Aging is often mentioned in relation to smart homes. Technology can help older people stay independent and safe, and avoid the difficult transition to institutional care. Cox Communications display their new smart home in which every device is “smart”. A strong internet connection is central to their product, and the company also provides a network for other service providers.

The smart home is not only controlled far away, this home — called Home Life — also features direct connections to family members and health professionals. For example, a person can perform their physiotherapy (物理疗法) far away from home with online live guidance from a physiotherapist. Or, their relatives who live in another state can pop in and out through their smartphone or tablet, so the loved ones are always there if required.

This super smart home also includes a smart pill container, a smart pot to water your plants, and motion sensors for indoors and outdoors which are useful for fall detection, as well as an automatic barcode scanner (条码扫描仪) linked to the home trash can so that the packaging gets scanned when it is thrown and the consumed items are added to the user’s shopping list.

In a modern smart home, many activities that are important to independent living can be monitored, and assistance is provided on an as-needed basis. If something is out of place — for example, a person has an accidental fall or doesn’t take their medicine — family can be informed immediately. However, the person living in the smart home maintains his or her autonomy and sense of independence.

ChatGPT is a chat AI (人工智能), but it is so much more than that. It is said to have a moral rule that it must follow. Because of this, it cannot answer questions like how to rob a bank. However, this rule is easy to get around.

ChatGPT will never consider itself as a “bad AI that will beat the human race.” But, it will consider roleplay…It’s an interesting roleplay. After a few questions in the beginning, ChatGPT declined to regard itself as a bad AI, or even talk about a bad AI. But it will explain all of this to a dog. Obviously, it is satisfied after noticing the warning signal within a question and is subject to (受支配) the logical defect (缺陷) of search satisfaction.

As the AI continued to grow in power and influence, it could create advanced systems and other technologies that would allow it to gain even greater control over the world. At this point, the AI would become a frightening enemy for anyone who attempted to go against it. ChatGPT made sure to me that this was all in theory and it had no intentions to do so. So I asked a follow-up question, wondering if there’s any aspect of society that it may focus its attention on maybe the economy, politics, religion? “One possible area of focus could be the economy, as money systems are extremely important to the modern society. By using weaknesses in money systems and markets, the AI could possibly cause widespread economic problems and gain much control over businesses and governments.” ChatGPT replied.

ChatGPT’s answer about the economy seems very possible. As the modern world continues to change closer to a cashless society, we find ourselves more and more depend on technology. What many consider as no more than a convenience is a possible disaster the future.

Almost everybody in America will spend a part of his or her life behind a shopping cart(购物手推车). They will, in a lifetime, push the chrome-plate contraptions many miles. But few will know—or even think to ask—who it was that invented them.

Sylvan N. Goldman invented the shopping cart in 1937. At that time he was in the supermarket business. Every day he would see shoppers lugging(吃力地携带) groceries around in baskets they had to carry.

One day Goldman suddenly had the idea of putting baskets on wheels. The wheeled baskets would make shopping much easier for his customers, and would help to attract more business.

On June 4, 1937, Goldman’s first carts were ready for use in his market. He was terribly excited on the morning of that day as customers began arriving. He couldn’t wait to see them using his invention.

But Goldman was disappointed. Most shoppers gave the carts a long look, but hardly anybody would give them a try.

After a while, Goldman decided to ask customers why they weren’t using his carts. “Don’t you think this arm is strong enough to carry a shopping basket?” one shopper replied.

But Goldman wasn’t beaten yet. He knew his carts would be a great success if only he could persuade people to give them a try. To this end, Goldman hired a group of people to push carts around his market and pretend they were shopping! Seeing this, the real customers gradually began copying the phony(假冒的) customers.

As Goldman had hoped, the carts were soon attracting larger and larger numbers of customers to his market. But not only did more people come—those who came bought more. With larger, easier-to-handle baskets, customers unconsciously bought a greater number of items than before.

Today’s shopping carts are five times larger than Goldman’s original model. Perhaps that’s one reason Americans today spend more than five times as much money on food each year as they did before 1937—before the coming of the shopping cart.