“Robots are ready to replace millions of humans in various industries. But they're nowhere close to being human-like,” said Blake Hannaford, a robotics professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

So far, robots don't really look or act like the sensitive beings described throughout science fiction. Rather, these basic machines are tasked with carrying out simple tasks that promote productivity around the workplace or factory. We are still decades away from a future where robots carry out more difficult and meaningful tasks.

But other aspects continue to have a significant influence on robotics. Robots are already performing some human functions. In everyday terms, that means your smartphone can do more with the same battery life. It also means quicker advances in artificial intelligence—things like computer vision and natural language processing that help robots “see” and learn.

Going forward, Hannaford said, robots will “free up people's brains” to perform other, more complex tasks. “There’s going to be a lot of people who fall by the wayside,” he said of the countless jobs that will be automated or disappear entirely.

More than 120 million workers worldwide (11.5 million in the U.S.) will need retraining just in the next few years due to replacement caused by artificial intelligence and robots, according to a recent IBM Institute for Business Values study. Not all of them will get that retraining, of course, but the ones who do will be more likely to gain new types of jobs brought by the robot revolution.

But some experts say the more robots surpass humans, the more humans will be expected to keep up.

“The way we have to start thinking about robots is not as a threat, but as something that we can work with in a co-operative way,” Hannaford said. “A lot of it is changing our own attitudes.”

American Sign Language (ASL) has been one of the primary means of communication for the deaf in the United States. But there are millions of people with normal hearing that do not understand the language. And while most deaf Americans learn to speak with the help of speech therapy (言语治疗), many find it easier to communicate through sign language. Now a team of researchers have created wearable technology that will make it easy for ASL and non-ASL users to converse.

The smart device has two separate sensors to translate ASL gestures into plain English. The first sensor keeps track of the significant movements-the user's hand and arm as he tries to communicate. The second sensor helps distinguish the smaller movements that follow the larger ones. It can recognize various hand and finger movements based on muscle activity. The two sensors working in turn help people get an accurate meaning of the gesture.

For example, when an ASL user is gesturing the word “please” or “sorry”, the first sensor will pick up the hand drawing circles to the chest, while the second will ascertain if the fist is open (please) or closed (sorry). Once the device that is worn on the user’s right wrist has captured the gesture, it transmits the appropriate signals to a laptop via Bluetooth. A complicated program translates them into English and displays the word on the computer screen.

Jafari, who showed the prototype (雏形) at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, says there is still some work to be done before the technology can be used in the real world. For one! It currently recognizes just 40 primary language signs, which means that it has thousands more to learn. Also, the smart device only translates one word at a time, making ordinary conversations painfully slow.

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Gitanjali Rao, a 15-year-old teenager who used artificial intelligence (AI) and created apps to track lead (铅) in drinking water, cyberbullying and other social problems, has been named Time Magazine’s Kid of the Year for 2020. The magazine announced the award Thursday, praising Rao’s ability to deal with daily-life problems and her desire to inspire other kids for their own dreams.

It’s just the latest recognition for Rao. Last year, she was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List. She won praise in 2017 after she responded to the water crisis in Flint, Miclugan, by creating a tool named Dehys, to detect lead in water and send those results to a mobile phone. She was named America’s Top Young Scientist when she was in the seventh grade.

More recently, Rao has developed an app named Kindly. which uses artificial intelligence technology to detect possible early signs of cyberbullying.

“You type in a word or phrase. and it’s able to check if it’s bullying, and it gives you the chance to correct it or send it the way it is, “Rao tells Time.” The goal is not to punish. Instead, it gives you the time to rethink what you’re saying so that you know what to do next time around.”

Rao has partnered with countryside schools, museums and other organizations to run workshops for other students.

“I don’t look like a typical scientist. Everything I see on TV is that it’s an older man as a scientist,” she told Time. “So I really want to put out that message: If I can do it, you can do it, and anyone can do it.”

For 92 years, Time has presented a “Person of the Year”, and the youngest ever was Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was 16 when she was on the magazine’s cover last year.