consultant at business-to-business platform ArtBiz Asia.

That's why many experts believe that NFTs can greatly change the art industry. According to the latest report, in the first half of 2021, the sales of NFT digital artworks reached $ 2.5 billion, an increase from just $13.7 million for the same period in 2020.

US artist Mike Winkelmann said that with the help of NFT technology, the art field has entered a new time. He created a digital work of art — Everydays: The First 5, 000 Days. In March, it was sold for $ 69 million.

Computer scientists have hoped to give robots technical skills to help them recognize, process and react to humor. But these attempts have mostly failed. AI (人工智能) experts say that in many cases, attempts to make robots understand humor end up producing funny results, but not in the way they were supposed to.

Tristan Miller studied more than 10,000 puns (双关语) in one research project. The pun is a kind of joke that uses a word with two meanings. For example, you could say, “Balloons do not like pop music.” The word “pop” can be a way of saying popular music; or can mean the sound a balloon makes when it explodes. But a robot might not get the joke. Tristan Miller says that is because humor is a kind of creative language that is extremely difficult for computer intelligence to understand.

Allison Bishop is a computer scientist and she also performs stand-up comedy. She explained that machines are trained to look for patterns. Comedy, on the other hand, relies on things that stay dose to a pattern, kit not completely within it. To be funny, humor should also not be predictable, Bishop said. This sets a great obstacle for a machine to recognize and understand what is funny.

Bishop says since robots have great difficulty understanding humor, she feels like it gives her better job security as a comedy performer. It even made her parents happy when her brother decided to become a full-time comedy writer because it meant he wouldn’t be replaced by a machine, she added.

Despite the difficulties, Darmstadt University’s Miller says there are good reasons to keep trying to teach humor to robots. It could make machines more relatable, especially if they can learn to understand sarcasm (讽刺), he noted. Humans use sarcasm to say one thing but mean another. But Kiki Hempelmann thinks differently. “Teaching AI systems humor may make them find it where it isn’t, and they may use it where it’s inappropriate,” he said. “Maybe bad AI will start killing people because it thinks something is funny,” he added.

Do you ever talk to yourself? Although it’s not always a conscious habit, most of us practice self-talk on a daily basis.

Research shows that self-talk can increase productivity, motivation and confidence, and even help manage feelings. “There is solid evidence that self-talk strategies improve learning and performance,” according to sport psychologist Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis, who studies the phenomenon of self-talk.

He explains that there are generally three reasons why we practice self-talk: to instruct, to motivate or to evaluate. Instructional self-talk happens when we need to guide ourselves through a specific task, such as learning a new skill. Motivational self-talk usually is used when we want to prepare ourselves for something challenging; it can help to increase confidence. Evaluative self-talk mostly is related to past events or actions.

Hatzigeorgiadis stresses that if we want to use such self-talk to good advantage, it needs to be short, precise and, most of all, consistent. Of course, self-talk also can be ineffective and even detrimental if it’s not done right.

“It is a matter of personal preference or what works for each person; but generally, it is advised that self-talk be positively rather than negatively phrased and focus on what you should do rather than on what you should avoid,” Hatzigeorgiadis says. So, for example, it would be better to say “stay cool” instead of “don’t get upset”. Although both instructions convey the same meaning, you should use positive words rather than negative ones. In this way you can avoid ill results.

Another thing that can make a difference when practicing self-talk is the way you address yourself. According to the research published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, using “you” rather than “I” when talking to yourself tends to be more effective. The researchers explain that when you think of yourself as another person, it allows you to give more objective and useful feedback(反馈).